Chapter 115: We're Our Major Weapons

Aidan’s grip on the steering wheel softened. He looked at me and then at each of us. “We need to split. Some of us push for Halvorsen. Some of us reinforce the estate. Selene just proved she can reach inside of town and pull power. We can’t be exposed. We need to protect the people we can. We also have to move to stop Selene from collecting more anchors.”

He paused. “I stay with Roxanne. Elena and Ethan go to Halvorsen first. Mara and Callum handle the estate perimeter and safehouse. Echo and Rhea handle archives and research; they’re the brain trust. And —” he looked at me — “— we’ll prepare a place where you can be safe if it comes to a choice. Not a throne. Not a cage. Safety.”

I wanted to argue that I did not want a place like that, but words failed in the way they often did when someone else tried to build a life prescriptively for you. He didn’t want me to be a queen. He wanted me to be a person who might someday choose to fight.

We made the decisions, because that’s what people do when a future feels like a cliff. Plans were a kind of rope.

The drive to Halvorsen House was long and the road thin. Ethan grumbled about mobile hotspot coverage and how small towns loved to be off-grid. Elena whistled under her breath. She was being loud because she’d always been loud; it kept her alive. It kept us alive, too.

The estate was shy beneath a grey sky. Hedges, an iron gate, stone lions with moss. The Halvorsen name was in black wrought iron on a stone archway. Nobody waved as we walked in. But that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes.

We split like we’d planned. Ethan and Elena slipped toward the guest wing records, a plausible reason for mapping out the manor. They smiled and lied and looked like tourists. Mara and Callum took the perimeter, slipping into places where the property’s private security didn’t reach. On the far side, there was an old storage wing — brick and heavy French doors — where the Devries had once shipped items in the past. Everyone started to move, a slow choreography of purpose.

At midnight, Ethan whispered on the comm. “There’s movement. Two cars on the lane. Somebody’s coming in with cases. Security is shifting.”

“Elena?” Mara’s voice came back, taut. “Do you want the diversion?”

She grinned into the radio. “Always.”

What began after that was a slow, careful night: dodges under hedgerows, a skip over a garden wall, the soft flick of hand tools and the quiet breath of committed people. We opened a door, then another, and found a wing of Halvorsen stacked with cases. The scent of cedar and old varnish wrapped us.

Boxes were labeled in ways that made Ethan's fingers fly: Latin terms, catalog numbers, shipping notations. Among the crates we found a small trunk that had been sealed with wax. On the lid, someone had carved a ring with a slash through it.

Rhea’s hands shook as we pried it open. Inside were things that felt like the world had tilted again: a thin, blackened scroll and a ring nested in velvet. The ring was simpler than I’d imagined — a band of tarnished metal with a single line scored across it. It shivered in my palm like it had a memory.

Ethan whispered, “I don’t know what it does.” His voice was a mixture of fear and awe. “But it’s old. Older than whatever Gregory worked with. Older than modern laws.”

Echo bent and read the scroll, the ink shallow but legible beneath the age. It was not a spell exactly. It was a binding — a set of instructions for linking blood and stone, for shaping an oath into an anchor. The words were clinical and cruel.

“This,” Echo said finally, voice flat as a blade, “is a mechanism. A way to make people tethered to a single person, not by love but by structure. This ring could be a key.”

A weight landed in my chest. The ring felt cold. I wanted to throw it away. I wanted to keep it and run. It pulled like a magnet.

“We pack it and we leak it,” Ethan said quickly. “We move it into evidence with someone we can trust. We don’t keep this here.”

“And we don’t leave Halvorsen empty,” Elena added. “We set a trap. We bait with this, if Selene wants it. Or we bait for Selene herself.”

“I don’t want a trap,” I said. The words were small and honest. “I don’t want to be bait.”

Aidan’s hand closed over mine. “We won’t set you out to be bait, Roxanne. That’s not how this goes.”

But the truth was already threaded through the night. Selene had made her move; we had pulled a string; the web writhed back. The ring wasn’t a prize, not really. It was a problem. We carried it like a live thing down the hedge and into a car that smelled of petrol and fear.

When we drove away from Halvorsen, dawn was a smear on the world. We were tired in a depth that made the bones ache. We had answers we didn’t want and a new list of reasons to be terrified. We had motion. We had a direction.

And in the back of my mind, under the steady hum of the engine, something else was present: the thought that whatever this ring did, whatever Selene wanted, it would not be stopped by wishes and speeches. It required choices. Some of those choices might be mine.

We drove toward the estate and the safety that had begun to feel small. We drove towards allies and maps and arguments we’d have to have all over again. We drove toward the next step, because nothing waits when the world is hot.

By the time we pulled into the drive, the house was stirring. Someone lit the boiler, coffee gurgled. Life tried to resume around the edges of the war. It never fully would. Not now.

We carried the ring inside like a wound.

And every time I looked at it, I felt its pull — like a knot being tightened one turn at a time.

We had a new lead, a real one: Halvorsen and the ring. We had the

monk’s records and Selene’s hints. We had a mess to clean and a map to follow.

We also had each other.

And sometimes, that was the only real weapon left.