Silence settled.The Brand didn’t flare. It didn’t need to. The dangeralone was a trigger.She leaned back and let her eyes close for one beat.She could see the next steps as clearly as if they were written on the glass.If she dug deeper, she’d need to pull logs she had no right to touch.If she pulled those logs, she’d create her own forensic signature.If someone was already framing her, she’d hand them evidence.
Her voice came out flat and honest. “If I go any further alone, Ibecome the suspect again.”
Alaric’s gaze held hers like a lock clicking shut. “You’re already the suspect in someone’s story.”
“Yes,” she said, the word tasting bitter. “But there’s a difference between being accused and being provable.”
For a moment, her throat tightened with something dangerously close to emotion. Not tears. Rage. The injustice of being competent and still powerless inside a game she hadn’t agreed toplay.
Alaric’s hand shifted on the desk, palm down, close enough that she could see the faint shape of the Brand beneath his skin.He didn’t touch her.He just took charge of the space.
Sera swallowed. “We need someone who can validate what I’m seeing without putting my fingerprints all over it.”
Alaric didn’t ask who.He alreadyknew.
“Lily,” he said.
Sera’s pulse jumped. Of course it did.Lily Dante was a name that carried a different kind of danger. Not the public kind. The private kind. The kind that could dismantle a life from the inside out with a keyboard and a smile.
“She can confirm the residue,” Sera said. “She can tell me if my conclusion is sane or if I’m missing something obvious because I’m too close to it.”
“And she’ll see patterns you can’t,” Alaric added.
Sera nodded.The idea wasn’t relief.It was dread.Because once Lily looked, the truth would stop being theoretical.It would become a name.And names were the point where peopledied.
Alaric’s voice stayed even. “Conditions.”
It wasn’t resistance. It was containment. The kind he defaulted to when a problem couldn’t be solved outright and had to be managed instead.Sera met his gaze, already understanding what conditions he needed to hear said outloud.
“Limited scope,” she said. “Lily sees only what touches the deletion. Nothing upstream. Nothingpersonal.”
“Controlled disclosure,” he added. “She gets context, not conclusions. Enough to evaluate your findings. Not enough to start drawing her own lines through my family.”
“No Brand discussion,” she added, and hated how her voice dipped on the word, like even naming it drew it closer.
Alaric’s eyes held hers for a beat longer than necessary. Then he nodded once. Final.
Sera looked at Alaric, the decision settling with a burden she didn’t bother pretending wasn’t there.”You should make the call,” she said quietly. “She won’t recognize my number, but she’ll answer you. And she’ll know this matters.”
Alaric studied her for a brief moment, measuring the cost, the optics, the risk. Then he nodded once.He reached for his phone.Sera watched his hand, steady and sure, as if the act itself didn’t widen the circle in ways neither of them could fully manage.
Help was coming.And it was going tohurt.
Alaric hit call and put it on speaker.The line rang once, twice.
On the third ring, Lily’s voice came on, light and amused, like the world had never threatened to swallow anyone whole.”Alaric?” Lily said. “This better be good. I’m in the middleof something.”
Sera’s stomach clenched.
“It’s not good,” he said quietly. “It’s work. Ineed you to look at something, and I need you to keep it tight.”
The amusement in Lily’s voice vanished so fast it was like a switch flipped.”Okay,” Lily said, all business now. “Tell me what you need.”
Sera glanced at Alaric once, saw the stillness in him, the agreement, the contained violence that was his version of reassurance. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. He looked straight ahead, already treating this as a threat assessment, not a favor.
“I need you to confirm a deletion that shouldn’t have been possible,” he said. “A death-trigger packet tied to my father. It was erased instead of opening. Someone intercepted it before the trigger could execute.”
He finally turned his head and looked at her. Really looked at her. The burden of it landed in Sera’s chest, the quiet fury he kept banked there and the fear he wouldn’t name because naming it would make it harder to influence. In that look, she saw what he believed. This was real, it was already dangerous, and she was now someone he would burn the worlddown to protect.
