Chapter 12 | Kincade
Anna was gone, and the world did not end, which told me how wrong everything had become.
The library still smelled faintly of whiskey and ozone.
The wards hadn’t shattered. The desk hadn’t been overturned.
No signs of a struggle beyond the residue in the air.
A distortion I recognized instantly. Watchers were not uniform.
The Brotherhood never wasted resources that way.
Some were soldiers, built for force and spectacle.
Others were observers, content to watch worlds burn from the margins.
And then there was the elite—the ones who slipped between spaces, who treated distance like a suggestion rather than a barrier.
They hadn’t sent a soldier.
They’d sent one of the elite.
Which meant this had never been about testing defenses. It had been about timing. About distraction. About taking her while my attention was elsewhere.
I took in the room. A glass of whiskey, untouched on the cart. Like she’d poured it, then got distracted.
On the floor, a letter opener. I crossed the room and bent to pick it up. The tip was smudged with blood.
She’d fought back. Used whatever she could find as a weapon. And she’d managed to stab him at least once. That was the shout. A way to signal me. And I was still too late.
I flung it on the top of the desk, clenched my hand into a fist, steadying myself long enough to kill the urge to tear the room apart. That was nothing but an impulse and it didn’t matter now. She was already gone.
They had what they came for.
I stood there a moment longer than necessary, cataloging the damage that wasn’t visible. No blood trail leading out of the room beyond the single smear on the letter opener. Clean work. Deliberate.
I’d prepared for an assault. For force. For spectacle.
I hadn’t prepared for restraint.
That was the lesson I should have remembered. The Brotherhood didn’t escalate unless it served them. They didn’t destroy what they could repurpose. And Anna—Anna had never been collateral. She was leverage.
The thought settled in my chest like a weight.
She’d stood in this room alone. Unarmed. Angry with me. Still willing to fight.
I pictured it too clearly. Her scanning the shelves for anything she could use, grabbing the first sharp object within reach, refusing to freeze even when the odds turned against her.
That was who she was. Who she’d always been.
And I’d spent the better part of the day trying to shield her from this moment.
Not because she couldn’t survive it.
Because I couldn’t.
I’d told myself I was keeping her safe. That secrecy was protection. That acting alone was faster, cleaner, more efficient.
What I’d been doing was delaying the inevitable. Pretending that if I moved quickly enough, I could keep the fallout from reaching her.
Sebastian had called my bluff.
When I turned back to the door, Ophelia stood there wearing shorts and a t-shirt with her sword in her hand, her eyes wide, and her face covered in a sheen of sweat.
“I heard—” She started then stopped. Her breath caught. Her face paled. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Stay here. Guard the others.”
Then I pushed past her and went back downstairs. The front door still stood open. The dead Watcher still sprawled across the foyer floor, blood seeping from under him. And beyond the door, moonlight illuminated the lawn where they’d crossed it, two by two flattening the grass.
But Ophelia didn’t stay put. Her bare feet pounded down the stairs after me. She sucked in a sharp breath when she saw the dead man at my feet.
“Are you going after her?” Panic laced her tone.
“Get back upstairs,” I barked.
“No. I’m coming with you. I’m—”
I rounded on her, clamped a hand around her upper arm. She flinched. I eased my grip.
“No.”
Her gaze flickered to the dead man, then to the open door. “They’re still out there, aren’t they?”
They were. I knew they were. They were waiting for my next move.
She searched my face and then understanding dawned. “Oh, shit. You’re not going after her. You’re going to let them take you. That’s your plan, isn’t it?”
She’d read me. But she didn’t understand that this was the only way I stayed ahead of them.
“Get back upstairs,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do not let the others come down here. If anyone else comes, don’t hesitate.”
The last thing I needed was to explain the dead man.
“What about—”
“I’ll deal with it.”
She nodded once, then turned and went back up the stairs on silent feet.
I sheathed the knife at my waist, then bent to pick up the arms of the dead man and drag him outside into the night.
A message.
I dropped the lifeless body on the gravel drive. Then waited.
“Come get your dead,” I said.
The air shifted. I didn’t turn. Whoever had remained wanted to be noticed.
A Watcher stepped out of the air a few feet away. In the shadows, it was too hard to make out his face, but I’d bet it was someone I knew. Someone I fought with. Someone Sebastian wanted me to see. He stood with his hands loose at his sides as if we were here to chat about the weather.
“You’re efficient,” he said. “You always were.”
Decker.
“Thought you couldn’t move like that anymore,” I said, voice even.
Because those powers of teleportation were taken away from him.
His laugh was sharp and humorless.
“I got that fixed.” He stepped close enough for me to see his face. “You always did hate surprises. Didn’t you, brother?”
The word scraped raw.
“Of everyone Sebastian could have sent,” I said, “he sent you.”
The air between us crackled, not with magic, but with memory. Battles fought side by side. Oaths broken. The moment I chose her. Lines crossed too many times to count.
He grinned. “Nice twist, huh? He thought it’d be fitting.”
Sebastian sent Decker because his loyalty had always been a hunger and I’d been the one thing it couldn’t swallow.
I said nothing as I stared him down.
“When you walked away for her, you didn’t break vows,” he said. “You rewrote the rules for all of us.”
I ignored him. “Where is she?”
“She fought,” he said, deliberately not answering. “Used a letter opener. Creative. Edward would’ve approved.”
He smirked. My hand tightened at my side.
“Where is she?”
“She’s alive,” he continued. “For now.”
I stepped closer. Close enough that he’d know how fast I could kill him if I decided.
“Say it,” I said.
Decker’s gaze didn’t waver. “He wants you both.”
“Why?”
He lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Because you taught him something dangerous.”
I waited.
“That vows are optional,” he continued. “That you can walk away. Pick something else.” His mouth tightened. “Pick someone else.”
Silence stretched between us.
“So, now you have a choice,” Decker said. “Stay and let her go. Or return and remember the price of freedom.”
“If I stay,” I said evenly, “she dies.”
Decker didn’t deny it. His face remained impassive.
“Then you know my answer.”
“I do.” He nodded once. “I knew you’d make that choice.”
I removed my weapons one by one and placed them on the ground beside the body. A calculated surrender.
“Then let’s go.”
The air folded.