Chapter Thirteen Nothing
Chapter Thirteen: Nothing
Gideon
The third contact goes to voicemail exactly like the first two.
I put the phone down on the desk instead of throwing it. Throwing it accomplished nothing the first time.
I stand there with my hand flat on the wood and think about what it means that every single informant I placed inside that facility has gone dark in less than twenty-four hours.
It means someone found them.
It means someone knew they were there.
Cassian has been in this city for forty days. Two weeks ago he assembled a case against my father-in-law that I cannot find a single procedural crack in — I've had four lawyers look at it.
He has systematically removed every set of eyes I had on the inside. Whatever is happening to Lysandra in there, I have no way to know.
That cannot continue.
I grab my coat off the chair and move.
Lilian is in the corridor, which is where Lilian tends to be when I'm trying to leave quickly.
"Where are you going?"
"The Alliance facility."
She makes a sound and her hand comes up to her chest, and she coughs. The kind of cough that has a shape to it, that starts in the right place and lands at the right volume.
I've heard it many times. I step around her.
Her hand catches my arm.
"You don't need to worry so much." Her voice sounds generous. "Lysandra's always been strong. She'll be fine. And besides — Inquisitor Cassian, he and Lysandra had a history. He won't treat her too badly, for old times' sake."
I stop.
The corridor is very quiet. I look at Lilian's face. She is wearing the expression of someone delivering reassurance.
History.
Lysandra and Cassian. The man who built an airtight case against her family, who pulled every informant I placed, who specifically requested solo custody of my wife.
Old times' sake.
Something detonates in my chest. I don't look at it directly. I don't have time to look at it directly.
At the end of the corridor, Nessa rounds the corner with a small tray — medicine, from the smell of it, heading for the room where Lysandra's mother has been sleeping since we brought her here.
"I'll take that in," Lilian says, already turning. "Nessa's clumsy, she'll spill it—"
"Stay in your room."
Lilian turns back. I don't raise my voice when I say it. I don't need to.
"You're sick. Rest. The pack doesn't need your help right now." I look at her for one more second, long enough for her to understand this is not a discussion.
"And don't go near that room. Lysandra wouldn't like it."
I don't wait for her response. The front door is ahead of me and the night is cold and I have somewhere to be.
***
Cassian
She's been asleep for twenty minutes and my wolf has been howling for two hours.
I'm aware of how this looks. The Chief Adjudicator of the Alliance, fully clothed, lying in a narrow bed in a facility safehouse with a fever-damp woman tucked against his side, while somewhere in his chest his wolf performs what can only be described as celebratory laps.
The wolf does not care how this looks. The wolf recognized its mate the moment I walked into that interrogation room and it has been losing its mind ever since.
I let it. The wolf has earned this.
The room is warm. I arranged that. The clothes are clean and dry. I arranged that too, the same way I arranged the room with no silver fixtures, the same way I arranged the medicinal compound in the pool water, sourced from a healer I trust.
These are not things I did impulsively. These are things I decided, and decided again, and did not take back.
My wolf howls. I ignore it. I look at her face.
Do I hate her?
Yes. In the specific way you hate someone who took the thing you offered most genuinely and used it to cut you. That wind-and-snow night is still in my body somewhere.
But then she walked into my interrogation room.
I did not expect it to be her.
She was covered in injuries. My first instinct — not a thought, an instinct — was to go to her. Cross the room. Pull her in.
I used everything I had to keep my hands where they were. To keep my face still. To wait until the right moment, and speak, and get her into a room where no one else could see what I was going to do next.
Mine. Not a soft thought. Not a complicated one. She is mine.
And everyone who put their hands on her has a reckoning coming that I have been planning in detail since the moment I confirmed she was in this building.
Gideon. Lilian. I have not forgotten a single name.
I spent four years in worse situations than that snow-night. I climbed over every obstacle placed in front of me.
I am sitting in the highest judicial seat in this Alliance not because I was given it but because I went and took it, specifically so that when I needed it, I would have it.
I need it now.
She can't stay here taking punishment for crimes her father committed and her sister enabled. Getting her out cleanly will take three more moves, maybe four.
I've been running the sequence. It's workable.
My wolf finally goes quiet, satisfied by the math.
I stay another minute, watching her breathe, before I get up.
I tuck the blanket up to her shoulder. She doesn't stir. I stand there for a moment with my hand near her face, not touching, and then I pull it back and walk out.
The guard outside the door straightens when he sees me.
"No one enters this room," I tell him.
"No one questions her but me. Anyone who tries, any reason, any rank, you come to me first. If they push past you without permission, you treat it as an attack on this facility."
He nods.
I walk.
***
The lobby of the building is marble and high ceilings and very poor acoustics, which means I hear the front doors open from forty feet away.
I stop walking.
The man who comes through is tall, well-dressed, and moving like someone who is either going to demand something or threaten something, and has not yet decided which.
He scans the room. When his eyes find me, they stop.
Gideon.
He starts toward me.
I turn my head slightly toward the armed guard on my left.
"No unauthorized personnel past the entry." My voice carries fine in the bad acoustics. "If he forces it, shoot."
I turn and walk back the way I came.
Behind me, I hear him say my name. Loudly. The word hits the marble ceiling and comes back down changed, smaller than he intended.
I don't turn around.