Eve felt it the mont they crossed back into neutral territory.
Not dramatically. Just a settling....sothing that had been tight in her chest for four days releasing increntally, like a fist slowly opening. She took a deep breath and released it slowly.
"Okay," Maya said. She’d stopped walking. She was standing in the corridor with her bag over her shoulder and she was looking at the ceiling.
"Maya," Eve said.
"I’m fine," Maya said. To the ceiling. "I’m completely fine. I’m just....." She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "I knew you were coming. I knew it the whole ti. I just...." Another stop. "It was a really long four days, Eve."
"I know," Eve said.
"The food was terrible."
"I know."
"I had nothing to read."
"I know."
"I kept thinking about that book I was reading to you." Maya lowered her face from the ceiling. Her eyes were wet. "Chapter one. I only got through Chapter one."
Eve pulled her in.
Maya made a sound that was sowhere between a laugh and sothing else entirely and held on with both arms, her bag bumping against Eve’s back, her face pressed into Eve’s shoulder.
"You took so long," Maya said, muffled.
"I know," Eve said. "I’m sorry."
"Don’t apologize." Maya pulled back and wiped her face with the back of her hand with the brisk efficiency of soone who had decided crying was fine but lingering in crying was not. "Just....next ti soone kidnaps , maybe day two? Day three at the latest."
"There’s not going to be a next ti," Eve said.
"Obviously there’s not going to be a next ti." Maya looked at Damian. Then at Damon. "Thank you. Both of you. For coming."
"Always," Damian said.
Maya looked at him for a mont. Then she nodded.
She looked back at Eve.
"Can we please go sowhere that has food," she said. "Real food. I would do genuinely unreasonable things for a proper al right now."
Damon put his hand on her shoulder and steered her gently down the corridor. "I know exactly how you feel," he said. "Let tell you about the ti I crossed a portal and imdiately wanted a full breakfast...."
"You went through a portal?"
"Just this morning. Yesterday morning. What day is it."
"I have no idea," Maya said. "They didn’t give a clock either."
Their voices faded slightly as they moved ahead.
Eve stood still for a mont.
Damian stopped beside her. He looked at her face and then at the corridor ahead where Damon was walking Maya back toward Seraphine’s territory, already apparently deep in conversation.
"Okay?" he said.
Eve watched Maya gesturing at sothing Damon had said, her bag swinging, her voice carrying back in fragnts.
"Yeah," she said. "Actually yeah."
Damian put his hand briefly on her back.
They started walking towards Serephine’s Territory.
*****
Malachai’s POV
He found out at six in the morning.
Not because his people ca to him imdiately....they hadn’t known imdiately. That was the part that felt worst. The room had been checked at midnight, routine, everything in order. The next check was scheduled for seven. It was only because one of his people had passed the east corridor early and noticed the door slightly ajar that anyone had looked at all.
Vael knocked on his study door at six-oh-four.
Malachai knew from the knock.
Not the content....just the quality of it. Vael had forty years of knocks and this one had a specific register that ant sothing had gone wrong and he was managing his own reaction before delivering it.
"Co in," Malachai said.
Vael ca in. Closed the door. Stood with his hands clasped.
"The girl is gone," he said.
Malachai set down his pen.
The study was very quiet.
"When," he said.
"Soti between midnight and six. The ward on the door was removed.....cleanly, no forced entry, no damage to the surrounding structure." Vael paused. "It was taken apart rather than broken. Soone who knew what they were doing."
"Soone who knew Seraphim ward construction," Malachai said.
Vael said nothing. Which was its own answer.
Malachai stood. He moved to the window....the sa window he always moved to when he needed a mont....and looked out at the Court below. Early morning, the sa as any other. People beginning to move through the outer spaces. The day starting without any awareness that sothing had shifted in the east corridor overnight.
He thought about Eve Seraphim sitting across his desk yesterday morning.
The question she’d asked.
Is she comfortable? She doesn’t do well in dark spaces.
He had answered it.
He had looked at her.....had been reading her, had been assessing her sincerity, had been deciding whether she was genuinely considering the offer or performing consideration....and he had answered the question because it had sounded like what it sounded like. A worried friend asking about a friend.
He had been so focused on what she was feeling that he had not thought about what she was doing.
Azrael, he thought. That was pure Azrael. The question underneath the question, delivered with just enough genuine emotion covering it that the calculation underneath was invisible.
He had underestimated her.
He stood with that for a mont. Not with anger.....anger was imprecise and he had learned a long ti ago that imprecision was expensive. Just with the clean, specific acknowledgnt of soone who had made a miscalculation and was now accounting for it.
"The passage," he said.
"Yes," Vael said. "We found the entry point on the second level. A pause that was as close as Vael ever ca to expressing sothing personal. "I should have had it monitored."
"Yes," Malachai agreed. "You should have."
Vael absorbed this without reaction.
"Seraphine," Malachai said.
"Almost certainly. She’s the only one who would have known about the passage and had reason to docunt it."
"And the extraction team."
"Three people by the tracks in the passage. Small. Efficient." Vael paused. "The heir herself, most likely. And the Blackwood brothers."
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