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They found the source of the howl an hour later, crouched in the brush overlooking a wide stretch of open land that marked the true start of Colt territory, and what they saw made Everly's stomach drop straight through the frozen ground.
It wasn't Grayson.
A man knelt in the center of a ring of guards, wrists bound behind his back, blood dried dark down one side of his face, and even from this distance, even after everything that had happened, Everly recognized him instantly.
"That's one of my father's guards," she whispered. "Renner. He's been at Duskfall longer than I've been alive."
Marcus went very still beside her. "Why would Colt guards have a Duskfall soldier."
"I don't know." Everly's eyes tracked over the scene, the guards standing at careful attention, the way none of them would quite meet the kneeling man's eyes, the particular kind of tension that came from soldiers forced to do something they weren't proud of. "But he looks like he's been questioned. Hard."
Odessa's face had gone sharp and focused in a way Everly hadn't seen from her yet. "If your father sent one of his own men into Colt territory, it wasn't an accident. He was sent to do something specific."
"Or he ran," Marcus said quietly. "The same way I did."
The thought hung between them, heavy and uncomfortable, because if Renner had run for the same reasons Marcus had, that meant more cracks were forming inside Duskfall than any of them had realized, and cracks like that rarely stayed contained for long.
A figure stepped into the clearing below, and Everly's breath caught, not from fear this time, but from something closer to relief so sharp it nearly hurt.
Grayson.
He moved toward the kneeling man with the same controlled authority she'd seen in him back in the first clearing, the posture of someone raised to command a room without raising his voice, and even from a distance she could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself like a man walking a line he didn't fully trust himself not to cross.
"Tell me again," Grayson said, his voice carrying clearly across the open ground, "who sent you to cross into our territory tonight."
The kneeling man lifted his head, and even from where they crouched, Everly could see something in his expression that looked less like fear and more like exhaustion, the particular kind that came from holding a secret so long it had started to feel heavier than the consequences of finally letting it go.
"I already told your father's men," Renner said. "I wasn't sent. I came on my own."
"Nobody crosses pack lines alone, especially not a Duskfall guard, especially not tonight." Grayson crouched in front of him, closing the distance. "Try again."
Renner's eyes flicked past Grayson, scanning the treeline like he was searching for something, or someone, and for one terrible second Everly was certain he'd seen her, that this was the moment everything collapsed. But his gaze kept moving, restless, and she realized he wasn't looking for her at all.
"I came to warn you," Renner said, low enough that Everly had to strain to catch it. "Not the girl. You. Because someone in your own pack has been talking to Damian Hawthorne for months, feeding him everything, and the same person who told him where to send guards last night is the same person who's about to hand you over the moment you find her."
Grayson went very still.
"Who," he said.
Renner opened his mouth to answer.
And then, without warning, without a single sound of struggle, he simply stopped, eyes going wide and empty, and slumped sideways into the dirt, a thin dart embedded in the side of his throat that hadn't been there a second before.
Everly's hand flew to her mouth to stop herself from making a sound.
Grayson spun toward the treeline, blade already drawn, his eyes scanning the exact stretch of brush where Everly, Marcus, and Odessa were hidden, and for one unbearable moment, it looked like he was staring directly at her.
Then his gaze shifted, sharp and certain, toward a different point in the trees entirely.
Someone else was out there. Someone who had just silenced the one person who knew the traitor's name before he could say it out loud.
Beside her, Marcus's hand tightened around his own blade, his eyes fixed on the same distant point Grayson was staring at, and his breathing had gone shallow in a way she'd never heard from him before, not even in the clearing with the knife at her throat.
"Marcus," she whispered. "What is it. What do you see."
He didn't answer right away, and when he finally did, his voice had dropped to something barely audible, something that sounded less like an answer and more like a confession he'd been dreading since the moment they'd left the den.
"That stance," he said. "That's my brother."
Everly turned to stare at him, certain she'd misheard. "Your brother is dead. You told me that the first night we met, when I was twelve."
"That's what I was told too." Marcus's face had gone the color of ash, his eyes never leaving the treeline where the second figure had vanished as quickly as it appeared. "Everly, if that's really him, then everything I told you about my family, everything I thought I knew about who I could trust, none of it was true. And whatever he's doing out here tonight, working with a dart meant to silence a dying man before he could name a traitor, it means my family isn't just tied to your father's secret."
He swallowed hard, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone hollow.
"It means we might be the ones who built it."
