We’re deep beneath the foundations of Kenyan’s campus church, in a room where the walls are lined with leather-bound ledgers cataloging generations of sin.
I stand in the center with my wrists cuffed, not because it would hold me—if I truly wanted, I could break it—but because Valen said optics matter, and I’m still willing to give him that much.
My shoulder throbs. The bullet grazed me cleanly. It’ll scar. Another one to add to the collection.
Five Elders behind a crescent of polished mahogany carved from old granite and inherited contempt.
“Subject 09,” the man at the center says. Silas. I heard my mother speak his name once, when I was young enough to think her friends were safe. “You completed the mission. Five incapacitated. Sokolov left... intact.”
“He tripped,” I say. “The glass was thin. A building code issue, really.”
Dr. Wick sits to Silas’s right, every inch the Chanel-suited bureaucrat of my nightmares, and narrows her eyes. “You’re anunhinged liability. You belong in a cage.” She doesn’t blink. “A cage was mercy.”
The room stills.
She folds her hands on the table, manicured fingers resting over the file with my number on it. Not my name. Never my name. “Unit 9 kept him alive because I allowed it. If he violates any condition, I’ll have him returned underground before sunset. Higher dosage. No visitors. No unsupervised movement. No windows.”
My jaw flexes once.
She sees it.
Her mouth curves, barely. “And if medication fails, there are other ways to quiet a violent mind.”
Valen’s expression doesn’t change, but the air around him does.
Azriel steps forward half an inch.
I smile at her because that is what she wants least.
“Careful, Doctor,” I say softly. “You keep confusing quiet with cured.”
“The liability just brought you the ledger,” Valen steps forward from the doorway, his voice carrying the boredom of a man who holds every card. “Without Saint, Sokolov would have sold your secrets to the Russians by dawn.”
“He carries no blood of the Order,” Silas snaps. “He is not a Vikiar.”
“He carries our mother’s blood,” Azriel interjects, stepping forward, his voice steadier than I expect. “Under the Order’s own founding charter, any son of a member—blood or bond of marriage—is entitled to the Order’s protection and adopts the same standing.”
The members exchange looks.
This is the play. Valen and Azriel have rehearsed it. I’m the prop that makes it necessary.
Valen walks to the table and drops the ledger onto the mahogany surface. The sound fills the room. “Here’s what we’re proposing.” Azriel takes his seat as Valen continues, “You get his loyalty, his record, his future. In exchange, Saint is released from Unit 9 and formally recognized by the Consortium. He stays on campus. Attends classes. Maintains the performance of a student. If he steps out of bounds without sanction, you send him back.”
Silence blankets the room for a few seconds,
“Absolutely not,” Silas says, his voice echoing throughout the room.
“Consider the alternative,” Valen challenges. “Victor Sokolov is already moving. He knows the ledger is gone. He’s not his father, and we all know he won’t wait for your protocols.”
“He’ll go straight for leverage,” Azriel says. “And his leverage is already on this campus.”
“The students on the Prey list,” Valen adds. “No lineage. No safety net. No family name powerful enough to make the right people nervous if one of them disappears.”
My hand tightens.
The photographs are still inside my hoodie. All those stolen faces. All those lives reduced to files, schedules, dorm assignments, and risk assessments.
Amy’s face replaces them anyway.
