The council room had never felt this full.
Ember sat at the long oak table between Trillion and Ash and watched the adults do the thing adults did when the world was ending, which was organize. Maps spread across the table. Elion's leather bound volumes open to specific pages, weighted down with cups and candlesticks. A detailed sketch of the sacred lake and its surrounding terrain that Ewan had drawn from memory and Croft had annotated with troop positions in a handwriting so aggressive it