Mira's POV
The report reaches me two days after the attack, secondhand through a contact I've cultivated precisely for moments like this: a merchant who trades along the neutral roads and hears things long before formal channels ever do.
"The Hollow's northern perimeter was breached," he tells me, in the careful, transactional voice of a man being paid well to notice things. Mercenaries, by the look of it. Fought off eventually, but not before some damage was done. Word is one of their own nearly died in the fighting."
I thanked him, paid him, and dismissed him with the same courtesy I extend to everyone, and only once I'm alone do I let myself feel the particular satisfaction of watching a plan bear fruit exactly where I needed it to.
I didn't order this attack. That distinction matt
