“Anything new?” I asked, nodding toward the maps.
“Nox got tired of looking for you and brought me a few letters for you,” Bishop explained, sliding an envelope across the desk. The paper was creased and salt-stained from the trip.
I unfolded it carefully.
Tamsin,
Good news! The lycan numbers are shrinking on Irish soil. Slowly, but they surely are. The reformed Watch is actually doing what it should have been doing all along—tracking real threats instead of inventing them. There’re still a few idiots who think ‘kill first, question never’ is a viable strategy, but we’re breaking them of that. Logan mostly scares them straight by just standing there. It’s a terribly useful skill of his.
The Isle of Man feels different with fewer whispers and more howling. I didn’t expect to say this, but it might actually become a place worth living instead of hiding.
Try not to let London eat you from the inside out. If it starts, send word. We’ll come set something on fire.
—Sera
I smiled despite myself.
Bishop’s eyebrow twitched. “Good news?”
“Relatively,” I said. “They’re not dead, the lycan numbers are dwindling, and Sera hasn’t declared herself Queen of the Watch yet.”
“Yet being the operative word,” he quipped.
“And Zara?” I asked.
He nodded toward another envelope under a paperweight. I picked it up and recognized her scrawl immediately.
Tam,
Ireland is still a mess, but it’s our mess now. We stabilize more ferals every week. Some of them cry when they come back to themselves. Some punch me. Both reactions are understandable, really.
Villages that used to lock their doors at sunset are starting to leave them cracked open again. There’s a bonfire in one town every full moon where wolves and humans actually share food without hiding knives under the table.
We’re short on hands and long on work, but for once, none of it feels pointless. I hate to say it, but it’s starting to feel like home.
Oh. Try not to let London turn you into a politician. I don’t think we could be friends anymore after that.
—Zara
“Too late,” Nox smirked from the window seat.
He was half-sprawled on the sill, one boot braced on the frame, the other propped on a crate. I hadn’t noticed him at first, which was typical. He was tossing a coin up, catching it, flipping it over his knuckles, like his hands couldn’t bear to be still.
“You’re already a politician,” he went on. “You just haven’t noticed yet.”
“That’s rude,” I said. “And probably accurate.”
He grinned even wider.
“Anything from Ashcroft’s old network?” I asked him.
“Bits,” he said. “A few rats trying to squeeze out of holes before the bricks settle. Some mid-level parasites who thought they were important enough to inherit his mess. They’re not. I’ve been… discouraging them.”
“How have you been discouraging them?”
“Explaining things,” he said. “Firmly. Occasionally with teeth and claws.”
“And do they listen?” Bishop asked.
