Chapter 168: CLXVIII

Levi's POV

"Vanessa," I said.

She looked at me. "I need the Blackthorn coordination files. The council wants an update before the end of the week."

She looked back at Isabell. "I didn't know you were here."

"She is staying here," I said.

Vanessa looked at Aria then at me. "Who is the child?"

"Someone under my protection," I said.

"My study is through there the files are in the top drawer of the cabinet, labelled by date."

Vanessa did not move toward the study she was looking at Aria. Aria was looking back at her.

There was something in the quality of that exchange that I registered without fully understanding, the way Aria's usual openness had gone very still, replaced by something watchful that I had not seen on her face before.

"Vanessa," I said, harder.

She looked at me.

"The files," I said.

She went to study.

I stayed in the living room. I crouched down near Aria. "Are you alright?"

"Yes," Aria said she was still looking at the study door.

"Do you know her?" I asked.

"No," Aria said. "But I know something about her."

Before I could ask what she meant, Vanessa came back through with the files under her arm.

"These are the last month's," she said. "I need the current cycle."

"I will send them to you," I said. "Today you don't need to be here for them."

Vanessa looked at me with the composure that had been her primary feature since she arrived, and underneath it I could see something working, adjusting to what she was looking at.

"You've moved her in," she said without a question.

"I've secured her here," I said.

"Given the current threat level in the territory, it made sense."

"The current threat level," Vanessa said, and her voice was controlled but had an edge in it now.

"Or the current emotional state."

"Vanessa-"

"You have a bonding ceremony scheduled in three weeks," she said.

"Your father has informed the council. The family has been notified. And you have moved a woman and a child into your apartment."

"This is not the conversation we're having right now," I said.

"Then when?" she said.

"Because from where I'm standing you are actively dismantling an arrangement that affects more people than just yourself, and you are doing it while my name is attached to it, while my family's honor is attached to it."

"I have never misled you about my intentions," I said.

"Your intentions have changed weekly since I arrived," she said.

"First you were going to comply, then you needed time, then there were extenuating circumstances-"

"The circumstances are significant," I said.

"They are always significant with you. There is always a reason."

She looked at Isabell, and I moved slightly, not dramatically, but enough to be between them. She registered that movement and what it meant.

Something shifted in her face.

"I am not going to attack her," Vanessa said quietly. "Whatever you think of me, I am not going to attack a woman in front of a child."

"I know that," I said.

"Then stop positioning yourself like a barrier."

I stepped to the side.

Vanessa looked at Isabell directly. "I hope you understand what you're asking him to give up," she said.

"His family, his position, his safety because walking away from this arrangement means walking away from Blackthorn protection, and there are people in that family who will consider that a provocation."

"He hasn't walked away from anything on my account," Isabellla said. Her voice was quiet and entirely steady.

"I've asked him repeatedly to meet his obligations. Whatever he's choosing, he's choosing it himself."

"That's the problem," Vanessa said. "He always has. And the people connected to him pay for it."

She looked at me one more time. Something in that look was not anger. I had seen Vanessa angry and this was not it. This was something that had been there for a long time and was not going to be argued with or managed.

She turned and went to the door and opened it.

"I will expect the files by tonight," she said, without turning around.

She left the door closed. I stood in the living room and let the quiet settle for a moment.

Then Isabellla said, "Aria."

Her voice had changed, the controlled quality was gone, replaced by something sharp and immediate.

I turned.

Aria was on the floor where she had been, but her position was wrong. She was not sitting the way she had been.

She was very still, her back rigid, her hands flat on the floor beside her. Her eyes were open but not focused on anything in the room. They had the fixed, distant quality of someone looking at something that wasn't there.

"Aria." Isabellla was beside her in seconds, hands on her arms. "Aria, can you hear me?"

Aria did not respond.

I was across the room in three strides and crouched on the other side. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," Isabellla said, her voice tight.

"She's conscious her eyes are open. Aria." She put her hand on Aria's face. "Come back. I need you to come back right now."

Aria blinked once and twice.

Then the fixed quality left her eyes and she was present again, the room returning to her in the visible way it did when someone came back from somewhere they had briefly gone.

She looked at Isabell first then at me her face was very serious. "Aria," Isabellla said.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"I saw something," Aria said. Her voice was completely calm, which was somehow more alarming than if she had been frightened.

"What did you see?" I asked.

Aria looked at me directly with those dark eyes that were her father's eyes and that never flinched from whatever they were looking at.

"The woman who just left," she said.

"Vanessa," I said.

"Yes." Aria held my gaze.

"She is going to hurt you," she said.

"I saw that she's going to do something and you're going to get hurt very badly."

The room was completely silent.

"Not today," Aria said.

"But soon." She paused, with the precision of a child reporting something specific rather than expressing a feeling.

"She has already decided. I saw it when she looked at you. She's already decided what she's going to do."

I looked at Isabell across the top of Aria's head.

Isabellla looked back at me with the expression of a woman who had spent a year learning that the things that sounded impossible in this world were very rarely actually impossible.

"Vanessa is going to kill you," Aria said, simply and without drama, the way she said everything that she had decided was fact.

"She has already decided."