While the alliance took shape across a dozen war tables and Council sessions, Jasmine found herself drawn, again and again, to the quiet of the nursery, watching Elara and Ronan with a new, unsettled attentiveness she hadn't felt since their birth.

Since the Hollowing's first appearance at the tree line, both children had changed in small, specific ways that only a mother watching closely enough would have noticed — Elara's fierce confidence tempered, occasionally, by moments of watchful stillness utterly unlike her usual nature; Ronan's quiet observation sharpening into something that looked, disturbingly, like genuine understanding of threats no toddler should have been able to comprehend.

"They're remembering something," Liora...