Rissa’s POV

The forest outside New Orleans is thick with humidity and memory.

Spanish moss hangs from cypress branches like ghosts that never left. The Mississippi moves somewhere beyond the trees, slow and patient, as if it has seen too many wars to be impressed by another one.

We are not in a castle.

We are in a reinforced safehouse hidden deep in bayou territory just outside the city limits. Concrete walls. Steel doors. Pack sentries stationed in rotating shifts beneath live oaks older ...