THE POISON IN THE COUNCILThe High Council convened on a Tuesday.Betty had not slept the night before, not from anxiety, but from the steady hum of information moving through Thornfield’s bond like water through roots. It had become stronger in recent months, no longer the distant static she once mistook for imagination, but a living current that passed through her bones and skin and settled behind her eyes.She felt the council members arriving one by one at the lodge before any car touched the gravel drive.Some presences moved sharply, clipped and guarded, minds arranged into neat locked boxes. Others came in wide emotional tides, broadcasting irritation, boredom, hunger, ambition. Thornfield was a web, and Betty stood too close to the center now to pretend she could not feel the vibrations.Elder Cass was already there.Betty sensed her like bedrock beneath soil—old, steady, patient, impossible to rattle. Cass never wasted emotion where silence would suffice. Her presence was a l
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