Chapter 20
The silence following Rhen’s departure lingered over the main room like smoke trapped beneath a ceiling beam. It no longer choked them, but it remained thick enough to press against their shoulders and settle at the backs of their throats.
The fire shifted inside the hearth, and the small sound seemed disproportionately loud in a room occupied by males who had no idea what to do with grief.
Cole continued staring at the empty doorway.
“Do you think he is right?”
Dax looked toward him.
“About which part?”
“Do you think they will come for Norse?”
Malakai answered without hesitation, his hands moving where both brothers could see.
They would be foolish not to try if they believe the prophecy.
“It is real,” Dax said.
Cole and Malakai looked toward him, not because they disagreed, but because certainty had become rare inside the stronghold.
Dax met their gaze.
“Leena believed it. She understood what Norse represented before he was born.”
His voice tightened around her name, but he continued.
“The heretics will not ignore a child who could change the balance of every bloodline in the city.”
Cole rolled the blood bottle between his hands.
“Then what do we do? Place guards outside every room and hide him until he is old enough to defend himself?”
Malakai signed,We begin by tracing the message. Someone knew where to send the courier and how to compel him strongly enough to make him walk to the gate.
Dax nodded.
“We examine the paper and seal, reconstruct the courier’s route, and identify anyone who saw him before he reached the private road. Somebody chose that human for a reason.”
“And if the trail ends?” Cole asked.
Dax’s expression sharpened.
“Then we work outward from every known heretic safehouse until someone gives us a name.”
Malakai watched him.
Burning the city will not make Norse safer.
“No,” Dax agreed. “But making the sender believe we are afraid will not help either.”
Cole placed the bottle on the mantel.
“We start carefully, then.”
Dax glanced at the blood drying across his fingers and remembered the wary woman waiting inside the eastern guest suite.
