Whenever the brigands passed their hiding spot, she covered herself with her wings, cradling her infant sister in her forelegs and quietly sobbing through the remainder of the night as the flames turned to embers, until the baron’s troops finally came to pick up the survivors. They had been elsewhere, dispatched to village after village to put down the shattered remnants of the force of brigands who crossed over from the kingdom of Jerminok. They had been led by a petty would-be warlord ousted from his roost in that benighted land who had sought easy spoils in the next kingdom over. He had been promptly stomped into the ground by a small army of an attentive duke who wanted none of that nonsense. Not that it comforted her much.