Eve’s POV
They were all standing when she walked in.
Not because anyone had told them to stand. Just....all of them on their feet, facing the door, having apparently been in that position for however long she’d been gone. Damian with his arms crossed. Damon with his hands in his pockets. Raphael near the window. Elena beside him. Seraphine at her desk, the only one who looked like she’d been sitting recently.
Eve closed the door behind her.
"Well?" Damon said.
"He offered a deal," she said. "Renounce my claim publicly, Maya goes ho unhard, he guarantees our safety."
The room was quiet for a mont.
"And?" Damian said.
"I told him I’d think about it."
Damon looked at her. "You’re not going to think about it."
"No," she said. "I’m not."
She crossed to the center of the room and looked at Seraphine. "Third level. East corridor. Room at the end. He said it has a window."
Seraphine went still.
"He told you," Raphael said. Not a question. Sothing in his voice that was between surprise and recognition.
"He was reading ," Eve said. "I asked if she had enough light. He answered." She paused. "He wasn’t expecting the question to be about anything except what it sounded like."
Seraphine stood up slowly. She looked at Eve for a mont with an expression that had moved past assessnt into sothing else entirely.
"Your mother," she said quietly, "used to do exactly that. Ask the question underneath the question." She turned to her desk and pulled out a docunt....a floor plan, hand-drawn, detailed. She spread it on the desk. "Co here."
Everyone moved.
The eastern wing’s third level had four access points.
Seraphine walked them through each one with the efficiency of soone who had been mapping this building for decades and had been waiting for a reason to use it. Two main corridors....both heavily monitored, Malachai’s people at regular intervals. One service passage that ran along the exterior wall, older than the rest of the wing, used for maintenance and largely forgotten by anyone who hadn’t been paying attention for the past forty years.
"This passage connects to the east corridor on the third level," Seraphine said, pointing. "Here. Forty ters from the room at the end."
"Guards?" Damian asked.
"At the main entry points. Not inside the passage itself.....it’s been out of regular use for thirty years. Malachai’s people know it exists but they don’t monitor it." She paused. "They should. It’s a significant oversight."
"Why haven’t you used it before?" Damon asked.
Seraphine looked at him. "I’ve never had a reason to extract soone from his territory before." A pause. "And I’ve been waiting for the right mont to use the information."
Damon absorbed this and nodded.
"Access to the passage is through a door on the second level," Seraphine continued. "Here." She pointed. "My people can get you to the second level without crossing through Malachai’s monitored territory. From there you’re moving through the passage and up the internal staircase to the third floor." She straightened. "The whole route takes approximately eight minutes if you move without stopping."
"And coming back out with Maya?" Damian said.
"Sa route. Ten minutes with an additional person." She looked at Eve. "She’ll need to move quickly and quietly. Can she do that?"
"Yes," Eve said. Without hesitation.
She knew Maya. Maya who had moved through three apartnts in four years carrying everything she owned in two bags. Maya who had worked double shifts and navigated difficult people and kept her head down in situations that required it. Maya was not soone who fell apart when things required her not to.
"When?" Damon said.
"Tonight," Eve said.
Raphael looked at her. "Eve....."
"He thinks I’m considering his offer," she said. "He thinks I need ti. That ans tonight he’s not expecting movent....he’s waiting for my answer, not watching for a rescue." She held Raphael’s gaze. "That window closes the mont I send word. Or the mont he decides I’ve taken too long."
Raphael was quiet for a mont.
"She’s right," Damian said.
Raphael looked at him.
"Tonight is the best window we’re going to get," Damian said. "She used the eting to create it deliberately." He looked at Eve. "That’s what the question about the light was actually doing. Not just getting the location.....buying us ti while he thinks we’re deliberating."
Eve nodded.
Raphael exhaled. "Fine. Tonight." He looked at Seraphine. "Can your people have the second level access ready?"
"By midnight," Seraphine said. "Yes."
"Who goes in?" Damon said.
"Small," Eve said. "Three. , you, Damian." She looked at Raphael. "You stay here."
Raphael opened his mouth.
"If sothing goes wrong inside his territory," Eve said, "I need you out here. Legally, politically....you’re the only one who knows this Court well enough to manage the fallout from the outside." She held his gaze. "You’re more useful here than in that corridor."
He closed his mouth.
"I hate that you’re right," he said.
"I know."
Elena had been quiet through all of it. She looked at Raphael when Eve finished. Sothing passed between them. He reached over and took her hand without looking at her, which was its own kind of language.
"What about Malachai’s ward structure on the third level?" Damian said. "The room will be warded. If Maya tries to leave...."
"I can break them," Eve said.
Everyone looked at her.
"At the trial I accessed my mother’s techniques," she said. "Ward-breaking was one of them. I know how she did it....not fully, not consciously, but enough." She paused. "Enough to get Maya out of a room."
"You’re not at full power," Raphael said.
"I’m at enough," she said. The sa word she’d used yesterday and ant the sa way.....not everything, but sufficient for the specific thing required.
Raphael studied her for a mont.
"Don’t push past what you have," he said. "Whatever you encounter in there.....don’t push past your actual limit trying to be faster. Speed is not worth another crash."
"Understood," she said.
He held her gaze for another second. Then nodded.
"Midnight," Seraphine said. She rolled the floor plan and held it out to Damian, who took it. "My people will et you at the second level access. They’ll go as far as the passage entry and no further.....I can’t have my faction’s people physically inside his territory tonight. The political cost would be....."
"Understood," Damian said.
"From the passage entry you’re on your own."
"Also understood."
Seraphine looked around the room. At Raphael, at Elena, at Damon, at Damian. Then at Eve last.
"Get her out cleanly," she said. "Don’t engage anyone you don’t have to engage. Don’t take anything longer than it needs to take." A pause. "And co back."
"Working on it," Damon said.
The hours between afternoon and midnight were the longest Eve could rember since Maya had been taken.
She ate.....actually ate, a full al that Elena put in front of her with the sa quiet efficiency she brought to everything. She went over the floor plan with Damian until she could have drawn it from mory. She checked her power levels the way Raphael had taught her.....not reaching for them, just taking stock. Present. Available. Enough.
She thought about Silas.
Not sadly. Just....reached for the bond the way she reached for it when things were loud. Found it imdiately. Steady and warm and there, the sa as it always was.
She held onto it for a mont.
Then she put on dark clothes, checked the ti, and went to find her mates.
They left at five minutes to midnight.
The corridor outside Seraphine’s chambers was empty. Seraphine’s people moved them through the building in silence....a route Eve hadn’t walked before, secondary passages, service corridors, the older parts of the Court that predated the faction divisions and belonged to no one specifically.
At the second level access point two of Seraphine’s guards were waiting. They opened a door in the wall that looked like stone until it wasn’t.
The passage beyond it was narrow and dark and slled like forty years of disuse.
Eve looked at it.
Then she looked at Damian on her left. At Damon on her right.
Damian held up three fingers. Counted down silently.
Three.
Two.
One.
They went in.
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