Chapter 34 34

Chapter 34 34
Lena's POV

I did not knock this time.

I pushed the door open and Percy was one step behind me and Damon looked up from the desk and read my face in one second and was already standing before I opened my mouth.

"Mira is gone," I said.

The study went completely still.

"And Voss," I said. "Together. Both of them. The deed is with them."

Damon looked at Percy.

Percy confirmed it with one nod.

Something moved through Damon's jaw. Not rage. The colder thing. The one that meant the situation had just reorganised itself and he was already three moves into the new version of it.

"When," he said.

"Rendal missed her by minutes," Percy said. "Her rooms were cleared fast. Planned in advance. She knew we were coming." He paused. "She had a route out. Pre-arranged. One of the side gates, the one by the old kitchen passage. The guard on it tonight was one of her people."

"Was," Damon said.

"Rendal has him now," Percy said.

"And Mira," I said. I needed to say it out loud again because it still was not sitting right in my chest. "Mira went with her voluntarily."

"It appears so," Percy said carefully.

I pressed my hand flat against the door frame.

Mira.

Who had been in this fortress for thirty years. Who had served three Lunas and buried all of them and kept going. Who had stood in my doorway at four in the morning and warned me about Croft and brought me tea without being asked and come with me to the north tower without hesitating.

Who had taken the deed from my hands when I threw it to her.

And had walked out of this fortress with it.

With Voss.

I thought about Mira moving through the north tower passage without a torch. Without hesitation. Every step certain. Like a woman who had walked that route before.

Like a woman who had been planning to walk it.

"She knew," I said quietly. "She knew the route. She knew the passage. She came with me to the vault and she took the deed and she—" I stopped. The shape of it assembling in my head in a way I did not want it to assemble. "She was not protecting it from Corvin. She was taking it."

The room was very quiet.

"She played me," I said.

Nobody contradicted that.

I looked at Damon.

He was looking at me with those eyes that were doing the careful thing, the measured thing, the thing he did when he was deciding how much of what he was thinking to put in his face.

"How long," I said. "How long was she working with Voss."

"That is what I intend to find out," he said.

"Damon."

"I do not know yet," he said. Firm. Not dismissive. Just honest. "I do not know and I will not guess because guessing means looking for confirmation of what I already think instead of finding what is actually there."

I breathed.

He was right.

I knew he was right.

It did not make it easier.

Mira had been in my room every morning. Mira had known everything. Every conversation, every document, every piece of the last weeks. Everything I had said to Damon, everything I had said to Percy, everything that had moved through the Luna's wing had moved through Mira first.

I had trusted her completely.

"Percy," Damon said. "Horses. Full tracking team. Rendal leads." He crossed to the desk, pulled a paper, wrote something fast. "The gate guard will know the direction. Whatever head start they have it is not more than forty minutes." He folded the paper. Handed it to Percy. "Give that to Rendal."

Percy took it and was gone before the door finished swinging.

Damon crossed to the window.

Stood with his back to me looking at the dark mountains.

I stayed by the door.

"She protected me," I said. It came out quieter than I meant it to. "Multiple times. The council meeting. The sitting room. The corridor outside Croft's rooms." I looked at the floor. "She warned me. Every time something was coming she warned me."

"Yes," Damon said.

"That does not make sense," I said. "If she was working against us from the beginning she would not have—"

"No," he said. "It does not make sense yet."

I looked at his back.

At the set of his shoulders.

"You are not surprised," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"I am," he said. "But not entirely."

I stared at him. "What does that mean."

He turned from the window.

Looked at me across the study.

"Mira served this bloodline for thirty years," he said. "She served my father before me. She served the Lunas before that." He paused. "She was loyal. Completely and verifiably loyal for thirty years." Another pause. "And then something changed. I did not know what. I noticed it approximately six weeks ago and I put Rendal on it quietly."

I stared at him.

"Six weeks ago," I said.

"Yes."

"You have been watching her for six weeks," I said.

"Watching is a strong word," he said. "I noticed a change and I began paying attention. Nothing Rendal found was conclusive. Nothing that warranted action." He held my gaze. "Tonight is the first conclusive thing."

"You could have told me," I said.

