Marcus was nothing but a dangerous loose end from the start. He knew far too much about the old Moonbane rituals—the ones your precious little circle clings to like relics. He sniffed out the first hints of corruption long ago, back when I was still quietly testing scattered loyalties. Easier by far to simply remove him than attempt conversion.
Marcus had voiced vague suspicions several months earlier, but dismissed them as lingering paranoia from his scarred history.
But now those pieces clicked into a grim, coherent picture: the delayed supply runs that dragged on without explanation, the odd, strained silences that hung over council meetings.
"And the seventeen lives you shattered?" Kael interjected, his voice even but laced with an undercurrent.
"Were those deaths random chaos,
