The Noble Council had existed for six hundred years.
Kael told me this the way he told me everything — matter-of-factly, without preamble, as though historical context was simply information that needed to be transferred and he was efficient about transfers. He'd pulled two of the older manuscripts from the protocol room shelves before sitting beside me, and he opened the first one to a section marked with a strip of cloth that suggested he'd consulted it recently.
"Six hundred years," I said. "You've been alive for four."
"Yes," he said. "I predate it."
"What was before it."
"Less organized versions of the same argument," he said. "Who holds authority over Lycan territory. How disputes between anchor points are resolved. What happens when a ward line integration produces competing cl
