Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Istep through first.
Atlanta heat hits me before my eyes adjust, and when they do, the light is at its peak.
Noon. Full sun. Real sun, not what passed for sun in Thessivane.
No shade anywhere in this courtyard. The light is hitting every surface, every inch of exposed ground, and Maximus is about to come through behind me.
No.
He’ll burn. There’s no time. No shade. No way to reach him. I spin back toward the Veil and the membrane is already shimmering.
“MAXIMUS, STOP!”
He steps through. Into full sun.
I grab him before I think. Both hands on his face, pulling his head down into my shoulder, my body against his, trying to cover what I can. It won’t be enough. I can’t block the sun from every direction. I know that. I don’t care.
He goes rigid. His arms come up around me. Reflex. Then his body shifts. His chin lifts. The sun is on his back, his neck, every part of him I can’t cover. His arms tighten.
My hands are on his skin and I’m waiting for it to start burning under my palms.
One second.
Two.
Three.
His skin is cool under my hands. Cool and whole and not burning.
His grip on me changes. Not loosening. Locking. Through the bond, something so large I can’t get the edges of it.
I pull back. He’s standing in it. Full Georgia noon, no shade, no cover, direct light on his exposed skin. He’s standing in it and he’s not burning.
He’s not burning.
Seraphina comes through behind him. Her head snaps up. Her hands are already moving, magic building between her palms, a ward half-formed before her feet hit brick.
Then she sees him. Standing. Not burning. Her hands drop. The ward dies.
Mira comes through last. She takes one look at the sun, one look at Maximus, and lunges for him. She gets two steps before she stops. He’s upright. He’s whole. His skin isn’t smoking.
His eyes narrow against the brightness. His hand comes up to shield them.
Seraphina hasn’t moved. Her face is white. Mira is frozen where she stopped, staring at her uncle in the sun.
My legs are shaking. My hands won’t stop. My eyes are telling me he’s fine and my body hasn’t caught up.
He turns his hand over. The M and C crest on his ring catches the light for the first time in its existence. He stares at it.
He looks at me.
Seraphina finds her voice. “The bond.” She says it like she’s working it out as she speaks. “It must be the bond. The springs would have catalyzed whatever was already moving between you.”
A bird passes overhead, its shadow crosses his face, and he flinches, a micro-expression that vanishes before it fully forms.
Mira sits down. On the ground. In the courtyard. Her legs fold under her, and she puts her hands on the warm brick and breathes.
“Uncle Max,” she says. From the ground. Looking up at him in the sun. “What the hell.”
“Celeste.” His voice is steady. The bond isn’t. What’s moving through the connection is enormous and uncontained.
His hands find my face. He tilts it up. Presses his forehead to mine. The sun is warm on the back of my neck and his hands are cool against my cheeks.
His thumbs brush the moisture from under my eyes.
He pulls me in. My face against his chest. His arms around me. Two hearts hammering, both of them too fast, both of them slowing together.
Mira’s voice comes up from the ground. “Nobody told me to pack sunscreen.”
The laugh that comes out of me is ugly and wet, and I muffle it against him, and I don’t care.
Nausea hits. Sharp. Lower than my stomach, sitting in a different place than nausea is supposed to sit, and it’s gone almost as fast as it came. The Veil. Or the panic. Or both. I file it and move on.
The compound looks wrong. The east garden is overgrown.
The witch-strike scars on the eastern wall have been partially repaired, scaffolding still up.
The front entrance has new reinforcements I don’t recognize, steel bolted to the frame in a hurry, the drill holes uneven.
Floodlights on the perimeter, wiring run in exposed conduit because whoever did it cared about speed, not aesthetics.
The walkways are clean but the edges are rough. Maintenance deferred.
We were gone four days. This place aged a lot more than four days.
I walk the corridors alone. Maximus is with Seraphina, assessing the ward architecture. Mira left without speaking.
The vampire wing is silent. Every vampire in it pressed down into dormancy.
Somewhere on the other side of the compound, Dr. Dalton is in the medical wing and the human staff are running the daytime operations the way they always do.
I know their routes. I’ve been avoiding them every time I slip out.
I take the corridors I always take. The ones where nobody is awake to see me.
I pass Julian’s door. Closed. Marcellus’s quarters. Closed.
The conference room door is open. The crisis covers all surfaces. Tablets stacked three deep. Printed reports in labeled folders.
But the chair at the head of the table is Marcellus’s. The legal pad beside it is filled with his broader script, decision logs and orders and personnel assignments. A coffee mug with a chipped handle sits next to the pad. The one he won’t replace.
