Chapter 21

Calla POV

I still had it from years ago. A small metal ration tin, dented, stamped with Hallow Quarry's mark on the bottom, the kind prisoners kept their meager food in during transport. Wren must have brought it back with her things when she was released, some habit of holding onto what little was hers. I found it shoved in the back of a drawer in her room weeks ago while looking for something else entirely.

I kept it since. You never know when a small, forgettable object might become useful.

Tonight, it became useful.

The family records room sat off the west corridor, locked most days, opened only when someone needed to check old pack ledgers or property deeds. I had a key. Everyone assumed I had access to everything now, which was true, and which made this embarrassingly easy.

I slipped inside after the household had gone quiet, moved straight to the shelf holding the oldest ledgers, adoption records, old correspondence, the kind of paperwork nobody thought to guard closely because nobody thought there was anything worth hiding in it.

I set the tin down carefully on the floor beside the shelf, angled just so, like it had been dropped in a hurry. Then I pulled two ledgers slightly out of place, enough to look disturbed without looking ransacked. Someone searching. Someone careless enough to leave evidence of themselves behind.

I stood there a moment, looking at my work, satisfied.

Nobody needed proof that Wren had actually done anything wrong. They just needed a reason to look at her sideways again, right when things were starting to feel too settled, too close to her actually walking free of all of this. A little doubt goes a long way in a house already primed to believe the worst of someone.

I locked the door behind me and went to bed feeling lighter than I had in days.

Garrett POV

I wasn't even looking for anything when I found it.

Damian had asked me to pull an old boundary agreement from the records room, some border dispute nonsense that needed settling before the council met again. I went in expecting a quiet ten minutes of digging through dusty paper.

Instead, I nearly stepped right on it.

A small tin, dented, sitting half in shadow near the shelf. I crouched down, turned it over, and felt something cold settle in my stomach at the mark stamped into the bottom.

Hallow Quarry.

I looked up at the shelf above it. Two ledgers sat pulled slightly forward, out of line with the others, exactly the kind of thing you'd notice if you spent years learning to read a room for what didn't belong in it.

My first thought wasn't an accusation. It was confusion. Why would something like this end up here, of all places, tucked against a shelf of adoption records and old pack correspondence that had nothing to do with prison at all.

My second thought came fast on the heels of the first, harder to shake once it landed.

What was she looking for.

I told myself I should just find her, ask her straight, the way I probably should've been doing from the start with half the things I assumed about her these past weeks. That instinct lasted about as long as it took me to stand back up.

Because if she really had been in here, going through old records, old adoption paperwork specifically, that wasn't nothing. That was someone digging for something, and I didn't like not knowing what.

I told myself I was being fair by not confronting her directly. Told myself I was just bringing facts to the people who needed to weigh them properly, instead of letting my own temper decide anything on the spot. It felt reasonable, walking that tin down the hall toward the council chamber.

It didn't feel reasonable anymore by the time I reached the door.

Three of the council elders were still inside, finishing up business from earlier that day. I set the tin down on the table in front of them without much ceremony.

"Found this in the records room," I said. "Near the adoption ledgers. Looked disturbed."

Elder Corwin picked it up, turning it over, reading the stamp on the bottom the same way I had.

"Hallow Quarry," he said, low. "Isn't that where.."

"Where Wren served her sentence. Yes." I kept my voice level, though something underneath it had gone tight in a way I didn't fully understand yet. "Records were out of place too. Two ledgers pulled forward."

"You think she was in there searching for something?"

"I don't know what to think," I said, which was closer to honest than anything I said about her in weeks. "I just know this doesn't belong in that room, and neither does whoever left it there."

Corwin exchanged a look with the other two elders, something already forming behind their eyes that I recognized from experience. Suspicion, once planted in a room like this, doesn't stay quiet for long. It spreads on its own, gathering weight with every person who repeats it.

"This needs to be brought before the full council," Corwin said. "Formally. If she's been going through private family records without permission, especially adoption records, that's a serious matter."

"Agreed," the second elder said.

I stood there, tin still sitting on the table between us, and something small and uncomfortable turned over in my chest. A version of me from a month ago would've felt satisfied right now, vindicated even, another piece of evidence stacking up against a woman I already decided was guilty of everything anyone accused her of.

This version of me just felt uneasy, I couldn't yet put a clean reason to it.

"I'll call a formal session for tomorrow," Corwin said, already gathering his things. "Good work bringing this forward, Garrett."

I nodded, said something appropriately dutiful in response, and left the chamber with that same uneasy feeling trailing behind me the whole walk back to the barracks.

It wasn't until I was nearly there that the thought finally surfaced clean enough to hear.

I hadn't asked her a single question. Not one. I found something strange, jumped straight to the worst possible explanation, and carried it to the people most likely to punish her for it before I even considered asking the one person who could've told me the truth outright.

Exactly the thing Emeric had called me out on, standing on that same path outside the training yard.

Did you ever actually ask her what happened.

"Damnit," I muttered to nobody, and kept walking, already knowing tomorrow's council session was going to feel a lot less satisfying than it would have before..