Levon had known for decades what it would take for this to stop: not a battle, but the slow work of building understanding across a divide that served the people maintaining it. He’d tried to accelerate that work with evidence, with documentation, with twenty years of partnership with Parker. And still it had taken this long. Still it had cost this much.
My mother would have recognized Aldric. Would have known how to move the conversation from cautious professional cooperation toward something that could actually hold. She’d had the patience for it that I was still developing.
But I was developing it.
Parker was walking Aldric through the data, her voice clipped and efficient. Aldric responded with equal precision. Two people trained by their respective worlds to regard each other as enemies, working a problem together because the alternative was worse—because they’d both, finally, seen enough of who was actually benefiting from the alternative.
My mother had been premature. Levon had been early but isolated. Parker had spent twenty years building what she could from the margins.
I was here, in my father’s repurposed study, with a map on the desk where I’d once stood being lectured about strength, watching what they’d all been trying to build finally function.
Ember’s warmth steadied against my neck. I set my hand near him without thinking.
She’d seen this coming. So had Levon. So had Parker.
The world had finally caught up.
I pulled my chair closer to the table and picked up the next intelligence report.
24
Keane
MY PORTALS HAD BEEN MAPPING corrupted wellsprings for three days straight. Wisp hovered just out of phase, her form dimming with every shift. She was as tired as I was—maybe more.
I stood in my suite at Wickem, but my consciousness extended through dimensional space. My portals created windows into corrupted wellsprings across Europe, letting me trace connections that normal magic couldn’t see. Wisp flickered beside me, her spectral form barely holding cohesion as she helped stabilize connections that shouldn’t exist.
The data I’d gathered told a story I didn’t want to believe. Dimensional maps spread across every surface of my suite. Red markers for corrupted wellsprings. Blue for cleansed. Silver lines showing the connections between them.
The pattern was undeniable. Vienna—the wellspring we’d cleansed three days ago—showed secondary corruption again. Exactly as predicted. But the renewed corruption had not come from the Budapest anchor we had identified and prepared to dismantle.
It had surged in from three separate nodes at once—not directed, not summoned but triggered.
Keane. Marigold’s voice came from the doorway. The council meeting starts in twenty minutes.
I looked up. She stood there with Scout on her shoulder, her dark brown eyes tired but steady. We’d all been running on minimal sleep since Vienna.
The urge to tell her to go without me was immediate, irrational. I wanted more time with the data. Wanted to find the answer before admitting we might not have one.
But she would have to present this too.
I know. I gestured to the maps. I need five more minutes. I’m missing something here.
She crossed to stand beside me, close enough I could feel her warmth, grounding and necessary.
She studied the corruption flow patterns with necromantic sight. What are you looking for?
Intervention. I pulled up Vienna’s timeline again. Decision points. Evidence that he’s steering it.
Her expression shifted. Show me the timeline again.
I displayed the hour-by-hour progression. Vienna cleansed at 14:00. First corruption signature reappearing at 18:00.
And no dimensional displacement? she asked. No trace of his presence?
None. My jaw tightened. There’s no pulse from him. No command structure. It’s not being driven.
My stomach twisted as the realization slid into place with cold precision.
