The letter came when Maren was two months old.
It arrived the way important letters always seemed to carried by a road-worn messenger, sealed with wax, addressed in a hand Aria did not recognize. But the seal stopped her cold. It was not Blackmoon's crowned wolf. It was something older, a sigil she had seen only once before, in Cress's books: a circle broken by a single line.
"The southern circles," Iola said, when Aria brought it to the round room. Her face had gone still. "That is the mark of the high coven. The ones Cress answered to, before she came north. They do not write often. They do not write at all, usually, unless something has changed."
Aria broke the seal.
The letter was short, and its brevity made it heavier.
*To Aria Vale, Queen of Ashenveil, Holder of the Seal,*
*Wor
