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Her lips worked, appearing to form words but remaining silent. Until she stammered, “How—how do you know of this?”

“I’ve been living through it for many years. Many deaths. And over that time, we’ve gathered documentation.”

“Proof?” She folded her hands one on top of the other. “Can you show me?”

I nodded.

She tilted her head up an inch. “I want to see everything you have on the Order.”

“That’s not here in the cottage.” I pointed to the rug beneath the rocking chair. “But I have one box with information that might interest you, hidden below.”

She stood and moved the chair aside. She pulled up the rug and exhaled when she saw it—the trapdoor.

“Where does that go to?” she asked.

“The storage cellar.”

She shook her head, adamant. “I’m not going down there.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a trapdoor. Translation: it must be a trap.”

A small smile flickered on my lips. “No traps involved. It simply leads down to a cellar for storage. I’ve been down there many times. Nothing more terrifying than a box of old documents and food to keep cool over the winter.”

She glanced at the door and then back at me. “You go.”

“Happy to.”

I pulled the iron-ringed trapdoor up, yanking harder where it stuck. Lighting my way with a candle, I climbed down the ladder.

Some hermit must have cut this out of the ground a hundred years ago for storage as it still smelled of earth and onion. Movement down the ladder surprised me and I saw Ruby’s legs descend. She followed, unafraid, or at least curious enough not to let fear stop her. I held out a hand to help her, but she didn’t need it and popped to her feet beside me with the top of her head level with my chin. Her candle cast her shadow up the wall and bent it across the ceiling.

I pointed to the box, full of documentation we’d confiscated over the years.

I brought it up, set it on the floor beside the table, and untied it. The light slanted across the floor in a slow yellow wedge across the room.

“How did you get this?”

My jaw twitched. “We got a shifter inside.”

She reared back. “Impossible.” A pause. “Absolutely suicidal. They’d kill whoever they found.”

I met her gaze. “They did.”

We both turned slowly to the box, to the documentation that one of my packmates had died to get to us. That was how important these were. And how risky it was to reveal them to Ruby. She could kill me and take them back to the Order.

And yet, it was essential. The way to break through to her was to show her who she was working for.

We pulled out the field orders first. They’d been taken off bodies. Then the books we’d retrieved from a training house. Requisitions. Relay logs, noting what was known and by whom. The entire rotten structure of the Crimson Order noting who knew what.

And notes on the land grants.

She read through several without making any sound but the rustling of paper. After stacking them neatly in a pile, she looked up at me.

“Mervyn. His signature is everywhere.”

I nodded. “Yes.”