Wren's POV
We reach the courtyard at a dead run, the warmth of a moment ago already burned away by cold, urgent fear, and whatever I expected to find waiting for us, it wasn't that. The courtyard is chaos by the time we reach it, wolves shifting and scattering in every direction, torches guttering wildly in a wind that shouldn't exist on a night this still, and somewhere beneath the noise I catch a scent I recognize instantly and with a horror that stops my heart cold.
Smoke. The same wrong, acrid smoke from my dream, the kind that doesn't come from an ordinary fire.
For one disorienting second, I'm not entirely certain which memory I'm standing in, the courtyard in front of me, or the burning study from five years ago, both of them tangled together by the same impossible smell, and I h
