Chapter 56

• The air on the ledge seemed to freeze, thick and heavy as lead.
• A stunned silence settled over the company, broken only by the wind howling through the cracks in the rocks. Soldiers stood with their mouths half open, looking from the deathly pale Sergeant Gareon, now safely back from the edge, to their fragile Empress slumped against her captain.
• What had happened in the space of a few heartbeats was so unreal that their minds refused to accept it.