The next forty-eight hours moved like a held breath.
Soren convened the elder council under the cover of a routine territory review. Standard enough that Marcus logged it without concern and proceeded with the rest of his morning. Seven elders. The same seven whose names I had written on the envelope with Bess. I had asked Soren to retrieve that envelope before the meeting and he had placed it on the table in front of them unopened as the first thing they saw when they sat down.
Elder Cora, the oldest and the one whose opinion carried the most weight with the others, had looked at the envelope and then at Soren and said, in the direct way she said everything, "What is this about?"
"Wait," Soren had told her. "Someone is coming."
I walked into that room and the silence that followed was
