Eight nights later, Wren carried Caelum’s key into the logging compound.
The provisional alliance vote was eight days away, assuming the council confirmed the accelerated calendar. Wren had stopped counting the time in days. Tonight, forty minutes mattered more.
Soren waited beneath the southern service stair with his patrol coat buttoned to the throat. Snow had begun twenty minutes earlier, fine enough to soften the yard without covering their tracks completely.
“You told him?” he asked.
“The night. Not the time.”
“And?”
“He said he would not follow.”
Soren looked toward the dark tree line behind the compound.
“You believe him?”
Wren inserted the brass key into the service door.
“I am finding out.”
The lock turned.
Caelum could have changed the patrol rotation. He could have p
