The next morning brought news that shattered whatever fragile calm the previous night's honesty had built between us. Cole's remaining contacts, pressed carefully for information, confirmed what all of us had feared but hoped to have more time to prepare for: Callahan had moved up his timeline. The full moon deadline Silas's note had originally promised was no longer weeks away. It was three days.
He knows we're organizing against him, Ronan said, standing over the war table that had become a permanent fixture in the planning room, maps and notes scattered across its surface in a chaos that somehow made sense only to those who had built it together over the past exhausting week. He's accelerating everything before the council's investigation gains enough traction to actually threaten him.
