“Good.”
Her hand catches mine.
I allow it. But we have some unfinished business to address.
We walk back inside.
The courtyard is lit by the emergency floodlights Caleb’s team installed after the compound assault. The eastern wall still carries the witch strike’s scars, stone fractured in patterns that follow the magic they channeled. The wards hum above us, Seraphina’s architecture reinforced by Lanthar’s power.
Daylight is long gone, but she still carries it. No vampire has any right to smell like sunlight. She does.
Past the conference room. Four faces turn when we walk by. Julian already has contingency frameworks on the table. He doesn’t look up.
Celeste stops at the doorway. “I’ll brief Julian on the shifter meeting. Get his read on the Accords.”
“Good.”
She lets my hand go slowly. Then she walks into the conference room, and I watch her take her place at the tablebeside Julian. She asks a question before she’s fully in her seat. He pulls a document toward her without looking up.
I go to my study. Close the door.
The room is dark. I don’t turn on the lights. I sit behind the desk, put my hands flat on the surface, and breathe.
Time passes. I don’t track it. I sit with it and let it settle.
Then her steps in the corridor. She enters my study.
“Julian’s drafted three contingency frameworks for the Accords activation,” she says from the doorway. “Ranked by risk.”
“Of course he has.” I look at her. “And the supply numbers?”
“Isabelle walked me through them. We're already down eighteen percent across the network. The new Charlotte reserve hub is still clean. If it goes, it’ll be six weeks before we run dry.” She pauses. “Konstantin doesn’t need to win a battle. He just needs to starve us until cooperation looks better than principle.”
“The lords will start breaking. The desperate ones first, the territories already running thin. He’ll offer them his solution and they’ll take it because the alternative is watching their people go feral.”
“His solution being the farms.”
“Yes.”
Celeste crosses the room. Sits on the edge of my desk.
She reaches for my hand. Her fingers close around mine. Her thumb moves across my knuckles.
“I love you.”
I feel it from her.
Her jaw tightens. Her gaze stays on mine.
I reach up and press my thumb to the empty place at her throat where the chain used to lie.
“When I get it back,” I say, “it goes here.”
Something hardens in her expression. “WhenIget it back. He took it fromme.”
“We’llget it back.”
She holds my gaze.
