CARDAN MONTESSORI
We found her!
I called the council to meet early. The air tasted of iron and rain when they came… men and women wrapped in the pale light, maps spread like bones on the table. We spoke of a raid at the northern border, of two small packs skirmishing over water rights. Little things, at first. The kind of trouble you fix with riders and words.
Then Nora walked into the room.
She did not knock. She did not even clear her throat. She opened the heavy door and stepped in like someone who belonged to the house. She looked different… less painted like a court spider, more raw, like a wolf that had been roughed up and come back hungry. There was a tightness around her mouth I’d not seen before.
My hands stopped moving over the papers.
The council noticed too. Heads turned
