Maren.
I turned the name over in my mind as Rowan walked me to the east wing to prepare for the council session. A woman who had known my mother. Who had been her closest friend inside these walls. Who had been waiting, according to Rowan's careful phrasing, for a very long time for me to walk through that door.
My mother had been twenty two when she left Ironpeak.
That meant Maren had been carrying the weight of whatever she knew about Sera Coles for nearly twenty years.
Twenty years of knowing something and saying nothing.
I understood that particular weight. I had been carrying versions of it my whole life. The question was what had kept her silent and whether the thing that had kept her silent was something I needed to be afraid of before I walked into that council room.
"What do
