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You shouldn’t be here. You should be resting. You should be playing. You should be having a childhood . Not in front of the Council. In here she was his advisor, not his mother. A war she constantly fought.
    Wren approached, and everyone stood as he climbed up in his chair at the head of the table. A formality they insisted on, though Wren had often said it seemed silly. His legs dangled freely above the floor, but his face was grave with understanding well beyond his eight years.
    The Council retook their seats.
    “How are you, Wren?” Rae asked.
    “I’m well, Miss Rae, thank you,” Wren said. His words and tone were kind, respectful, but Cass could tell the answer had been more reflex than response. “It’s the difference that scares people so much. All the changes.”
    He said it like a statement, but it was a question. Looking for confirmation.
    “Change, uncertainty,” Aron said, nodding. “Like Rae says.”
    “But that’s not the whole truth,” Hondo said, leaning forward. “It’s them , too. What they are. What they represent.”
    Cass felt anger rising, but checked herself.
    “Tell us, Hondo,” North said. He was speaking Cass’s mind, whether he knew it or not. “What do our friends represent ?”
    Hondo swallowed, licked his lips, glanced around the table for allies. Maybe he’d pushed it too far.
    “People think they could go back,” Wren said. The Council seemed surprised to hear him answer for Hondo. “To the way they were.”
    Hondo nodded. For a moment, Cass lost herself hearing her son give voice to the nightmare that haunted her daily; the terrifying thought that she might ever… relapse? Revert? Was there even a word for it?
    “And some folk blame them for things that happened,” Hondo added after a moment. “I know it’s not fair. It’s not right, and it’s not fair, but that’s how it is.”
    “None of this moves us any closer to resolving last night’s attack,” Cass said, reasserting control of the conversation. “Unless you’re suggesting that we’ve reached such a state in Morningside that people would send someone to kill my son?”
    Hondo shrugged in a way that suggested it was the only possible explanation.
    “What purpose would that possibly serve?” Rae asked.
    “It’d be the first step towards getting things back to the way they were, wouldn’t it?” Hondo said. “Think about it. Wren dies by the hand of an outsider, what’s the first thing everyone’s going to want to do?”
    “Send them all back outside,” Vye said.
    “Whoa, slow down now, slow down,” Aron countered. “Ain’t no reason to go makin’ up conspiracies when it coulda been just like I said. Girl after revenge, on her own, cause of her own reasons.”
    “It makes sense, though,” Connor said. “A terrible, terrible kind of sense.”
    Rae took over. She said, “Look, in the immediate, it’s irrelevant. Whether she was crazy, or desperate, or a hired assassin, we’re not going to figure that out sitting around this table. The question we’re here to answer right now is – what do we do ?”
    It was quiet for a moment, as each Council member looked to the others.
    “Nothing,” said Wren. Hondo suppressed a condescending smile; Connor smiled what he probably thought was an encouraging smile, but that ended up more condescending than Hondo’s.
    “We can’t do nothin ’ Wren,” Aron said. “Once people find out–”
    “If we don’t do anything, then no one has to know anything happened,” Wren answered.
    “I think you’re putting a little too much faith in your guards,” Hondo said.
    “Maybe someone will talk,” Wren replied, “But if we don’t make any sudden changes, then who will believe it? It’ll just be like any of the other rumors people talk about every other day of the week.” Wren was sitting up straighter, leaning forward. Confident. And becoming convincing. “You’ve been saying it yourselves all morning. People fear change. So, we don’t