POV: Ayla

The search begins in the room where we have been storing the recovered Dravenmoor records. Boxes of household papers, old ledgers, sealed correspondence that survived the transition. Most of it is ordinary. Supply lists. Guest logs. The careful, empty language of a house that wanted to look respectable from the outside.

I am not looking for ordinary things.

Caius cleared the space for me this morning after the security review made one fact unavoidable: if the infiltration stretches back years, then something in the older record might still carry a fingerprint. Ryker checked the room twice before he left me to it. Zane brought a second lamp and...