The words settle like poison in my chest.
“This,” he gestures lightly as more images flash, invasive and violating in their exposure, “is not love. This is war. Spiritual warfare waged upon a soul too blind to see its own fall.”
My breath thins.
My heart stutters.
“And yet,” Gideon adds, his lips curving almost imperceptibly, “all is not lost. The lost may still return. The broken may still be made whole.”
His gaze sharpens, cutting straight through the screen, straight through me.
“Come home, Seraphina.”
The video cuts.
Silence crashes down over the room, heavy and suffocating.
It takes a moment for me to realize my hands are trembling, that my pulse is racing as though I have just escaped something I am not sure I can outrun.
I don’t look at Trey.
I can’t.
But I feel him.
Perfectly still.
Dangerously quiet.
The tension rolling off him saturates the air.
No one speaks.
Not Mac, not Logan, not Sam.
Even Niko is silent, his usual composure edged with something sharper, something unsettled.
Chace exhales slowly, already stepping forward, already moving into strategy as if motion alone can cut through the weight of what we have just seen.
“It’s everywhere,” he says, gesturing toward the screen. “Religious forums, mainstream media, fan accounts. Everyone’s picked it up. I’ve already started—”
“Find him.”
Trey’s voice slices through the room.
Lethal.
Chace stills.
Everyone does.
When I finally force myself to look at Trey, the expression on his face steals the breath from my lungs.
Because there is no hesitation in him.
No doubt.
Only one thing.
