16. Chapter Sixteen #2
An invisible clamp tightens around my chest. Lord Sethrak isn’t the victim of his son’s betrayal. He’s the architect of it. And now he’s looking at me with the patient, empty stare of someone calculating exactly how much trouble I’m worth.
Kazren stands next to his father, empty eyes staring unblinking at me. “You’ve been assisting my brother with a rather incriminating internal investigation against my father.”
“I merely maintain House systems.” My voice holds. Barely.
“By accessing systems well beyond your maintenance clearance? That’s rather thorough,” Kazren says.
“I fix networks.” The lie tastes metallic on my tongue. I know he doesn’t believe me. But I’m going to keep trying. Keep aiming for a grain of doubt, because every grain buys me time.
His eyes narrow by the smallest fraction. “By planting bugs in the system?”
A knot tightens beneath my ribs. I spent days looking for the pattern hidden inside their network. I never stopped to wonder whether someone was building one around us instead.
Every nerve in my body prickles. The air feels too thick to breathe. My shoulder throbs, a dull counterpoint to the sharper rhythm of my heart. Sweat traces a cold path down my spine beneath my shirt.
This isn’t an interrogation. They don’t need to ask these questions.
So why did they bring me here?
Something passes between them. The slight tilt of Sethrak’s head. The fractional deepening of Kazren’s smile. Father and son, aligned in a silence that says more than any order ever could.
Understanding. Decision.
The walls press closer. The guards’ hands are iron on my arms. The orange light from the windows dims as the distant sun slips behind the stark red mountains.
If Lord Sethrak believed I could be persuaded, he’d bargain. If I were the sort of person who could be bought, he’d make me an offer. Instead he asks only enough questions to confirm what I know, and every answer I give him is another nail in a coffin that’s already been built.
Forcing myself to keep breathing even as panic claws higher inside my chest. My back aches where the guard’s knee drove me into the floor. The split in my lip stings every time I inhale. I can still taste copper from where my teeth caught my cheek.
Think. You’ve survived two years in the Warrens. You’ve outrun syndicates and slipped through security nets that should have caught you a dozen times over. There has to be something. Some way out. Some angle you haven’t seen.
My eyes flick around the office again, desperate now.
The furniture is sleek and spare — a low desk of dark wood, chairs positioned with mathematical precision, nothing out of place.
No loose objects I could throw. No panels I could access.
The windows are floor-to-ceiling but sealed, and even if I could break them, the drop would kill me faster than Sethrak’s guards.
Another door. There has to be another door.
Nothing.
Just the one we came through, now sealed. One way in, one way out. Just the guards at my sides, their grips unyielding. Just Sethrak’s empty burnished eyes, still fixed on me. Just Kazren’s satisfaction, warm and ugly in the corner of my vision.
The door opens.
I jerk towards the sound. Zavin. But the name dies in my throat. More guards fan out along the walls with the unhurried precision of males taking prearranged positions.
Positions.
The word echoes through my skull. They’re spreading out to cover the chamber. Covering every angle. Facing the door.
Facing the door.
My mind scrambles backwards. The overturned room. The books scattered across the floor. The chair on its side. Every broken thing in that room will tell him how hard I fought. He’ll see Percy hidden and he’ll understand.
He’ll understand what happened and he’ll come. Straight here. To me.
Because Sethrak knows Zavin. Knows his son. Knows that Zavin is predictable in the worst possible way — predictable in his loyalty, predictable in his fury, predictable in the one thing Sethrak can set a trap around.
Me.
His son is no longer under his control, and he knows it. I’m not a witness being removed. I’m not even a problem being solved.
I’m the bait.
A sound tears from my throat and I start to struggle, terror stripping any thought of self-preservation.
Wrenching against the hands holding me. My shoulder screams. I don’t care.
My heels skid against the polished floor as I throw my weight sideways, trying to break free, trying to reach the entrance, trying to do anything that might warn him before he walks through it.
The guards’ hands tighten. One of them wrenches my arm higher behind my back until white light floods my vision and my knees buckle.
I don’t stop fighting. Can’t stop fighting.
If Zavin comes through that door he’s walking into a room full of armed males with nowhere to run and no way out.
It will be my fault, all of it my fault, because I was the one thing he couldn’t leave behind.
“Hold her still.” Sethrak’s voice cuts through the chamber without rising.
The guards lock me in place. I’m breathing in ragged gasps, my hair falling across my face, my pulse roaring so loud I can barely hear anything else.
Sethrak’s amber eyes travel over my face. “A pity. All of that intelligence. Wasted.”
Opening my mouth to scream a warning. Through the door.
Through the walls. To whatever part of the house Zavin is in.
I don’t care if the guards break my arm.
I don’t care if they kill me before he arrives.
If I can give him even one second of warning, one heartbeat to realize what he’s walking into—
The door pings open.
My voice locks in my throat.
The guards along the walls go still. Sethrak turns from the window and Kazren’s smile sharpens.
His gaze finds me immediately, sweeping over the blood on my face, the guards holding me and the angle of my shoulder.
His claws slide free.
Only then does he look at his father.
“Let go of my female,” he says quietly, “and I may let you live.”