An hour later, the letter hung in the air of the Kagu Ancestral Estate's inner courtyard, and everyone I loved who could fight was standing in a circle around it.
Selene Kagu had given us the courtyard without being asked. It was the oldest part of the estate, a square of grey flagstones ringed by low black pillars, with a single ancient plum tree in the centre that had survived three wars and, as of that morning, a fourth. Her own guards held the outer gates. The family wards hummed overhead, layered so thick the sky looked faintly purple through them. After the plaza, it felt like standing inside a closed fist.
