They left Astrid with Corin and two healers summoned from the pack house, and they ran back the way they had come, faster this time, the urgency of the wounded watchman replaced by something colder, the specific dread of carrying a name that could break everything or nothing depending on what waited for them when they said it out loud.

Silvain did not speak until they reached the treeline above the pack house.

"If it's true," he said, "he answers for it in front of the pack. Same platform. Same law he tried to use against you."

"And if it's not true," Marina said, "someone wanted us to think it...