The four walls of Avery’s dorm room felt less like a sanctuary and more like a concrete tomb.
She stood in the center of the dark space, her hands pressed flat against her desk as a violent, uncontrollable tremor racked her entire frame. The cold, mechanical echo of Jake’s voice was still bouncing off the interior of her skull, repeating the singular, devastating syllable over and over again.
“L.”
He had the initial. He had the valley. He had the historical anchor. He was standing on the very precipice of unearthing Leo’s entire existence, and the moment he connected that letter to the living, breathing boy rotting in Magnus’s silver-lined subterranean cells, the execution order would be signed in blood. Her strategy was dead. Her surveillance was compromised. She had crawled into his s
