We didn't storm the estate. You don't free a wolf from a cage by kicking the door you frighten them into clutching the bars.
Instead I did what I did best. I went in invisible.
The estate was staffed by old Hale-loyal servants, and old servants, like all servants, stop seeing the wolves who move through the servant ways. I'd been one of them my whole childhood. So Celeste and I went in through the kitchen entrance at the dawn shift-change, two women in plain clothes among the household staff, unremarked, unseen and we walked through the manor Vale had built around his forged princess the way I'd once walked through Crescent Hollow to take it back, using the exact invisibility that had made me.
We found Elara in the gardens, alone, in the grey morning light, walking the paths with that l
