Oren took the news the way old people take bad news when they've been expecting it for decades. He sat with it for thirty seconds, nodded once, and asked for details.
I gave them. The entity's fear. The image of the silver feather. Serena as a vessel, not a casualty. Moonstone Hall before the next full moon, which Cass calculated immediately as twenty-three days from now, standing in the gray pre-dawn of the Exile camp with her fingers counting on her hand like a child doing arithmetic and her face like someone doing anything but.
"Twenty-three days," she said.
"Yes."
"To prepare for something the entity that's been eating Sovereigns for four centuries is afraid of."
"Yes."
She looked at her fingers. Looked at me. "Right."
Jax was awake, sitting near the fire Oren had rebuilt, a bla
