Chapter 13 · Frontier Lord - Chapter 13: The Gate Was Open

The key was cold in Ava's palm. Half a key, really. The teeth were worn smooth and the iron was older than anything she'd seen in the fort.

"She said it was already open." Rain's voice was flat. He was still bleeding from the cut on his arm where the wolfskin woman had tested him. "From inside."

Ava's fingers closed around the broken metal. Someone in her camp had done this. Someone she'd fed. Someone who'd sat at her fire and smiled and waited for the right moment to let the enemy in.

"We need to find where," she said. Her voice didn't shake. That was good. "Before everyone wakes up and starts asking questions."

Rain nodded. His daughter was still asleep in their tent. His wife too. Half the camp didn't know how close they'd come to dying tonight.

Ava turned toward the old fort gate. It stood at the north edge of the camp, a massive iron-banded thing her grandfather had commissioned back when Windstone Hollow was worth defending. The wood was gray with age. The iron was pitted and dark.

She'd walked past it a hundred times. Never touched it.