Leo had been unusually quiet for two days following the revelations about Corvin and the Crescent Pack, and Clara had assumed his silence stemmed simply from the heightened tension now gripping the Citadel.
She discovered otherwise on the third morning, finding her son perched at the small table in their chamber, brow furrowed in fierce concentration as he arranged a collection of smooth stones into careful patterns across the wooden surface. He had been arranging and rearranging them for nearly an hour by the time she noticed, muttering quietly to himself in a manner that suggested some elaborate scheme unfolding entirely within his own small mind.
"What are you working on, sweetheart?" Clara asked, settling into the chair across from him.
"A plan," Leo announced with the gravity of so
