"Every day. Whether the news changes or not."
I nod. I leave.
The corridor toward the east wing. Simone is sitting on the bench outside the garden entrance. Alexei is beside her. Not touching. Not speaking. He's reading something on a tablet. She's looking at the garden where the candles from last night have burned down to stubs in the grass, wax pooled at the base of each one.
She sees me. Stands.
"Maximus."
"Simone."
"Thank you," she says. "For last night. For the ceremony."
"You're family, Simone. You belong there."
"I know why I was there." She pauses. "I'm thanking you for being the reason she's still alive to want me there."
She sits back down. Alexei's eyes flick to her and back to his tablet. He doesn't say anything. He shifts half an inch closer on the bench.
I keep walking.
Lanthar is at the tree line. He's out of the Veil-crossing armor. The compound's perimeter lights catch the edges of his face, and he turns when I approach with the unhurried precision of someone who heard me before I cleared the corridor.
"The survivors?" I ask.
"Settled. My healers have addressed the malnutrition and the injuries. The children are eating." He pauses. "Several of the adults have asked when they can go home."
"When Konstantin is dealt with."
"That is what I told them." His gaze moves past me toward the compound. "One of the youngest children has not spoken since she arrived. My people are patient. She will speak when she is ready."
"How long can you hold them?"
"As long as is necessary. Thessivane has sheltered refugees before. Not human ones. But the principle holds."
I nod. He inclines his head. I walk on.
Carson's lab. The lights are on. They're always on. Carson doesn't follow the compound's schedule. He sleeps when the data lets him and works when it doesn't.
He's at the centrifuge. Two units of contaminated blood in the rack. One unit of purified blood in the output tray, labeled and dated in his tight print.
"How many can you process in a night?"
He doesn't look up from the centrifuge.
"Four units. Six if Elena runs the secondary filtration." He pulls a printout from the stack beside the centrifuge. "I've been scaling the column design. The current prototype handles one unit at a time. The next version can do three simultaneously. I need the materials I requisitioned from Isabelle."
"You'll have them."
"The problem isn't speed." He turns to face me. Clean shirt. Tired eyes. The same steady focus he had the first time he walked into a room full of vampires and didn't flinch. "The problem is scale. The contamination in the human blood supply comes from pharmaceuticals, street drugs, microplastics. It's been building for decades. The volume of tainted blood in circulation across the southeastern territories alone would take my current setup months to process. And now Konstantin has a device that can turn clean supply into contaminated supply without opening a bag. We're fighting the existing crisis and a man who can manufacture more of it. We need facilities. Multiple sites. Trained operators."
"Then we build them."
Carson holds my gaze. He nods once. Turns back to the centrifuge.
I station two of Marcellus's fighters outside the lab on my way out.
Celeste is in the conference room when I return. She's standing at the screen, scrolling through Adrienne's ward data. Seraphina is beside her, reading the magical frequencies as fluently as Julian reads surveillance feeds.
