The clearing went silent except for the wind through the trees.
"My mother…" Liz's voice was tight, controlled. "She sent me away before it happened. Told me to run.Her hands clenched."I never understood why. Why she stayed. Why she didn't come with me."
"She was protecting you." Vera's tone was gentle. "The order lost contact with her during the raid. But Corvin… Corvin found something. Documents. Evidence. That's why he went to Ashveil. To confirm what he suspected."
"Which is?" Marcus asked.
Vera pulled a folded map from inside her shirt. Dirt-stained, well-worn, marked with dozens of annotations in different colored inks.
"This." She spread it on the fallen log.
The map showed the eastern regions in detail. Ashveil was marked with a red circle. But that wasn't what caught Marcus's attention.
