Lena's POV
The messenger arrived on a Tuesday.
I knew it was significant before anyone told me, the way you know significant things in a house like Stormridge: by watching the quality of stillness that moved through the wolves in the east corridor when the sealed packet was delivered to the receiving desk, and by watching the way Bastian's expression did the particular thing it did when he was storing and assessing simultaneously.
He brought it to me first.
That told me something, that he came to my rooms before he went to Damien's study. He stood in the doorway with the packet in his hand and the careful expression of a man who had already read the summary and was deciding how much of the context to provide before I saw the content.
"From Crestfall," he said. "Your father's formal co
