The smell hit me first.
Cedar and old power, the same as it had always been, the same as the night I walked in wearing my mother's repaired dress knowing something was wrong before I could name what. Except now the cedar was underneath something else, something that hadn't been there before, sharp and metallic and wrong in the specific way that meant old magic being pushed past its design tolerance.
Moonstone Hall was doing what it was built to do. Holding. But barely.
We stood at the entrance, the six of us, the same people who had walked out of the Exile camp five days ago. Kael to my left. Fen to my right. Cass behind me with the document folded in her coat even though she knew every word on it by memory. Jax behind her, crossbow loaded, which was both practically limited against wha
