Page 83 of The Vespertine Treaty

"In the eastern garden," Silas continued, his voice devoid of emotion, factual and cold. "Asleep. Hidden beneath the hydrangea bushes."

I stared at him, the rage stuttering, the momentum of my fury hitting a wall of confusion. "She... left the beast?"

"Wait here," Silas’ tone was a bit commanding for my taste, but I simply nodded.

He turned and vanished into the corridor.

The silence that rushed back into the room was heavy, suffocating. Friedrik looked at me, his chest heaving, his face looking more pale. He didn't speak. He knew better than to interrupt the processing of a predator.

I stood amidst the wreckage of the room, my chest heaving, the shadows retracting slightly, hovering close to my skin like anxious ghosts.

Why would she leave the fox?

She wouldn't.

The answer came before the question even fully formed. I remembered the way she had shielded the animal from me the first day. The way she sneaked food to it. The way her entire demeanour softened when it nuzzled her hand.

Silas returned.

In his massive, scarred arms, he held a bundle of golden-orange fur. The creature was limp, its head lolling against Silas’s bicep, its breathing shallow and slow.

It looked... broken. Small. Infinitely fragile against the brutality of Silas’s appearance.

I stared at the animal, and for a split second, the mask I had worn for centuries—the mask of the unfeeling, unbothered lord—cracked. A fissure ran right down the centre of my composure.

Because looking at that small, helpless thing, I saw Ophelia. I saw the fragility I had tried to protect.And failed miserably.

Rhana stalked forward, her belly low to the ground. She sniffed the air around the limp fox, her nose twitching.

Silas’s familiar, Rock, scuttled out from behind Silas’s boot, chittering anxiously.

Rhana snapped her jaws at the anxious creature, a sharp, warning clack of teeth that sent Rock scrambling back into the hallway. She wasn't panicking; she was demanding silence for the evidence.

"Chemicals,"Rhana stated, her voice devoid of its earlier mockery, replaced by cold, tactical assessment."It reeks of alchemical sleep. She didn't abandon the creature, Cain. She was taken.”

"Is it dead?" My voice was unrecognisable. Quiet. Terrified.

"Sedated," Silas said, stepping over the remains of a chair to bring the creature closer. "Heavily. Rock says it smells of alchemical sleep. Magic dampeners."

I looked at the fox, and the pieces clicked together with the sickening precision of a loaded crossbow.

Ophelia hadn't run.

She hadn't left me.

Someone had taken her.

The relief that she hadn't betrayed me was instantaneous, a cool wash over the fire in my veins. But it was immediately replaced by a terror so profound, so icy, that it made the previous rage look like a temper tantrum.

"She wouldn't leave it," I whispered, the realisation horrifying. "She would never leave it behind. If she had run... she would have taken Poppy with her.”

"She was taken," Friedrik breathed, the colour draining further from his face.

I looked at Silas, my eyes burning. "Take it upstairs," I commanded, my voice turning into a serrated blade. "Put it in Ophelia’s chambers. On her bed. Make sure it is fed. Make sure it has water."

"Cain..."

"DO IT!" I roared, the sound shaking the remaining glass in the window frames. "It is all she has! If she comes back and that thing is dead, she will never forgive any of us. Keep it alive, Silas!”