Wren
We spent nine days getting ready, and they were nothing like the war days, and that was the strange sweetness of it.
The war had been maps and dread. This was, there's no other honest word, this was family. The whole household went to work like we were preparing for a festival with teeth. Lucien lived half in the vault, copying Sera's letters and the old law scrolls in his ruled hand, building what he called the brief and what Caius called the exhibits, volume two. Zephyr drilled me, not in fighting this time but in Council custom, who sits where, who speaks when, which silences mean what, pacing the study like a war tutor while Berta fed us both. Darius arrived on day three with the entire Ashwood delegation and our parents' vow scroll, "in case the Law needs reminding what our fam
