Chapter 111 Accepting Help
ARYA
Mordecai’s information was good.
Caspian had verified four of the seven locations within forty-eight hours. The fifth was confirmed on the morning of the third day when a surveillance team tracked a Reclaimed operative to a meeting point that matched exactly the description provided.
The sixth location was a safehouse in neutral territory, a converted farm building with significant magical shielding that one of Bardon’s contacts identified as consistent with void research work.
The seventh was more complicated.
“It’s inside our network,” Caspian said, his voice carefully controlled. We were in the secure briefing room, just the four of us, me, Luca, Caspian, and Sage, who’d been pulled in when it became clear this was going to require operational expertise. “Not the council chamber or the inner circle. But inside the broader Unity Council administrative structure.”
“Which department?” Luca asked.
“Communications.” He let that sit for a moment. “The person who sent the fourteen-day threat through our verified channel didn’t have council-level access. They had administrative access. Someone in the communications office allowed their credentials to be used or was actively involved.”
“Or was coerced,” I said.
“Possibly. We have three people who have the access required. Two are long-standing staff with no unusual behavior patterns. The third joined eight weeks ago.” Caspian pulled up a file. “Ostensibly referred through an allied pack’s recommendation. The background check was clean because it was fabricated.”
“Eight weeks ago.” I did the math. “Before the elections were announced.”
“Before the elections were our idea,” Luca said.
We looked at each other.
“The Reclaimed knew we were going to offer elections,” I said. “Or they planned for the possibility. They put someone in position weeks before the announcement.”
“So, they’ve been watching the council closely enough to anticipate our decisions,” Caspian said. “Or they have another source inside who predicted it.”
“Calder,” Sage said.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She spread her hands. “I’m not accusing him of anything. But think about it. He declared his candidacy suspiciously quickly after the elections were announced. He had the infrastructure already in place, campaign structure, territory contacts, messaging. That didn’t come together in three days. No matter how fast his team is, it’s just not plausible.” She looked at Caspian. “Has anyone checked his connections to void research community?”
“I’ll add it to the verification list,” Caspian said.
“Do it quietly,” I said. “If Calder is clean and we’re investigating him, the leak will know we’re checking him. If Calder is involved and we alert him, we lose the advantage.” I looked at the tactical display. “What’s our timeline for acting on the Reclaimed locations?”
“We can move on five of them simultaneously within forty-eight hours,” Caspian said. “The sixth requires more preparation because of the magical shielding. It is really significant there. And the seventh—”
“We handle internally,” Luca said. “No need to have people watching us more.”
“Agreed.” I looked at the three faces around the table. “The goal isn’t arrests. The goal is intelligence. We need to understand what they’re actually building and how far along they are.” I thought about Mordecai’s words.
‘The void is not a power source to be mined.’
“If they’ve made any actual progress on void access methodology, we need that research contained before it spreads.”
“Are we going to destroy it?” Sage asked.
“Containing it will be better. It can be studied by people we trust, then we can decide later on.” I held her gaze. “I’m not burning knowledge just because it’s dangerous. That’s how you create the exact desperation that makes people do reckless things with it.”
She nodded once. It was clear she’d had a different opinion and had genuinely changed it.
“We have forty eight hours,” I confirmed, looking at Caspian. “Get your teams ready.”
\-----
The next forty-eight hours were the busiest I’d experienced since the summit.
I ran three council sessions, fielded communications from six different territorial representatives who had concerns about the election timeline, met with the independent tribunal committee to brief them on Mordecai’s cooperation status, and somewhere in the middle of all of it found twenty minutes to eat lunch while Sage briefed me on the operational preparations.
“You shouldn’t run yourself down,” Luca said. It was 11pm and I was still at my desk reviewing Caspian’s pre-operational briefing documents.
“I won’t.” I replied, without turning to address him.
“You’re trying to hold every detail personally so that nothing falls through any gap.”
“Someone has to.”
“Someone can. Not every detail needs to be you.” He sat on the edge of the desk, not taking the papers from me but making it slightly difficult to read them without acknowledging him. “Delegate one thing. Right now. Pick one thing on that list and give it to someone else completely.”
“Luca—”
“One thing.”
I looked at the list. It was long. Most of it was genuinely mine. But there was one item that I’d been holding personally because I trusted my own judgment more than I trusted anyone else’s, and that was exactly the kind of thinking he was calling out.
I picked up my tablet and sent the inter-territorial water rights dispute briefing to Lord Drayven’s office with a note asking him to lead that committee session.
Drayven would be annoyed. He’d also be excellent.
“There,” I said with a slight huff.
“Good.” Luca took the briefing document from my hands gently and set it aside. “Come to bed.”
“I need to finish—”
“You need to sleep. The documents will still be wrong in the morning and you’ll read them better then.” He stood. “Come on.”
I went. Not because I’d run out of arguments. But the truth was I was tired in a way that had settled into my bones, and the bond told me he wasn’t going to be argued with tonight, and also because somewhere in the past month I’d learned that letting him take care of me occasionally was not the same as the years of being invisible in Jaime’s pack.
It was different when the person caring for you also respected what you were.
I was asleep before I finished the thought.