Seraphine's POV
Ryder came back smelling of smoke.
I did not ask immediately. I had learned that he needed a moment after something went wrong, a single breath between the thing happening and the telling of it, and that trying to pull the words out before he had arranged them cost us both something. So I watched him come through the door and read his body the way I had learned to read it, the set of his shoulders, the way his hands moved, the specific quality of stillness he wore when he was holding something heavy.
Garrick was behind him with a man I did not recognize, wrists bound, looking at the floor.
Caer straightened from where he had been sitting against my desk. He looked at the prisoner for a long moment.
"Drevin," he said. Not a greeting. An identification.
The man, Drevin,
