Arwen's POV
We come up the stairs in a specific order that nobody decided on out loud.
Draven first because he is an alpha and the training of a lifetime points him toward the front of anything uncertain. Me behind him because the silver light in my hands is still constant and low and apparently permanent now and serves as something useful in the dark of the staircase. Cora does not come. She looked at the door at the top of the stairs for a long moment when I asked if she wanted to and then shook her head and returned to her chair and said she had been below for two hundred years and the world above could wait a little longer. I did not push her. The chair and the room and the long waiting are hers and I am not the person to tell her when they stop being necessary.
Ashcroft was gone by
