Day four of travel looked like this: grey sky pressed low over bare winter trees, the ground hard underfoot, breath visible in the cold morning air, and Seraphine explaining the original architecture of the Moon Council's authority to Aelara in the same tone a mason might use to describe a wall that had been built wrong from the foundation and had been falling ever since.
It was, Aelara had discovered, how the old woman taught. Without a preamble. Without checking whether the student was ready. Knowledge arrived when Seraphine decided it was time for knowledge to arrive, and the student's job was to keep up.
"The Council was never meant to govern," Seraphine said. They were riding through a corridor of birch trees, the group spread in a loose formation with Kira at the front and two wolves trailing at the rear. "Governance requires choosing sides. Weighing interests. Deciding who gets what. The Goddess doesn't operate that way and the Council wasn't designed to either."
