She arrived in a single vehicle with no escort and a cardboard box of documents balanced on her lap, the kind of arrival that should have looked unremarkable and somehow did not.
Seventy-three years old. Small, the way some people grow small with age while staying entirely undiminished by it. Silver hair pulled back simply. And eyes the specific dark brown I had spent twenty years seeing only in mirrors, never quite matching anyone else's face, until now.
I met her in the reception hall. Caden beside me. Rowan at the door, watchful in the particular way Rowan was watchful when he had not yet decided whether something required intervention.
The moment Wren saw me she stopped walking.
For five full seconds she simply looked at me, and I understood, watching her face do the careful work o