"You trusted her," he said. "Completely. Without that trust you would have been more isolated in this fortress than you already were." He looked at me steadily. "I made a judgment call."

I looked at him.

At the man who had been managing twelve things simultaneously the entire time I thought I was managing them with him.

"I am not a person you need to protect from information," I said.

"No," he said. "You are not. And I am telling you now."

"Because I no longer have a choice about knowing," I said.

He held my gaze. "Because the situation changed tonight and you deserve the full picture." He paused. "Both of those things are true."

I pressed my lips together.

Breathed.

"What changed six weeks ago," I said. "With Mira. What did you notice."

He crossed back to the desk. Sat. "She began asking questions she had no reason to ask," he said. "About the vault. About the north tower specifically. Subtle questions. The kind a woman of thirty years service could ask without raising immediate suspicion." He looked at his hands. "And she began spending time with Voss. Not obviously. Brief exchanges. Corridor conversations. But Mira did not spend time with Voss before that. She found her irritating."

"What made her turn," I said.

"I do not know yet," he said.

"There is something," I said. "There is always something. Nobody serves a bloodline for thirty years and then walks out in the middle of the night for no reason." I held his gaze. "Someone has something over her. Or someone offered her something she needed badly enough."

Damon looked at me.

"Yes," he said. "That is my belief also."

"Rael," I said.

"Or whoever Rael is working through in this territory," he said. "The network is larger than Lena knew. She gave us what she had access to. The edges of it. There are pieces she was not shown."

I sat down in the chair across from him.

Put both hands flat on the desk between us.

Thought.

Mira knew the vault. Mira had positioned herself to take the deed the moment an opportunity came. And I had handed her the opportunity myself, in the north tower, when I threw it to her and said go.

She had not been protecting it.

She had been waiting for exactly that moment.

Which meant she had known, or strongly suspected, that something was going to happen at the vault tonight. Which meant she had known about Corvin's plan. Which meant her information network inside this fortress was as good as mine had been in three years of professional work.

Better, maybe.

Thirty years of access.

"She knows everything," I said. "Everything that has moved through this fortress in the last six weeks. Everything I said in my room, everything discussed in the corridors she patrolled, everything." I looked at Damon. "She knows what Lena told you tonight. She knows about Corvin. She knows about Rael."

"Yes," he said.

"She will take that to wherever she is going," I said. "And whoever is waiting for her will know exactly what we know and what we do not know and what our next move is."

"Yes," he said.

"Which means Rendal needs to catch her before she reaches anyone," I said.

"Yes," he said. "He does."

The fire had burned low while we were talking. The room was dimmer than before. Outside the window the sky was doing the first impossible thing it did before dawn, not light yet but less dark, the particular shade that meant morning was coming whether you were ready or not.

I had been awake for twenty hours.

I could not feel it.

That was the thing about this kind of night. Your body stopped registering tired and just kept moving because stopping was not an option and something in you understood that even if your brain was too exhausted to articulate it.

"There is something else," Damon said.

I looked at him.

He was looking at the desk.

At one paper specifically.

He picked it up. Held it out to me.

I took it.

Read it.

It was short. Rendal's writing, from earlier tonight, before the vault, before all of it. A report. Two lines.

Mira Voss connection confirmed. Prior relationship. Eastern territory, pre-fortress.

Mira and Voss knew each other before.

I looked up.

"They were not just working together," I said. "They knew each other before she came here."

"Yes," Damon said.

"Voss came here three years ago," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"And Mira was already here," I said. "So either Voss came here because Mira was here, or they both came here because of something in this fortress." I put the paper on the desk. "Which means Voss's arrival was not about you. It was not about the alliance or the Luna position or any of the things we thought it was about."

"No," he said. "It was not."

"It was about the deed," I said. "She came here for the deed three years ago and she has been waiting for the right opportunity since."

"Yes," he said. "That is what Rendal believes."

I looked at the paper.

At the two lines.

At the shape of three years of patience assembled into one night that had almost worked.

"If Rendal does not catch them," I said.

"He will," Damon said.

"But if he does not," I said.

Damon looked at me steadily. "Then we find them another way," he said. "We have Lena. We have what Corvin knows. We have names and routes and enough of the network to dismantle it piece by piece." His jaw was set. "They do not disappear. Not with something that significant. The deed is physical. It has to be somewhere. And wherever it is, we find it."

