“Tell me I misunderstood, Alaric.” Her voice remained calm. That calm was not peace. It was a blade laid flat against skin. “Tell me you weren’t going to isolate me in your house or in your office or wherever youdecide to put me until you determine whether or not I’m a risk.”
He didn’t answer immediately.She watched his eyes unfocus just slightly. Watched him go somewhere internal and cold.He was running scenarios.Decision trees.If he denied it, he lied.If he admitted it, he confirmed her worst fear.There wasn’t a branch where this stayed clean.”The plan is temporary,” he said finally.
Sera held his gaze. “Temporary doesn’t mean right. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean appropriate. Who gets to define temporary, anyway? Who gets to determine my guilt or innocence?” she demanded. “You? Magnus? Vidar?”
She saw his reaction to Vidar’s name. Not fear. Readiness. The kind that came from memory, not imagination.”You go on alert when I say his name,” she said softly.
“I don’t.”
“You do,” she said. “You just do it in places people can’t see. Why?”
He fell silent for a long moment, amuscle jerking in his jaw. “If I’m right, he’s tried once to take you out. Iwon’t let him come after you again,” he grittedout.
The truth of it slid beneath her defenses before she could stop it.Thiswasn’t about her at all. It was about what had already been done to her.And that was what made everything that followed worse. Not because it excused him, but because it proved he knew exactly what he was choosing. Containment over trust, authority over her. And he chose it anyway.
As though to prove her suspicion, he continued: “As for Magnus, he’s doing what he’s supposed to do.”
“And what are you doing?”
For a beat, she wondered if he would step out of process and meet her where she was. If he would choose her over the structure already closing around them. She already knew the answer. The pause told her more than any reassurance could.
His voice went flat. “I’m doing the same.”
Something inside her settled into a colder shape.”So you agree with your brother,” she said. “I’m a dangerous breach. I’m at risk to be manipulated even if I’m not malicious. And because of that, Ineed to be isolated while you decide whether I belong in your world.”
He swore under his breath. “That’s not what he said.”
“It’s exactly what he said,” she retorted. “He just used cleaner words for the parts he thinks I can’t hear.”She breathedin carefully. Slowly. “So tell me. What does containment look like?”
She saw the pause. The mental inventory. The intention to slow the moment until the facts were fully in view and he could set them down gently. It didn’t matter how he phrased it.She’d already heard enough to behurt.
“It looks like restricted access,” he told her. “It looks like you not going anywhere alone. It looks like you not touching systems until we can validate all paths. It looks like time.”
“To prove I’m innocent,” she whispered.
“To prove what happened,” he corrected.
Her eyes sharpened. “That’s convenient. It means you don’t have to believe in me. You only have to believe in the results.”
She saw it land.Not anger. Understanding.The moment he realized what she was actually asking of him. Not for exemption. Not for blindness. But for faith in her that existed before logs, before proof, before validation cleared her name on paper.
She wasn’t asking him to ignore evidence.
She was asking him to choose her without needing proof.
And she saw, with sudden brutal clarity, that this was the one thing he had neverlearned how todo.
“I don’t operate on belief,” hesaid.
“Just hard, cold facts.” She held up her palm where the lightning bolt throbbed. “But not this hard, cold fact.”
“Fuck,Sera!” He shot a hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say? That I don’t think you were involved in the theft? Iabsolutely do not. But I have obligations that don’t belong to me alone. This file was erased. Someone reached into my family’s systems and made something disappear. Idon’t get to look away from that. Idon’t get to say it doesn’t matter just because I trust you. If I stop asking how it happened, who did it, and why, then I’m not doing my job. I’m not the Underboss.”
She absorbed it without flinching. Let the words settle. Not because she agreed, but because she understood exactly what he was saying.
“I know,” she conceded.
That made his gaze sharpen.
