Chapter 11-At the Table

Odett’s POV

  The report delivered beneath the holiday lights changed the rest of winter break. By morning, three Royal Guard vehicles waited in the courtyard, and Orian had redrawn the patrol schedule. Mom tried to keep the younger children occupied, but even Zander stopped complaining when she sent them upstairs. I watched Dad’s office door and wondered what Sam had written.

  Sam was alive. Dad had told me that much, and I repeated it whenever my thoughts strayed toward the dreams. His report had arrived, but no letter came with it. Each guard who entered the office made it harder to believe there was nothing else I needed to know.

  ‘They are still hiding something,’ Lorilie said with a restless growl inside my mind.

  ‘I know,’ I replied silently with growing frustration as I continued watching the closed office door.

  Joshy joined me with two mugs of hot chocolate. He had stopped asking about the night I woke screaming Sam’s name, but he had not forgotten it. When another guard crossed the hall, his gaze went from the office to my face.

  “If you keep watching the door, it isn’t going to open any faster,” Joshy said with gentle amusement as he held the mug toward me.

  “I’m not waiting for it to open,” I lied while accepting the mug with an innocent expression.

  “You have been standing in the same place for ten minutes,” Joshy pointed out with a raised eyebrow.

  “I was thinking,” I defended myself with an irritated frown.

  “You were glaring at the door while you were thinking,” Joshy corrected with an amused smile.

  “Sometimes I do both,” I reminded him with a warning look.

  The office door finally opened, and Uncle Orian stepped into the hallway with several folders tucked beneath one arm. He looked tired enough to have spent the entire night awake, but he smiled when he noticed us waiting.

  “Your father wants to speak with both of you,” Uncle Orian said with a serious expression.

  “Are we in trouble?” Joshy asked with cautious curiosity as he pushed away from the wall.

  “Not yet,” Uncle Orian answered with a tired smile.

  “That depends on how well the two of you follow instructions,” he continued firmly.

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” I said with a suspicious look as I followed him into the office.

  Dad sat behind his desk while Mom studied a map covered with markers for packs, covens, vampire collectives, and fairy settlements. Most clustered across the north. I recognized the territory Sam had last named in a letter and tried not to stare at it.

  “Your mother believes the two of you are old enough to assist with a small part of the investigation,” Dad said with visible reluctance after Uncle Orian closed the door.

  “That makes it sound as if you disagree,” I replied with a raised eyebrow.

  “I believe you should be concentrating on the Academy and your normal responsibilities,” Dad explained with a protective frown.

  “We are still on winter break,” Joshy reminded him carefully.

  “You will not be on break forever,” Dad answered.

  Mom folded her arms and waited. Orian turned toward the map, wisely avoiding both their eyes. Whatever they had argued about before calling us in was not finished.

  “They are not going into the field,” Mom said.

  “They will be sitting inside your office with copied reports,” she continued firmly.

  “They do not need to know everything happening outside the kingdom,” Dad argued with a tense expression.

  “No one suggested telling them everything,” Mom replied.

  “I suggested allowing them to organize information that your investigators no longer have time to organize,” she clarified patiently.

  “It still brings them into the investigation,” Dad reminded her with a protective look.

  “It prepares them to become leaders,” Mom corrected.

  Dad looked toward Uncle Orian for support. Uncle Orian glanced between my parents before releasing a defeated sigh.

  “She has a point,” Uncle Orian admitted with a cautious expression.

  “You always say that when you don’t want her angry with you,” Dad accused with an irritated look.

  “That doesn’t mean she’s wrong,” Uncle Orian replied with an amused smile.

  ‘He knows he has already lost,’ Lorilie said with obvious amusement inside my mind.

  Dad took a small stack from the folder, read the top page once more, and set it on the desk. The rest stayed beneath his hand. He wanted us to help, but every movement told me how difficult it was for him to allow even this much.

  “You will only receive the information necessary for the work I give you,” Dad said with a firm expression.

  “Nothing leaves this room; you won’t contact anyone in these reports without my permission, and you won’t go looking for information I haven’t given you,” he said.

  “Does that include Sam?” I asked.

  “It especially includes Sam,” Dad answered with a pointed look.

  Lorilie growled, and I kept my face still. If I argued about Sam now, Dad would take the papers back before Joshy had touched them. I wanted to be trusted with more than a reassuring answer.

  “What exactly are we organizing?” Joshy asked.

  “Attack dates, messenger routes, border crossings, and response times,” Dad explained as he handed him the copies.

  “The reports were created under different systems, and I need to know when each message was written, how it traveled, and how long it took to reach the investigators,” he continued evenly.

  “That’s all?” I asked.

  “That is more than you knew yesterday,” Dad reminded me with a warning expression.

  Mom hid a smile when Dad showed us the smaller table. Joshy carried the copies over, and Orian brought travel records from the cabinet. The first two reports seemed to describe different attacks until Orian pointed out that both named the same river bend.

  The wolf patrol named the nearest pack, while the witches who lived beyond its boundary used their coven’s own district name. Neither appeared on the other’s map. We laid both records side by side, and I could see how a family searching for survivors might lose days simply because two communities called the same place by different names.

  “Why doesn’t everyone use the name of the community that was attacked?” I asked with a confused frown.

  “Because most territories created their records for their own people,” Uncle Orian explained with a patient expression.

  “They never expected another kingdom or species to compare them,” he added seriously.

  “That seems like a problem,” Joshy said with a thoughtful look as he examined the maps.

  “It became one when the attacks began crossing boundaries,” Uncle Orian agreed with a serious nod.

  The dates tangled too. A vampire patrol marked the night an attack began, while the human messenger wrote down the morning he found it. A fairy elder measured the route by the time it took to cross her people’s paths; the wolf patrol had used road miles. Joshy moved the markers until we could see one journey beneath all those different accounts.