Chapter 249

Chapter 249
Augustin POV

Breakfast was over. The manor shifted back into motion.

I walked into the conference room. Evanth, Bryloch, and Adryx were already there, seated around the long table with documents spread between them. The atmosphere was lighter than yesterday.

Just slightly.

"Matthew and Kieran are on their way," Bryloch said without looking up. "Five minutes."

I took the head seat and leaned back.

Evanth spoke first. "Four days from now, you'll be King with full authority." He looked at me, something unreadable in his expression. "How does that feel?"

I didn't answer immediately.

Four days. The ceremony preparations, Berry's wedding, dismantling what remained of the resistance network, all of it compressed into four days.

"Pressured," I said. "More responsibility coming."

Evanth nodded slowly. Adryx said nothing, but his hand stilled on the page he'd been turning.

I noticed Evanth's expression, he was actually listening. Not waiting for an opening to push back.

This man. It had taken me too long to read him clearly. He'd spent years believing Father valued him, that Mother was firmly in his corner, that he'd simply been denied what he deserved. What he didn't know was that Nathanael had never seriously considered him a successor. And I had never told him.

Maybe someday. Maybe not.

"I'm starting to understand some of your decisions," Evanth said."The way you handled the Elder Council, if it had been me, I'd have moved sooner."

"You did eventually move," Adryx said flatly.

Evanth rolled his eyes but didn't argue.

The door opened. Matthew and Kieran came in together and took their seats.

Matthew slid a document to the center of the table.

"The list Charles provided," he said. "I verified it. It's accurate."

Bryloch picked it up and scanned it quickly. "Isabelle and her partner are out there while the people on this list..." He paused. "They're just pieces. Useful when needed, discarded when they become a problem."

"Nia still hasn't woken?" Adryx asked.

"Medical wing says it'll take more time."

"She knows something." Adryx set the document down. "Isabelle doesn't hand silver dust to her own people without a reason. Whatever Nia knows, Isabelle didn't want us getting to it."

Silence held the room for a moment.

Then Juno linked me.

Isabelle is in Suncrest. Francis Vasquez just visited her, they argued. He left.

My expression didn't change.

I opened a link between myself, Bryloch, and Adryx.

Keep surveillance on her. Bryloch responded.

Kieran glanced up at me. He said nothing, but he'd caught something.

"A warrant," Kieran said. "Why haven't we issued one?"

I shifted my gaze from the documents to him. "Because we want her to believe she's succeeded."

"She'll reach out to Matthew."

Matthew's jaw tightened slightly.

"The Sovereign needs cover," I continued. "Isabelle is his shield. As long as she's out there moving freely, he stays hidden. The moment we issue a warrant, he'll have her dealt with before we can reach him, then cut every connection."

The understanding settled over the table.

I looked at Matthew. "When she contacts you, I need you to act like nothing's changed."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Matthew."

"I heard you," he said, voice low. "I just—" He bit down on whatever came next. "I can't guarantee she'll still be alive when we find her."

No one spoke.

Kieran leaned toward him and said something too quiet for the rest of us. I couldn't hear it, but I watched Matthew's shoulders come down slightly.

"Catch the real target first," Kieran said, clearly this time. "Everything else after."

Matthew stared at the table. Then he nodded. "Fine."

I moved on. "Isabelle is willing to burn everything for this man. Her bond with you, her family, her standing, she destroyed all of it." I paused. "Which tells us he gave her something real, or at least something she believes is real."

I thought of something and turned to Matthew. "Can you imagine sharing Juno with someone else to get what you wanted?"

Silence.

Something detonated behind Matthew's eyes, contained just barely. "No."

"He wouldn't even let me dance with her," Kieran added, dry.

I wasn't in the mood to find it funny.

"But the Sovereign allowed Isabelle to stay with Matthew," I said. "He let her be marked. Let her carry what appeared to be another man's child, even when that child was his. What does that tell you?"

"He's using her." Adryx said it plainly.

"Yes. But Isabelle doesn't see it that way." I leaned back. "That's what makes her dangerous. She'll do anything for him. Including sacrifice herself in the end."

"So you think he won't kill her," Bryloch said.

"Not yet. She's still useful." I looked at the list on the table. "When it's over, he won't care what happens to her."

Matthew's fist closed on the table.

"Before she contacts you," I said to him, "do nothing. Answer normally. Talk normally. Get us her location."

Kieran spoke to him quietly again. Matthew closed his eyes, exhaled.

"Alright," he said. "I'll cooperate."

