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She’d stopped fighting it.
Her hair had come most of the way down from where she’d put it up before the emergency, a streak of grime along her jaw from the chamber wall. She stood in water, wearing a coat never built for underground flooding — the most capable person he’d seen in this chamber in years of using it. He took it all in at once, completely, the way he took her in now — in no order.
His wolf watched her with the full attention it gave to everything that mattered, no pretense of objectivity. Three months ago, she’d set a boardwalk banner on fire. Now she was holding the deepest layer of the town’s containment infrastructure in place within a flooded chamber.
At some point, Pike appeared on the access stairs with his notebook and a summary of the surface situation: Colleen in custody pending the full council session, Tor coordinating the structural assessment, the northern breach sealed, and the eastern section holding. He read from the notebook because Pike trusted the accuracy of primary documents.
“She’s been running these modifications for eighteen months,” Pike said, looking at the notebook.
“I know.”
“I flagged the pattern six weeks ago. It didn’t look right. I put it in the red tab.”
Drayce looked at him.
“The red tab is for things I’ve identified as problems that no one has asked me about yet.” Pike’s face was completely neutral. “It has its own index.”
“Is there anything I should know about how she got in?”
“I have notes.”
“Of course you do.”
“They’re detailed.”
“I’ll read them in the morning.”
Pike looked at Althea then at the anchor array. He looked at Drayce. He made a note. “The coven’s at the surface. Bexley has questions about how Colleen got in. She says it’s for professional reasons.”
“Tell her I’ll forward them.”
“She said she anticipated that and has drafted the analysis questions already. I have the list.”
“Of course she does.”
Pike tucked the notebook under his arm and went back up the stairs, reading the room correctly — decades of practice teach a man that.
The water was again at ankle depth, receding steadily, when Althea took her hands off the anchors. She stood for a moment with her palms at her sides, the fire radiating its low, settled warmth and the ward lamps holding at full strength for the first time since the breach.
“That’s the second time this week.”
“Third.” He was beside her. “The dock district Wednesday counts.”
“Right.” She looked at the anchor housing. At the fractured wall. At the water, inch by inch, receding from the bedrock floor. “Someone aimed the creature’s attacks at me.”
“Yes.”
“Because I walked into this town with fire coming out of my hands, and apparently that was all the evidence anyone needed.”
“Yes.”
“And the answer was to use me as evidence of danger rather than—” she stopped. “Rather than any of what actually happened.”
“The plan assumed you’d fail. It didn’t account for the alternative.”
He watched her take it in — not anger, which was there, but the layer beneath it. The feeling that came when someone found out they’d been underestimated by someone who should have known better.
“Are there more of them? On the council?”
