Chapter 43 44

Chapter 43 44
Sera's POV

I made him wait forty minutes.

Not because I needed forty minutes to prepare. I was prepared. I had been prepared for this conversation since the morning I arrived in this fortress and understood what Cain had done.

I made him wait because waiting was the first thing I could make him do and I was going to make him do every single thing I could.

Damon found me in the corridor outside the meeting room at the thirty minute mark.

He looked at my face.

"Do you want me in there," he said.

"No," I said.

He held my gaze.

"I need to do this part alone," I said. "He came here for a reason. He has information or he claims to. Whatever it is I want to hear it without an audience." I paused. "And I want him to look at me without the King in the room. Just me. Just Sera." I looked at the door. "I want him to understand what that means now."

Damon looked at me for a moment.

"Percy will be outside the door," he said.

"I know," I said.

"And I will be in the study," he said. "Which is twenty seconds from this room."

"I know," I said.

He looked at me one more time.

Then he walked away.

I waited ten more minutes.

Then I opened the door.

\---

Cain looked terrible.

That was the first thing I noticed and I noticed it without satisfaction and without sympathy, just as a fact. He had aged in the weeks since he had left this fortress. Not the normal way. The way men aged when the thing they had built their identity around was removed and they had not yet found anything to replace it with.

He was sitting at the table with his hands in front of him and he looked up when I came in and something moved through his face that I had not seen on it before.

Not guilt.

Not quite.

The thing that came before guilt in men who were not used to feeling it. Recognition. The specific recognition of someone who understood, possibly for the first time, the full weight of what they had done.

I sat across from him.

Did not speak.

Let the silence do the first work.

He looked at the table.

"You look well," he said.

"I know," I said.

He pressed his lips together.

"The announcement," he said. "I heard about it."

"Good," I said.

"And Rael," he said. "I heard he came."

"He did," I said. "He left."

Cain nodded slowly.

More silence.

"You said you have information," I said. "About Rael. That you did not give during your visit."

"Yes," he said.

"Then give it," I said.

He looked at his hands.

"There is a second network," he said. "Not Corvin's. Not the one Lena knew about." He paused. "Rael has been building it for two years in parallel. Separate people, separate funding, no overlap with the first operation." He looked up. "He always builds two. If one fails he still has the other running."

I looked at him.

"How do you know this," I said.

"Because he told me," Cain said. "When he first approached me. He wanted me to understand that the operation was not fragile. That even if pieces of it failed the structure would hold." He paused. "He told me about the second network to make me feel secure about the investment."

"Investment," I said.

He had the decency to look uncomfortable.

"What did you give him," I said.

"Access," he said. "To Ashwood's eastern connections. Pack leaders I had relationships with that he did not." He looked at the table. "And information. About this fortress. About the King's alliances. About the Luna position and its instability after the third death."

I looked at him.

"He paid your debts," I said.

Cain said nothing.

"The same way he paid Lena's," I said. "Your debts and your territory protection in exchange for access and information." I held his gaze. "And when he was done with you he cut the communication and left you with nothing and you came here."

"I came here because the second network is already active," he said. "Whatever happened with Rael at your gate, it is not finished. He has people already placed. Already running. The same way Mira was already placed before Voss arrived." He looked at me. "He is not done."

"I know he is not done," I said.

"Then you need what I have," he said.

I looked at him.

At the man sitting across from me with his hands on the table and his leverage gone and his territory gone and whatever dignity he had left assembled into this moment, this room, this offer.

He had come here because he had nothing else.

And he was right that I needed what he had.

Both of those things were true at the same time.

I let him sit with the silence for a long moment.

Then I said, "Before you give me anything."

He looked at me.

"Demi," I said.

The name landed.

His face did something.

"You told me she was dead," I said. "You looked at me and you described it and you let me carry that." I held his gaze. "For three years."

"Sera—"

"Do not explain it," I said. "Do not tell me why. Do not give me the version where it made sense or where you had no choice or where it was complicated." I leaned forward slightly. "Just tell me that you know what you did."

