The Silence. The Warden Chronicles, #2

The battle is over. The war is just beginning. Six weeks after their first victory, the Warden children are learning that winning a fight and winning a peace are two very different things. Hollowfield is rebuilding, but the village that woke from the Alignment is not the village that fell asleep. Some people are angry. Some are ashamed. Some miss the quiet obedience they lost. When a desperate messenger arrives from Ashwick, a neighbouring village tearing itself apart after its own awakening, Angus leads his siblings east to help.
But what they find is a new kind of threat: not an agent with a grey cloak, but a trusted healer whose kindness is quietly steering the village back toward the very thing it escaped. And in the deep forest, the stone has gone dark. The great wolf who guided them is silent. The children must learn to lead without the voice they trusted most. The Silence is the second book in The Warden Chronicles. The war for freedom is no longer about swords and sacrifice.
It is about what happens the morning after, when the real work begins.