Cole found me in the kitchen.
Not the dramatic finding — Cole rarely did dramatic. Just appeared in the doorway the way he always appeared, without sound or announcement, carrying the specific quality of a man who has received information he did not expect and has done the calculation of how to deliver it and has arrived.
I turned from the stove.
His face was doing the minimal-expression thing that meant something significant.
"Crest," he said.
I set down the spoon.
Crest — Theron's old advisor, the man who had stayed on Darius's council through the transition, the name that had been under investigation since the earliest compound meetings and had never been confirmed, the thread I had stopped pulling because the compound had enough to carry and Darius had said *not yet.*
"You have
