He just continued watching me for one heartbeat longer than necessary before turning back to the rest of the room.
“As Rhett reported,” he said, “we had rogue movement near the Nightfang border. One dead, one barely alive. Kade Thorn appeared, claimed he’d been ‘cleaning up pests’ on his side. There was witch‑scent on the air.”
“Witch‑scent?” Elder Maris, the oldest of the three, repeated, her wrinkles deepening. “Are you certain?”
Lucian’s gaze flickered briefly to me—to my hands folded on the table, to the faint, lingering pulse of magic I still felt humming under my skin when the witch was mentioned—then back to her.
“Yes,” he said. “The same trace we found at the shrine.”
A ripple of unease moved through the room.
“The curse,” another elder murmured.
“Has been active for years,”
