The council chamber was fuller this time than it had been that morning, word having spread through the pack house in the particular way important news always spread despite every effort at discretion, and Marina stood at Silvain's side facing a room that included not just the coalition's territory heads but ordinary pack members crowded near the back, drawn by rumor and fear into a space usually reserved for formal business alone.

Silvain did not waste time on preamble. He laid it out plainly, the way he had promised on the walk back from Hollow Ridge, the third archive, the mirror, the resonance in the twins, the Custodian's stated intention,...