Maya had been gone for nineteen minutes when Raphael’s car ca through the estate gates.
Nineteen minutes. Maya had walked forty feet to get water and had been gone for nineteen minutes, and the estate, the warded, protected, supposedly impenetrable estate had simply let it happen.
Eve was sitting on the bedroom floor.
She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d moved from the bed to the floor. Sowhere between minute seven and minute twelve, probably. It didn’t matter.
The pack was searching. Every available person, every corner of the estate and the grounds beyond it. Marcus had taken the exterior. Catherine had locked down the interior. Security footage was being reviewed in real ti.
Forty feet. A corridor Eve had walked a thousand tis.
Nineteen minutes.
She went to get water, Eve kept thinking. She was coming right back.
The door opened, and Raphael ca in first, Elena behind him with her bag still over her shoulder.
Raphael looked at Eve on the floor.
He crossed the room in four long strides and crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her level with the deliberate care of soone who understood that eye contact mattered right now.
"Eve," he said.
"She was forty feet away," Eve said. Her voice ca out flat. Not calm, just emptied out, wrung dry from the inside. "She said she’d be right back. I was sitting right there."
"I know."
"She’s human." The word landed wrong in her mouth, tasting like accusation. Like indictnt. "She’s completely human, Uncle. She has no... she can’t defend herself against whatever..." She stopped. Started again. "She’s in my life because of . She stayed in my life even after everything changed because of . She’s here, in this estate, in the middle of all of this, because she loves and I let her stay, and now..."
"Eve." Raphael’s voice was quiet but firm. "Stop."
"I should’ve sent her away months ago. I should’ve..."
"You should’ve done nothing differently," Raphael said. "Maya is an adult who makes her own choices. She chose to stay. She chose to be here. You didn’t put her in danger, Malachai put her in danger. Those are not the sa thing."
Eve looked at him. Heard the words. Felt them slide off the surface of her guilt without penetrating it.
From the doorway, Damon said: "Security team has sothing."
Everyone looked at him.
He was on his phone. "Marcus. Talk to ." A pause while he listened, his eyes tracking across the room without settling. Then: "Show exactly where."
He lowered the phone. Looked at Damian.
"Eastern corridor," he said. "Near the secondary exit. They found sothing."
Damian was already moving. Silas stood, glanced at Eve.
"Go," Eve said. "I’m coming."
"Eve..." Silas started.
"I’m coming," she said again. She got up from the floor. Her body registered its objections, the lingering exhaustion from the trial, the depletion that still hadn’t fully recovered. She ignored all of it.
Elena appeared at her side, steadying hand on her shoulder, and they walked out of the room together.
The eastern corridor was narrow and functional, staff access, less used than the main hallways, running along the interior of the estate’s oldest wing. The secondary exit at its end was a heavy door, warded like everything else. Alard.
The alarm hadn’t triggered.
That was the first thing Marcus told them when they arrived. The door had been used, and the alarm hadn’t triggered, which ant whoever had done this knew the ward architecture well enough to move through it silently. Not brute force. Precision. The expertise of soone who’d been studying these wards from the inside.
Three days. Soone had spent three days learning exactly how to do this.
"Here," one of the security team said.
He was crouched near the threshold of the door, pointing at sothing on the floor that Eve had to look at twice before she could see it, a residue, barely visible, a faint luminescence that was more felt than seen. Like the mory of light rather than light itself.
Eve crouched beside him.
Her power reached toward it instinctively...still depleted, still rebuilding, but enough to recognize what it was touching. Supernatural energy. Deliberate, specific. Not a trace left by accident.
Left on purpose.
"Soone left this intentionally," she said.
"Yes," Raphael said from behind her. His voice had gone very even. "That’s not residue from passage. The signature’s too clean. Too contained." A pause. "It’s a marker."
"A trail," Damian said.
"More than that," Raphael said.
Eve looked up at him.
"Uncle," she said. "What is it?"
He was quiet for a mont.
"It’s a ssage," he said. "The energy signature...it’s Malachai’s." He looked at Eve. "He’s not hiding that he did this. He wants you to know it was him."
"He wants to follow it," Eve said.
"Yes."
Eve looked at the faint trace of luminescence on the floor. The deliberate breadcrumb. The invitation wrapped in threat, wrapped in the knowledge that he’d taken the one person who would make Eve move before she was ready.
Maya. Human, unprotected, completely innocent of everything except loving Eve at the wrong ti in the wrong world.
He knows you, so cold part of her mind said. He knows exactly what you’ll do.
She knew it too.
She stood up and looked at her mates, at Damian’s jaw tight with controlled fury, at Damon’s eyes which had gone very still in a way that ant he was past the point of pretending to be fine, at Silas whose hand had found her back without either of them noticing.
She looked at Elena, who had gone pale but steady. At Raphael, whose face was telling her sothing his words hadn’t gotten to yet.
"Tell the rest," Eve said to him.
A pause.
"There’s more to the signature," Raphael said. "Embedded in the energy. It’s... it’s a specific technique. A way of carrying information in a supernatural trace, like a note folded inside a letter." His eyes t hers. "Malachai left you a ssage, Eve. Inside the energy itself."
"What does it say?"
The corridor was completely silent now.
Raphael held her gaze with the steadiness of soone delivering sothing they wished they didn’t have to deliver.
"He has Maya," Raphael said. "She’s unhard. He intends her to stay that way." A pause that carried everything. "On one condition."
Eve’s hands were very still at her sides.
"He doesn’t want a legal challenge," Raphael continued, his voice quiet and even. "He doesn’t want an assassin. He doesn’t want to fight your claim through proxies or politics or combat trials." He looked at her. "He wants you, Eve. He wants you to co to him directly. Co to the Court. Co now....not when you’re recovered, not when you’re prepared, not when your claim is fully established and your allies are assembled." The next words landed like stones into still water. "He wants you to co to the Seraphim Court before you’re ready. Alone. On his terms."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Eve stood in the corridor with the ghost of Malachai’s energy at her feet, and the weight of the guilt of not being able to protect her best friend, She thought about Maya...Maya in fox pajamas reading to her this morning, Maya driving her to hospitals at three AM, Maya eating crackers in a kitchen they could barely afford, Maya who had never once flinched from whatever Eve needed her to be.
She thought about a man who had looked at everything Eve loved and chosen Maya specifically.
Who had left a trail because he knew she’d follow it.
She thought about that, about being known that well by soone who wanted her destroyed.
She also thought about the fact that he’d left a ssage rather than a body. That the condition was co to rather than anything worse.
He needs alive, the cold part of her mind noted. He needs to co willingly. Which ans he needs sothing from that force won’t get him.
She didn’t know what that was yet.
But she was going to find out.
Eve looked at Raphael, then at her mates.
"We’re going to the Court," she said.
Not a question, And definitely not a rash decision. It was a decision she had made the mont Maya didn’t co back with that glass of water
"Eve...." Damian started.
"He took Maya to move ," she said. "So I’m moved. But I’m not going the way he expects." She felt a new kind of anger in her chest, it was like nothing she had ever felt before, it felt more like a feeling that has being growing for a long ti . But underneath all of it, She also feel sothing that was older than any of those feelings. Sothing that had been waiting since the first dream, since the pendant, since the mont her parents had looked at a world that wanted their daughter dead and decided she would survive it anyway. "He wants scared and reactive and unprepared. He wants on his terms."
She looked at the luminescent trace on the floor one final ti.
"Well he’s going to get on mine."
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