I looked at him.

At the certainty in his face.

At the man who did not panic. Who had never once in my presence panicked. Who took each new worst thing and filed it and moved to the next move without stopping.

I did not know if that quality was comforting or terrifying.

Both, probably.

"Go to sleep," he said.

"You just told me Mira walked out of this fortress with a document that could destabilise the entire northern territory," I said. "And your suggestion is sleep."

"My suggestion," he said, "is that you have been awake for most of two days, you have managed three separate crises tonight, and there is nothing you can do in the next six hours that Rendal cannot do better rested." He looked at me. "So yes. Sleep."

I looked at him.

At the desk covered in papers.

At the fire that was almost out.

At the window where the sky was doing the pre-dawn thing.

"You are not going to sleep," I said.

"No," he said.

"Because you are going to sit here and go through everything Lena gave you and everything Rendal has and figure out the pieces that do not fit yet," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"I could help with that," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

Then he reached across the desk and pushed a stack of papers toward me.

"Rendal's notes from Lena's debriefing," he said. "Tell me if anything contradicts what you know about Corvin's network."

I pulled the papers toward me.

Settled in the chair.

The fire was low but the room was still warm enough.

Outside, somewhere on the dark road, Rendal was riding after two women who had planned this for years and had a forty-minute head start.

Inside, in this study, Damon worked through his papers and I worked through mine and the night moved toward morning around us and neither of us mentioned that this was not what sleep looked like.

An hour passed.

Maybe more.

I found three things in Rendal's notes that did not match what I knew about Corvin's standard methods. Wrote them in the margin. Passed the pages across.

Damon read them. Made his own notes. Passed them back.

We did not talk much.

We did not need to.

The papers moved between us and the fire burned down to embers and the sky outside went from almost-dark to the first pale grey of actual morning.

And then Percy appeared in the doorway.

Breathing harder than Percy usually breathed.

I looked at him.

Damon looked at him.

"Rendal," Percy said.

"Did he catch them," Damon said.

Percy came into the room.

Closed the door behind him.

Looked at both of us with a face that was doing something I had not seen on Percy before.

Not the tight look of bad news.

Not the careful look of complicated news.

Something else entirely.

"He caught Voss," Percy said.

"And Mira," I said.

Percy looked at me.

"Mira was not with her," he said.

I stared at him.

"Voss was alone," Percy said. "She says Mira left her two miles from the fortress. Took the deed and went a different direction." He paused. "She says she does not know where Mira went."

"Does Rendal believe her," Damon said.

"He does not know," Percy said. "But there is something else." He looked at me again. That look that meant what he was about to say was specifically for me. "Voss had a letter on her. Sealed. She says Mira gave it to her before they separated." He reached into his coat. Pulled out a folded paper. "She said to give it to the Luna."

He held it out.

I took it.

Looked at it.

My name on the outside.

Mira's writing.

I recognised it immediately. Thirty years of writing notes and leaving them outside my door in the morning. I knew her writing the way I knew the sound of her footsteps.

I opened it.

Read it.

And sat very still for a long moment.

Then I put it on the desk and pushed it toward Damon.

He read it.

His face did the thing.

The completely controlled thing that was the opposite of controlled underneath.

He looked up at me.

I looked back at him.

"She has had the deed this whole time," I said quietly. "Since the moment I threw it to her in the vault. She was never giving it to Voss."

"No," he said.

"She was running with Voss to draw Rendal's attention," I said. "While she went somewhere else."

"Yes," he said.

"She is not working for Rael," I said.

"No," he said.

"She is working for someone else entirely," I said. "Someone who wants the deed but does not want Rael to have it."

"Yes," he said.

I looked at the letter.

At the last line of it.

The one that had made me go very still when I read it.

The deed is safe. It will be returned when the King makes his choice. He will know what that means.

I looked at Damon.

"Do you know what that means," I said.

He looked at the letter for a long moment.

Then he looked at me.

And something moved through his face that was not the controlled thing and not the wall and not any of the expressions I had catalogued over weeks.

Something I did not have a name for yet.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I know what it means."