The letter's warning still weighed heavily over the small council tent hours later, and it was Elowen, watching her daughter and new son-in-law absorb the mounting dread of an enemy far larger than Thackeray had ever been alone, who finally spoke into the tense silence.
"There's something else," she said quietly. "Something I should have shown you both the moment we found each other, but I confess I wasn't certain, until this letter arrived, that it was truly relevant enough to risk revealing."
Wren turned to her mother with sharpened attention. "What is it?"
Elowen reached into the folds of her traveling cloak, withdrawing a small, weathered leather satchel that had clearly been protected through decades of careful hiding, handled now with the particular reverence of something whose im
