Chapter 13: What the Courier Document Contains

The candle had burned down a third of its length by the time Serafka finished reading the document the first time.

She read it again.

Outside, Ashford was quiet in the specific way of small towns past midnight — not peaceful, exactly, but emptied out, all its anxieties temporarily shelved. A dog barked somewhere on the far side of the market square and then stopped. The wind moved through the gap under the window shutter in a thin, persistent whistle that she had been ignoring for the past hour.