Sera Thorne snatched the folded letter straight from Kaelen’s fingers, her brow furrowing as she held the parchment up to the afternoon light.
“It is not convenient,” Sera said, her voice like cold flint. “It is an execution trench.”
Barnaby Holt leaned over her shoulder, scowling at the clan seal. “Old Mill Ravine? That dried riverbed between the northern bluffs? The cliffs are eighty feet tall and made of crumbly shale.”
“Exactly,” Sera said, her thumb tracing the paper edge. “Caravans haven’t used that pass in twenty years. If fifty mounted vultures hold the rim, they can rain barbed arrows down on anything that moves. You can’t climb out, and you can’t flank them.”
“A textbook kill-box,” Barnaby growled, turning toward Kaelen. “Derrick isn’t trying to make peace. He is trying to slaughter you and Mina in a ditch where nobody will hear you scream.”
Kaelen held out two fingers, plucking the letter back from Sera’s grip.
He brought the cracked red wax seal toward his nose and took a light, deliberate sniff.
“Derrick always was a remarkably sloppy liar,” Kaelen said.
