[SERA — POV]
Aldenmere was everything Veyrath wasn't: clean, bright, purposeful. A mid-sized city built for governance and civic function, without the layered supernatural history of Veyrath's underbelly. The Warden's Council seat was in the old municipal quarter—a converted historic building that had been a bank and before that a courthouse and before that something she'd never learned.
Councilor Maeve Dorn kept an official office in the building and a personal office in a house on the city's eastern residential edge. Sera knew this because she'd spent three hours before this trip reviewing everything she knew about Dorn, which was the baseline before any high-stakes conversation.
She left Kael in the car two blocks from Dorn's house. She was aware he didn't like this—not because he ob
