Three candles flickered quietly on the desk. In the study of Blackthorn Manor—a narrow, dark room enclosed by stone walls built one hundred eighty years ago—three documents lay in a row. A letter from her mother. An envelope from an unknown sender. And a letter from Adrian Vestyr. Blackthorn Evangeline sank deep into her chair and picked up her mother's letter. (Blood that survived the Smoke Chaos) No matter how many times she reread that single phrase, she couldn't measure its meaning with precision. The possibility that her birthplace coordinates differed from where she'd always believed. The distance to the Ashwing Society—a secret organization lurking at the heart of the empire, supposedly formed by remnants of the First Prince's faction after their defeat in the succession war eighty-seven years ago. All of it seemed connected by a single thin thread, yet not connected at all. She rearranged the three documents toward the word "intersection" that Adrian's letter indicated at