He looked at me.

For a long time.

"I know what I did," he said quietly.

"And," I said.

He closed his eyes.

Opened them.

"I am sorry," he said.

Not the performed version.

Not the version that was building toward something else or trying to buy something.

Just that.

Flat and insufficient and the only thing he had left to offer that cost him anything.

I sat with it.

It was not enough.

It was never going to be enough.

But it was what it was.

"Where is she," he said. "Demi. Is she—"

"She is here," I said. "She is safe. She is eating Mira's breakfast and annoying Percy and she is going to be fine." I held his gaze. "No thanks to you."

He looked at the table.

I stood up.

"You are going to give everything you have on the second network to Rendal," I said. "Every name, every contact, every piece of information Rael gave you or that you observed yourself. All of it." I looked down at him. "And then you are going to stay in this fortress until Rendal confirms what you have given him is complete and accurate."

He looked up. "And then."

"And then Damon decides what happens to you," I said. "Not me. I am removing myself from that decision because I cannot be trusted to make it fairly and I know it." I held his gaze. "But Cain. If what you give Rendal is incomplete or inaccurate or if you are here for any reason other than what you say you are here for—"

"I know," he said.

"Do you," I said.

"Yes," he said. "I know."

I walked to the door.

Opened it.

Percy was outside.

"Take him to Rendal," I said.

Percy looked at Cain.

Then at me.

"Are you alright," Percy said quietly.

I thought about it.

About the coal in my chest that had been burning since Demi walked through the gate.

It was still there.

But it was smaller.

"Yes," I said. "I am alright."

I walked away from the meeting room and down the corridor and up the stairs and did not stop until I reached the courtyard.

Demi was there.

Of course she was.

Same spot as this morning. Face in the sun. Eyes closed.

She heard my footsteps and opened her eyes.

Read my face in one second the way she always had.

"He came here," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"And," she said.

"He said sorry," I said.

She looked at me.

"Was it real," she said.

I thought about his face.

About the specific quality of it when he said it.

"Yes," I said. "I think it was."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Does that help," she said.

"A little," I said. "Not enough. But a little."

She nodded.

Turned her face back to the sun.

I stood beside her.

And then from the doorway behind us Mira's voice, dry as stone.

"The eggs are cold because nobody came to eat them," she said. "I have made them again. If they get cold a second time I am not making them a third time."

Demi looked at me.

I looked at her.

"She is terrifying," Demi said quietly.

"Yes," I said. "She is."

"I like her," Demi said.

"So do I," I said.

We went inside.

Sat at the table.

Mira put the eggs in front of us and said nothing and stood near the wall with her arms crossed.

Damon came in two minutes later.

Looked at me.

I looked at him.

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat.

Reached for the bread.

Looked at Demi.

"Rendal has him," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Did you get what you needed," he said.

I thought about it.

About the meeting room and the silence and Cain's face when I said Demi's name.

"Yes," I said.

He held my gaze for a moment.

Then he looked at Demi.

"How are the eggs," he said.

Demi looked at him.

Then at me.

Then back at him.

"Better than yesterday," she said.

"Good," he said.

And we sat at the table in the morning light and ate breakfast and the fortress moved around us and outside the window the mountains were the same mountains they had been every morning and would be every morning after this.

Fixed.

Solid.

Mine.

And then Percy appeared in the doorway with his face doing the thing.

The new thing.

The one that was worse than the old thing.

I put my fork down.

"Percy," I said.

"Rendal," Percy said. "He has been going through what Cain gave him." He looked at Damon. "The second network. The people Rael placed."

"How many," Damon said.

"That is the thing," Percy said. He looked at me. "One of the names Cain gave. One of the people already inside this fortress." He paused. "Rendal recognised it immediately."

I stared at him.

"Who," I said.

Percy looked at me with the face.

"Demi," he said quietly. "The name is Demi."

The table went completely silent.

I turned slowly.

Demi was looking at her plate.

Not at me.

At her plate.

And she was very, very still.