The baby’s scream carried faintly through the call.
Thin.
Desperate.
Alive.
Leena was not.
Something inside Sule went brutally, murderously cold.
The witches around the table rose at once as the pulse from the shattered wards reached them.
Isa’s face drained of color.
“Sule—”
He was already gone.
Chapter 12
Sule was gone before Isa finished saying his name.
Cold closed around him as the council chamber vanished and the east-wing corridor reformed beneath his feet.
The compound struck him all at once.
Stone.
Shadow.
The fractured hum of the wards.
Blood.
Too much blood.
It hung in the corridor like an omen, thick enough to coat the back of his throat.
Sule was already moving.
Dax, Cole, and Malakai converged on the royal chamber from farther down the east wing. The adjoining warded suite had been sealed behind them, the night medic remaining inside with Veya.
No one spoke.
They didn’t need to.
Leena’s door stood half open, warm firelight spilling into the corridor—domestic, soft, and horribly wrong.
Mary stood just inside the threshold, white-faced and shaking, the phone still clutched in one hand as though she had forgotten how to release it.
Her eyes met Sule’s.
They filled immediately.
“Sire…”
The heir cried from inside the room.