Julian built the picture. Marcellus made the calls.
I close the door. Leave the work untouched. They’ll brief us when they rise.
The corridors are quiet. The air carries the faint smell of cleaning solution and old plumbing.
A heaviness moves through me. Not nausea this time, sitting lower than anything the Veil left behind, and I don’t have a frame for it. I stop in the corridor and put my hand on the wall and breathe through it and it passes in thirty seconds, and I don’t have time to figure it out.
The building wakes at dusk. Doors opening. Footsteps. Movement through the corridors.
Marcellus finds us first. He appears in the main corridor with his usual unhurried stride, but the toll shows in the set of his shoulders and the new lines around his mouth. He’s lost weight.
He stops when he sees Maximus. Scans him head to toe.
“You’re back,” he says.
“How long have we been gone?” Maximus asks.
“Twenty-one days.” Marcellus’s voice is even. “Briefing in twenty minutes. Julian’s prepared the full picture.”
“Good.” Maximus clasps his shoulder. Holds it. “Thank you, Marcellus.”
Something crosses Marcellus’s face. Gone before I can clock it. Then he’s back to his usual register.
The briefing assembles in the conference room. Marcellus takes the head of the table, the position he’s held since we left, and stays seated when Maximus enters. He holds the seat for one beat. Their eyes meet. Then he shifts to the right. His chair. The second’s chair.
Maximus sits at the head. I take the seat beside him.
Julian sits across from Marcellus, tablet open. Elena is beside Marcellus. Her hair is longer, the growth making the time gap physical.
Marcellus opens the briefing.
“Contamination incidents have doubled. Two feral attacks made local news. Hunters are organizing with coordinated funding and military-grade equipment. We had two witch probes on the western wards. Erik sent wolves for perimeter support. Zero casualties, two donors relocated.”
He pauses. “Julian will take you through the details.”
Julian gestures to the map on the screen.
“The first feral showed up in Piedmont Park. Shifter cleanup crew got there before the police, but three witnesses had phone cameras. Erik’s people scrubbed the footage.
The second was a parking garage in Buckhead.
Four casualties before Marcellus’s team put it down.
That one made the eleven o’clock news as an ‘animal attack.’”
He changes the screen. “Hunters. Humans who know about us and have decided to fight back. They used to be amateurs who watched too much Buffy.” He pauses. “Not anymore. They’re coordinated, with military precision. Someone is funding them, equipping them, training them.”
He changes the screen again. “Erik’s pack reports three attempted breaches along the Iron Claw perimeter since you left. All probing, all professional.”
He pulls up the next screen. “There were witch probes on our western wards. Seraphina’s architecture held.”
Maximus stands. “Thessivane ratified the alliance. We have Fae military support against Konstantin’s witch forces, and Lanthar is sharing intelligence through Seraphina.”
Marcellus exhales. One breath.
Julian’s fingers are already moving on his tablet. “How soon can we expect Fae assets?”
“Seraphina is coordinating the timeline.”
Maximus runs through priorities. Ward reinforcement, donor relocation, perimeter lighting, each one clipped and precise. Then he stops.
“The eastern wall scaffolding needs to be reprioritized. The anchoring on the upper section is pulling away from the mortar. Another week and the scaffolding itself becomes a liability. I looked at it this afternoon,” he says.
Julian’s fingers stop on his tablet. Elena’s head turns. Marcellus’s mouth tightens.
“This afternoon?” Marcellus asks quietly.
“We arrived at noon,” Maximus says. “Through the Veil.”
“At noon,” Marcellus repeats it. “In daylight.”
“Full sun,” Maximus acknowledges.
“How is that possible?” Julian asks.
“The bond has been transferring Celeste’s immunities,” Maximus says. “The dormancy resistance has been building for weeks. But something changed in Thessivane where I didn’t go dormant at all.”
“Immunities,” Julian says. “Plural.”
“Sunlight. And dormancy.”
Julian picks up his tablet. Sets it back down.
Elena is looking at me.
“Celeste is immune, too?” she asks, staring at me. “How long have you been immune?”
“Shortly after I arrived here at the compound,” I say. “Konstantin’s modifications progressed in stages.”
The silence deepens. I watch Marcellus’s hands flatten against the table surface. His throat moves once. Twice.
“You never said,” Elena says.
“I didn’t know what it was at first. By the time I did, there were bigger things in front of us.”
She sits back in her chair. Her hand settles on Marcellus’s forearm on the table.