“What?”
Caspian stayed crouched beside the table.
“Astra.”
“What?”
He moved aside.
The initials were small. Nearly hidden where the leg met the underside of the table.
S.V.
Beneath them, one line.
A word.
Survive.
I stared at it until the room went quiet in the wrong way.
My mother had been here.
Here, not in a story or a file or a dress preserved by the people who killed her.
In this room.
Waiting for a door with no handle to open.
My knees wanted to bend.
I didn’t let them.
Caspian rose slowly.
Kieran had gone pale. Hale looked at the far door as if he could see through it and hated what stood on the other side.
“Did she leave this before or after the formal?” I asked.
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
The lock turned.
All four of us went still.
The door opened and Linden stood in the corridor.
Behind him, Quill waited with two stewards and the woman from the interrogation. She had a notebook open in one hand.
Of course she did.
Linden looked at the four of us.
Then at the room.
His gaze dropped, just once, toward the underside of the nearest bench.
