Someone in this building is a traitor.
I don't know who.
But I will find them.
And when I do,I think, looking at Aurora's face, at this woman I have somehow managed to fall completely and irreversibly in love with,God fucking help them.
28
AURORA
"The boss says to pack warm," Margareta says, setting a folded blanket on my bed like that explains anything. "And comfortable. He says no heels."
I look up from my laptop. "Where are we going?"
She smiles, closes the door.
That's all I get.
Okay... what the hell? I was busy reading when Margareta came in with an announcement from Axel, and now I’m sitting here, stunned for a full ten seconds, staring at the blanket. Then I close the laptop, open the wardrobe, and start looking for thewarmest thing I own, which turns out to be a cream knit sweater and a coat I never thought I'd need. I pull them both on, look at myself in the mirror, and head downstairs.
Axel's already at the car when I step outside, dressed in dark trousers and a heavy jacket, hands in his pockets. The cold evening air hits me immediately, and I hug my coat tighter. Viktor's nearby, speaking quietly into a radio. Two other cars are idling at the end of the driveway, engines running, windows dark.
Axel turns when he hears me on the steps, and something in his expression shifts. Quick, almost imperceptible, the way it does sometimes when he thinks I'm not watching.
"You look warm," he says.
"Margareta told me to pack warm and wear no heels." I stop in front of him. "That's the sum total of my information."
"Good." He opens the car door and steps aside.
"Axel."
"Get in the car, Aurora."
I huff and get in the car.
He slides in beside me, the door closes, and the convoy starts moving, four cars rolling down the long driveway in the dark,and I watch the estate gates disappear behind us and decide to let myself not know for once. To just sit with the not-knowing and see where it takes me.
For the first half hour, we move through the city. I watch it through the window, the lit-up restaurants and the late-night foot traffic and the bridges over dark water, all of it streaking past in amber and white. Axel's quiet beside me, calm, one hand resting on his knee.
Then the city thins. The lights space out. Buildings give way to warehouses, then to trees, then to nothing at all except road and sky and the occasional farmhouse sitting dark in a field. The roads narrow, the tarmac roughens, and the world outside the window becomes the kind of empty that doesn't exist anywhere near a city. Just land and dark, and the smell of cold air even through the sealed windows.
I press my face to the glass like I'm twelve years old and watch the landscape change.
Where in the world are we going?
The cars climb. The road curves upward, and the trees fall back on either side, shorter now, windswept, bending slightly in a way that says we're high enough that the weather means something up here. My ears pop.
Then the car stops.
I look out. We're on a hill, wide and open, no buildings, no roads visible in any direction, nothing except grass and cold sky and Axel's men already spreading out silently across the ground. Viktor stays close. The other cars settle into position at the edges of the space, headlights clicking off one by one until the only light is whatever the sky is doing.
Axel opens his door. Comes around to mine, opens it, and holds out his hand.
I take it and step out into the cold, and it hits me everywhere at once — my cheeks, my lungs, the backs of my hands. Sharp and clean and nothing like city cold, nothing like anything I've felt before. It smells like grass, altitude and pure untouched space, like the world before people got to it.
Maybe I’m rambling. But everything here feels and looks magical.
