Chapter 5
Elias
She didn't even look back.
That was what got under my skin — not the fact that she'd clocked the car, not the deliberate detour through streets she had no reason to take, not the performance of buying water she clearly didn't want just to have somewhere to stand while she confirmed what she already knew. All of that was exactly what I'd expected. What I hadn't expected was the moment she stepped back out onto the sidewalk, twisted the cap off the bottle, took a long drink with the particular unhurried quality of someone who had decided they were done being unsettled, and got back on that goddamn bike without so much as a glance in my direction.
Like I was a parked car. Like I was weather.
"Don't follow her," I said. "Take us back."
Thomas, the driver, didn't ask questions. He never did, which was most of what recommended him. The sedan pulled a smooth U-turn and the rain closed in behind us, and I leaned back against the seat and looked at the ceiling and tried to identify what exactly was sitting in my chest in a way that felt like swallowed glass.
Seven hundred years. Seven hundred years of watching empires go to dust and finding the whole spectacle approximately as interesting as a change in the weather. I had outlived languages. I had watched coastlines shift. I had stood in rooms where history was being made and felt nothing more pressing than a mild, clinical curiosity, the way you might observe a chess game you have no stake in.
And then there was this. Her. Sitting across a desk from me this morning with her hands folded and her face arranged into the precise expression of a woman performing professional composure — and doing it well, I'd give her that, well enough that anyone who hadn't spent three years cataloguing the specific tension she carried in her jaw when she was furious would have believed it entirely.
I had believed nothing.
I had watched her hold herself perfectly still while I spoke, and I had felt the moment my energy field reached her — that particular, involuntary shudder she couldn't quite suppress, the one she'd been suppressing all morning, the one that told me her medication was doing exactly as much as it ever did, which was not enough. She'd felt me the moment she stepped off that elevator. Probably before that. Probably the moment she walked into the building and the air changed.
She'd spent the entire day pretending otherwise.
I almost smiled at that. Almost.
She thinks she can still run. That was fine. Let her think it. She'd always been faster on her feet than was convenient, and I'd always found that more interesting than I should have.
The gates of Nocturne Manor closed behind the car with the familiar sound of iron on stone, and I was halfway up the front steps when Renard materialized from the shadow of the doorway with the expression of a man who had endured something and wished to be acknowledged for it.
"Mr. Valmont." He fell into step beside me. "Miss Lila Ashford had a productive afternoon."
I stopped walking. "Define productive."
"She located the east wine cellar."
A pause.
"She didn't—"
"She did not drink anything. She did, however," Renard continued, with the careful neutrality of a man who had been in service to this family for a very long time and had learned to deliver bad news without inflection, "reorganize approximately forty bottles by what she described as 'color of the label.' Several did not survive the reorganization."
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
"She also," he added, "convinced three of the kitchen staff to play some card game with her for two hours, which I believe she won, repeatedly, and may have been cheating at. Mr. Cassius Ashford's family has certain — inherited tendencies." He paused with professional delicacy. "She ate well. Finished her blood pack without complaint. She's been asleep in the blue guest room since eight."
I stood there for a moment. Through the walls of the manor I could feel the particular stillness of a sleeping child, small and uncomplicated and entirely unbothered by the wreckage she'd left behind her.
"Tomorrow," I said, "she comes with me to the tower. Tell the morning staff they have until noon off."
Renard absorbed this without visible reaction. "Of course, sir."
I left him to it.
I was in the study with a glass I wasn't drinking from when Cassius called.
"How's my darling niece?" he said, by way of greeting.
"She destroyed part of my wine cellar."
"Allegedly."
"Renard has witnesses."
"Renard," Cassius said pleasantly, "has always been dramatic. She's nine, Elias, not a war criminal." There was the sound of something — a door, traffic, the particular ambient noise of wherever he was that wasn't here. "More importantly. How was your first day back?"
I said nothing.
"Funny thing," he continued, in the tone he used when he'd been waiting to say something and had decided the moment had arrived. "I seem to recall you telling me, what was it, eight months ago, that acquiring Aeterna was a purely strategic move. Undervalued assets. Regional leverage. Nothing personal."
"It wasn't."
"Mm." The sound he made was not agreement. "And it's purely coincidental that the woman you've been not-mentioning for three years happens to be employed there."
"She's a competent executive secretary. The position requires—"
"Elias." His voice shifted, just slightly — the drop that meant he was done performing amusement and had moved into something more direct. "I've known you since before the Norman Conquest. I watched you go three decades without speaking to anyone after the last time someone got under your skin. You acquired a corporation. You moved back to Valerius. You personally reviewed the personnel files of a mid-level secretarial department." A beat. "So let's skip the part where you explain the strategic rationale to me, because I genuinely cannot sit through it."
The glass in my hand was very cold. I set it down.
"Come get your niece," I said. "She reorganized my wine cellar."
"I'll be back in two days, three at the most—"
"Two days."
"Elias—"
"Cassius."
He laughed — that specific laugh, the one that meant he'd gotten what he came for and was gracious enough not to press further. Then, because he was constitutionally incapable of leaving anything alone: "Oh, one more thing. Is that why you followed her car tonight? Making sure she got home safe? Very strategic of you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Right, right." A pause, loaded and deliberate. "She must have been so surprised to see you. After everything." Something shifted in his voice — lighter on the surface, heavier underneath. "You know, I've been looking into what she's been up to these past three years. Some of it's... interesting. You might want to—"
"Two days," I said. "Or I send Lila to Sion."
Dead silence.
Then, with genuine alarm: "You wouldn't."
"Three days and I give him her new phone number."
"That is — Elias, that is genuinely cruel, Sion would have her enrolled in four extracurricular—"
I ended the call. I knew he just didn't want to face Sion.
The study held the silence the way old rooms do, completely and without effort. I stayed where I was for a while, not drinking, not reading, not doing anything that could be described as productive.
Some of it's interesting.
I didn't reach for the thought. I was very practiced at not reaching for things.
On the far side of the room, against the wall beneath the window, there was a low wooden shelf I'd had built years ago at a height that had made the carpenter mildly confused. It was empty now. Had been empty for three years. I'd told myself twice that I should have it removed, and twice I hadn't.
Outside, the rain continued. It always did, in this city. It persisted the way certain things persist — without drama, without apology, with the patient certainty of something that has no intention of stopping.
I picked up the glass again.
She looked at the car, I thought, and then she looked away.
I drank.
