[Emma's POV]
The air in the Blackwood library, usually a sanctuary of leather and dust, was now charged with the electric tang of forbidden hope and profound dread. The brothers had moved beyond the law, beyond the Council. They had summoned a specter from the underworld of their world: Liora. An outlaw seer, her name a curse and a prayer among those who dealt in truths that could get you erased. She arrived not with ceremony, but like a gust of ill wind, dressed in worn leathers that smelled of distant deserts and bitter herbs, her eyes the color of storm-tarnished silver, holding a depth that saw too much.
Her examination was unnervingly silent. She didn't use crystals or bones. She simply… *observed*. I stood within a complex circle of Himalayan salt and crushed moonstone that Cain ha
