Page 51 of Mating Her Dragon

That mattered more than he'd initially credited. Knowing exactly where a trap intended to close was, in its own way, nearly as valuable as knowing where the enemy actually stood.

Then Sydney went very still, staring at the Council's map.

"What?" Garrett said.

"Why didn't that one wake up?"

She pointed to a single marker, older than the others, sitting off to the side of the obvious trail. It was closer to the convergence point than any of the ones that had actively responded. Dormant. Silent. Untouched, while every other piece of the network had lit up in perfect sequence.

Garrett felt something click into place.

If Keevandrie had built a natural tracking network, deliberately or not, that marker should have responded too, simply by proximity to the others. Unless she'd excluded it on purpose.

Which meant she didn't want anyone looking there.

Garrett almost smiled. There she was– not the Special One dutifully following a prophecy laid out for her by someone else, but Sydney Kavanaugh, noticing the one thing everybody else in the room had looked straight past.

The Council checked it. Miles from the obvious Elven sanctuary. Remote. No modern Magical designation on record, nothing recent. The references were buried deep enough in old files that it had taken real digging to surface at all. An abandoned Elven waystation, possibly– or something sealed and subterranean, hard to say from the fragments they had.

It sat entirely outside the trap's apparent convergence. Every active marker Keevandrie had allowed to wake pointed away from it, cleanly, deliberately.

"You think she's there," Carrick said. He didn't ask. He made a statement, and Garrett knew he was meant to answer. However, Syd beat him to the punch.

"I think she really doesn't want us wondering why that marker stayed asleep," Sydney said.

Evidence, not certainty. Garrett noted the distinction and respected her for making it.

Two locations, then. The obvious sanctuary, glowing with every breadcrumb Keevandrie had left for them to follow. And the silent marker, deliberately excluded, sitting quiet at the edge of everything.

This was the part of the problem Garrett actually knew how to solve.

He didn't propose sending everyone straight to the silent marker and calling the puzzle solved. He proposed splitting attention. His plan was to let the Council visibly mobilize toward the obvious sanctuary, making it look, from any distance, like Keevandrie's trail had worked exactly as intended. Meanwhile, he, Sydney, and a small, quiet containment team would approach the silent marker directly, without announcing it to anything that might be listening.

Sydney had outthought the Magic. Garrett intended to outthink the battlefield.

"So," Carrick said slowly, once Garrett had laid it out, "your plan is to knowingly walk toward the exact place Keevandrie specifically doesn't want you looking."

"Correct," Sydney said.

"I miss when you were six."

"I was worse at six."

"I believe her," Garrett said.

Before any of it moved forward, Garrett turned to Sydney. One question mattered more than the plan itself.

"Do you want to do this?"

Sydney studied the map a moment longer. The obvious trap was screaming, Come here, Special One, and the dark, silent place said absolutely nothing.

"Yeah."

Then she looked at him. "Do you?"

Garrett found the answer arrived without hesitation. He understood, examining it honestly, exactly why. Not because he was following orders. Not because Keevandrie had dragged him back toward old trauma and left him no other choice.

Because this woman, his Mate, had taken the very thing that had once reduced him to architecture– a door, an asset, a piece of Magical infrastructure to be preserved and used– and turned it into the tool that was about to hunt the person responsible.