Her scar burned.
The wall inside her creaked.
And somewhere beneath the building, in a restricted archive lit by a single oil lamp, her mother’s journal sat on a shelf in the dark, holding the truth that had waited twelve years to be spoken out loud, and now it had.
Now everything that happened next depended on what Caelum Ravencrest chose to do with it.
Lira went first. She did not look back at the heavy oak door or the wolf head crest carved into its surface or the two enforcers standing on either side with their eyes fixed forward and their bodies held in that particular stillness that meant they had heard everything and were pretending they had not. She walked down the corridor toward the service stairwell and she felt Soren fall into step three paces behind her and Hadley behind h
