Damien found out about Mara's visit through Rhys.
Not because Rhys had been watching or reporting, but because Rhys knew everything that happened inside Ironmoon's walls with the same automatic efficiency that the pack house knew when a door had been left open in winter. Information moved through him the way air moved through a building, not through any deliberate mechanism but through the simple fact of his position and the relationships he had built across twenty eight years of living inside this particular world.
He told Damien at seven in the morning in the corridor outside the war room, the same corridor where he delivered most of the things Damien needed to know before the day had properly started.
"Mara spent an hour in the garden with her yesterday," Rhys said. He was carrying t