The last item was straightforward.

The individuals on the list, issue warrants.

Bryloch had the document ready. I signed it, pushed it across for him to process. Papers gathered. The room emptied one by one.

Kieran was the last out. The door closed.

I stayed seated for a moment alone in the conference room.

Then I stood and walked back to my office.

The afternoon belonged to paperwork.

Tedious, but necessary. Draft announcements for the Elder Council reshuffling. Confirmation letters for regional appointments. A revised Clifflands security protocol. I worked through each one, signed, sealed, set aside.

Bryloch came through once with an updated surveillance report and left without lingering. Adryx linked me, saying Nia was showing signs of consciousness, they were waiting for her to fully surface.

Good. Tell me the moment she's coherent.

Will do.

Berry hadn't come to interrupt me.

I knew she was occupied, wedding preparations, coordinating with Amelia, seeing to Chris's family. I could feel her through the bond, steady and focused, that meant she was moving between too many things at once and managing all of them.

I didn't reach out. She'd come to me when she had a moment.

The stack of documents shrank slowly.

Four days until the ceremony.

I set down the last file and pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose.

There was still too much I didn't know about the Sovereign. The name Helena had concealed in a private apartment. The child she'd kept hidden. The network that had spent years quietly threading itself through every structure I'd built or inherited. Charles hadn't given us everything, and Isabelle had given us a list designed to mislead.

We were still behind.

But not for much longer.

I pushed back from the desk and stood.

The west garden wasn't where I'd planned to end up.

I'd been heading toward the east wing, there were documents waiting for Bryloch's signature. But I passed an open door and heard it before I saw it: children's voices, carrying across the lawn with the particular lack of restraint that belonged entirely to people under the age of ten.

I stopped in the doorway.

Chris was sitting on a blanket spread between two trees, both twins orbiting him with the energy of small animals that hadn't learned stillness. One of them, Jeffrey, I thought, had found a stick and was conducting some battle of his own imagining. The other had discovered a beetle and was holding it up for his father's inspection with enormous seriousness.

Olivia wasn't there.

Chris looked up and saw me.

He went still the way he always did in my presence, not afraid exactly, but braced. Eight years of being told I wanted him dead did not disappear in a week.

I walked out onto the grass.

The twins noticed me immediately. Jeffrey's stick-battle paused. The other one closed his hand around the beetle and took a step behind his father.

"Alpha King," Chris said.

"You don't have to call me that." I crouched down to the twins' level. "What did you find?"

The one with the beetle considered me for a moment, then opened his hand. A fat brown beetle sat in his palm, antennae moving.

"It was under the rock," he said.

"Good spot," I said.

Jeffrey apparently decided this was sufficient vetting. He thrust his stick toward me. "I'm winning."

"Against who?"

He looked at me like this was a foolish question. "Everyone."

I stood. Chris was watching me carefully.

"Where's Olivia?"

"Resting. The travel caught up with her." He paused. "She doesn't want to be a burden."

"She isn't."

Chris said nothing. His hands rested on his knees, and he had the look of a man with something he wanted to say and wasn't sure if he was allowed to say it.

"You've been here a week," I said.

"Yes."

"You and your family should be living here."

He blinked. "We have rooms—"

"Permanently." I looked at him. "As residents. Not guests."

The beetle twin had climbed partially into Chris's lap. Jeffrey had resumed his solo battle nearby, but he was listening.

"I don't know what that would look like," Chris said slowly.

"It would look like I give you the title of Lord." I said it plainly. "Sinclair, if you want to use the name, or Levenston, that's your choice. The title comes with this estate as your permanent residence and a seat in formal proceedings."

Chris stared at me.

"You don't have to be active," I said. "You don't have to attend every council session or take a position on every decision. You can be as visible or as removed from it as you want." I paused. "But you hold the title. It's yours."

Silence, except for Jeffrey narrating a victory somewhere behind us.

"Why?" Chris finally asked.

It was a fair question. I thought about how to answer it honestly.

"Because you're my father's son," I said. "That's not his fault and it's not yours. And because Helena spent eight years making you run from a threat that was never coming from me." I met his eyes. "I'm not my father."

Chris was quiet for a long moment.

The beetle twin had fallen asleep against his side, apparently deciding the afternoon had been sufficiently eventful.

"Alright," Chris said quietly.

"I'll have the documentation prepared before the ceremony."

He nodded. Then, after a beat: "Thank you."

I left him there on the blanket with his boys and the particular peace of a garden in late afternoon, and walked back toward the east wing.