The second door knocked beneath the estate until even the wolves stopped pretending they were not afraid.
It did not knock loudly. That would have been easier to dismiss as damage, shifting foundations, stone settling after too many old rooms had opened their throats. This sound came with patience. Three measured strikes rose from somewhere below the Court of Wolves, traveled through black marble and old oath-lines, and entered every bone in the estate as if an unseen hand had found the underside of the world and was asking to be let in.
Sera felt the final knock in her teeth.
She stood in the lower archive with the dark silver locket still resting in its iron bowl, the blue cloth folded beside it, and the silver-black bond record sealed beneath Delara’s ash. Around her, the others had
