Chapter 21. The East Sends Wolves

They came with their claws sheathed and their teeth put away, which meant they were ready to talk or ready to insult us for thinking they weren’t.

Marshal Syra chose the old garden for the parley—a rectangle of stone and frost-burnt hedges open to the sky, the kind of place that made secrets feel rude. Two Shadowfang war-captains stood at the exits. Three Seers watched from the veranda under hoods. Kael leaned against a cracked sundial whose shadow had forgotten its job.

The delegation announced itself with silence. Five wolves in half-form padded across the flagstones, their shifts settling into human shapes as if they were shrugging into a familiar coat. Ashfall leathers. Dusk Spire steel. No Vesper colors, but the way they moved—precise, with a surgeon’s patience—carried the scent of the western court like a rumor.

At their center walked a woman whose face I’d seen once in a pool that lied and told the truth with the same mouth: the old Ashfall matriarch. Bones