19. Chapter 19 #3
“Everything gets political in a hurry,” Taras murmured, already writing again. “The question is whether we prefer political fallout or a failed extraction.”
Arsenal finally spoke, his voice clipped and steady.
“Direct approach gives him warning and fixes your position at the gate. Good for pressure. Bad if he’s got interior routes and disciplined security.
Silent insertion gives better odds of contact with target.
Bad if wards light us up or if the contractors are tighter than expected. ”
Wrecker nodded once. “We know how to move quiet. Doesn’t mean quiet’s enough. Parker's working on bringing down warning systems.”
Gunner dragged a hand over the back of his neck. “Gate also tells Maddie where we are, if she can hear it.”
The room paused at that.
Because that was the piece brute force offered which strategy alone could not dismiss. Noise. Presence. A clear declaration to a trapped wolf that her pack had come.
Juliet drew a breath and let it out slowly. “If she hears Bronc, she’ll move heaven and earth to get to him.”
“She’ll move for any opening,” I said.
They all looked at me then, and I let them.
I had no right to ask to be believed after how long I had spent fighting the truth. So I did not ask. I simply gave them what I knew.
“Maddie is not passive,” I said. “Whatever else he has done, however he has attempted to isolate her, she will be looking for a weakness. A door. A hallway. A person she can manipulate. A lie she can sell. If we create an opening, if she has the ability, she will move toward it.”
Memory struck with vicious clarity: her chin lifting when challenged, her mouth sharpening around an insult, the humor she used like a blade and a shield both. Sweet, yes. Kind, deeply. But no one with that much life in her had ever been made for obedience.
Taras’s pen scratched steadily. “Then any plan must account for target initiative.”
Maksym nodded once. “Agreed.”
Bronc’s gaze had gone distant in that way it did when he looked through the map into some tactical space only he could see. “Gate demand draws eyes front. Covert team uses that to breach elsewhere.”
“A split operation,” Lucia said.
“Which increases variables,” Taras countered.
“Which also increases opportunities,” Wrecker said.
Doc uncrossed and recrossed his arms, thinking. “If he sees Bronc and believes he’s got a little time before dark assets move, he may shift inward, tighten around her, start prep. That’s bad if we’re late. Good if it fixes her to a ritual location we can target.”
Amelia made a face. “We’re forgetting part of the ritual demands the subject be restrained. We have to assume she cannot come to us. We also must assume he may drug her or ward her to make finding her more difficult.”
Every ugly possibility in the room seemed to lean closer.
Discussions continued, and contingencies were argued.
The clock on the wall gave another measured tick. Then another. We were running out of time.
I became aware that my thumb had found the paper near Ironwood’s eastern boundary and pressed there hard enough to bend the map.
A line of wall. A strip of trees. One of several probable weak points.
Or perhaps merely the one I needed to believe in because the bond kept tugging in that direction and I had nothing else to offer the room that would not sound like madness.
My father’s gaze dropped to my hand, then lifted to my face.
“You feel something,” he said.
It was not a question.
I swallowed once. “Not enough.”
That was the truth, and the agony of it. The bond gave me hurt, wrongness, distance, brief ghost-impressions that vanished when I tried to catch them. No clear location. No clean thread. Only a persistent pull that made my body want to turn east and begin killing until the sensation changed.
Amelia glanced at me, then at the map under my thumb. “Eastern side might matter,” she said carefully. “Or the bond’s reacting to proximity in a weird way. I’m not calling it evidence yet, but I’m not ignoring it either.”
“Nothing is ignored,” Father said at last. He looked over to Devon who’d been sitting quietly at his side, listening to everything. “We are all warriors with various skills. We will all fight to free Madelyn.”
The room stilled again.
He rose from his chair in one unhurried motion, and it struck me—not for the first time—that my father had always understood something most rulers never did.
Power rarely needed haste. It needed certainty.
He came to the table and laid one pale finger on the map just north of where my thumb still pinned the eastern wall.
Bronc held his gaze and gave one slow nod.
Father looked at Taras, then at Maksym. “Prepare for covert entry.”
Then to Bronc. “Prepare to go to the gate if the covert entry requires cover, or if we lose contact and must force visibility.”
That was not yet a locked decision, and every person there knew it. It was something colder and more exact: parallel lines of readiness, held until the next piece of intelligence forced one line to become action.
Lucia stepped toward Amelia and Aspen. “You two will go with the breach team.”
Amelia blew out a breath. “Obviously.”
Aspen nodded and patted the small satchel she kept at her side. Oscar poked his head out and saluted. I could only shake my head, realizing I trusted them.
Doc pushed away from the wall completely now. “If she’s drugged or injured, I’m in.”
“No argument there,” Bronc said.
I looked down at the map again. Lines. Routes. Guesses dressed as plans. Somewhere beyond them, Maddie existed where I could not see, under hands I had not yet broken, breathing air that did not belong to her. The bond pulled once more, deep and savage, refusing closure.
I pressed my thumb harder against the eastern wall marker until the paper threatened to tear.
Bring her home, I told myself, because there was no prayer in it anymore, only command. Bring her home or deserve the grave you make on the way.
Above us, the old clock kept counting down toward dusk with all the mercy of a blade.