Chapter 1

I found out Lucian Vael—the man I took a crossbow bolt for five years ago—had been living a double life behind my back.

I don't know exactly when I blacked out. I remember the archive room floor coming up fast. Then nothing.

When I came to, he was already there.

He was on the phone at the far end of the physician's room, and his voice had an edge I almost never heard from him. Something about the ritual components. Something about whoever had let this happen again. The physician was waiting him out patiently, the way you learn to wait out powerful men.

For a moment I almost believed it. That he was that furious on my behalf.

Then I remembered the crystal. Those two new silver branches. The name carved into one of them.

The physician got through half his update before Lucian ended the call and crossed the room.

"Was it the Accord?" he said, low and tight. "Did someone get to your materials?"

"Nobody got to anything. I just pushed too hard."

He looked at me like he didn't believe it, then looked at the physician like he was deciding whether to find someone to blame anyway.

"Blood loss," the physician said firmly. "Third time in six months. No more rites until she's recovered. Two weeks minimum."

Lucian pulled a chair close and sat. He reached over and put his hand against my face—same angle, same weight as five years ago, the night I first woke up changed, when he'd steadied me because I didn't know how to hold my own head up yet. I wondered if he knew he still did it that way.

"What's wrong?" he said. "Something else."

"I'm tired."

He held my gaze for a second, then leaned in and pressed his mouth to my forehead.

That's when I caught it.

Under the cedar-and-copper that was specifically him: something cold. Old. A pureblood's presence clings to skin and fabric differently than anything else—floral in a way that has nothing to do with flowers, something you can't place until you know what you're looking for. I'd been in the same room as Seraphine Moreau three times. I knew that scent.

And beneath it, so faint I nearly missed it: something sweet and warm and milky.

Infant blood smells different. It's one of the first things you learn.

I pushed him back, said something about needing a moment, and barely made it to the bathroom before I was sick.

He followed. He gathered my hair back with both hands and said nothing, just stayed there, kneeling on the tile floor in a coat that probably cost more than most people's rent. He'd always hated mess. He'd always been worse around illness. He was kneeling on a clinic bathroom floor not caring about either.

I almost told him. I was right on the edge of it—I'm pregnant, seven weeks, I just found out yesterday—and maybe if I had, everything would have gone differently.

Then his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen. Something moved through his face, there and gone. "Clan business," he said. "I'll be right back."

He wasn't back in twenty minutes.

What came instead was a vision—images that pushed into my head uninvited, sharp as memory, except they weren't mine. It happens between two people who've shared blood long enough. Someone can send things through that connection without a phone, without warning.

Soft light. A pale nursery. Lucian leaning over a crib, his mouth to a baby's forehead. Unhurried. Like he'd done it before.

Seraphine in the background. Her hand on his arm. Watching.

One line of text threaded through it after: He moves fast when they need him.

I stayed on the bathroom floor until my hands steadied. Then I called Mira.

"Two days," I said. "I need to be dead in two days."

A beat of silence. Then, carefully: "Corbin's been lying to me too. I found the messages." Her voice was controlled but only just. "I can't stay, Vera. Not anymore."

She was wrong. He'd spent eight months saving for a ring, had her old Hunter insignia worked into the setting, wanted her to know he accepted everything she'd been before. I didn't know that yet.

"Okay," I said. "We go together."

That night I came home to an empty house. Late, his message said. Handling things.

I went straight to the archive room. Four years of notebooks on that shelf, his handwriting in my margins, time that had looked like partnership from where I was standing. I pulled them down one by one and tore them. I'd expected it to feel like something. It didn't.

The gown from my first clan gathering went into a bag without me looking at it too long.

My ring caught the light when I tied the handles shut.

I left it on. The plan needed it.

My phone lit up on the countertop.

Mira: Everything's ready. 48 hours.

Forty-eight hours, and Vera Cross-Vael would be dead.