Chapter Twelve: Unexpected

"How close?" Adrian was already moving toward the stairs.

"Two minutes, or maybe less," the voice on the radio said. "Sir, there are a lot of them."

"Define a lot."

There was a pause, a very long silence.

"More than we've got," the guard said finally.

Marcus swore under his breath. "That's not an answer; that's a body count waiting to happen."

"It's the only answer he's got," Adrian snapped. "Get everyone to the main floor. Now."

They moved fast up through the dark; Lena, on the other hand, took Mira along by the wrist without either of them really noticing they'd grabbed each other. The torches had burned low, and the stairwell felt narrower than it had an hour ago, like the whole house had shrunk around them.

"This doesn't make sense," Mira said, while taking the steps two at a time. "Why send a photo about your father, threaten a sunrise deadline, and then attack hours early? Why lie about the timing at all?"

"Because he wanted us planning around the wrong clock," Marcus said. "To get us thinking about the first light, get half our men still asleep and then catch us at mid-shift change."

"That's not Corin's usual style," Lena said. "He likes theater; he likes making people wait and suffer through it."

"Maybe he's done waiting," Adrian said.

They burst out into the main hallway, and Helena was already there, barking orders at two guards who looked barely older than Mira.

"Sir, thank god," Helena said. "I was about to send someone down after you."

"Where's the girl, Helena? Do we have anyone at all covering the east gate?"

"Two men, both green," Helena said. "I pulled everyone else toward the perimeter the second we lost the cameras."

"That's not enough," Adrian said.

"I know that," Helena snapped, and her voice cracked, just slightly, just enough that Mira realized how frightened the older woman actually was underneath all that composure. "I did what I could with what we had left."

A distant boom rattled the windows. It was not gunfire but something bigger.

"That's the east gate," Marcus said, as he was already moving toward the door with three men falling in behind him.

"They're not sneaking in this time," Adrian said, and for the first time all night his voice had gone completely flat, in a way that scared Mira more than his shouting had. "This time they're just walking through the front door."

"So what do we do?" Mira asked.

Adrian turned to her, and something in his face had hardened, like a door slamming shut behind his eyes.

"You and Lena go to the safe room. The real one this time, not the one they already know about."

"There's another one?" Lena asked.

"There's always another one," Adrian said. "Helena, take them. Marcus, come with me."

"Adrian—" Mira started.

"Not now," he said, and it wasn't cruel; he was just tired and looked worn. "Please, not now."

Mira wanted to argue, she wanted to grab his sleeve the way she had at the gate, but Helena's hand closed firm around her arm and pulled her toward a side passage before she could get another word out.

"This way," Helena said. "Quickly."

They moved through a narrow servant's corridor Mira had never seen; the corridor was lit only by a single bulb overhead. Lena kept glancing back over her shoulder like she expected someone to be following.

"You keep doing that," Mira said. "The looking back thing."

"Old habit," Lena said. "That is what three years of watching your own shadow does to a person."

"Must have been so awful."

Lena laughed, short and humorless. "You have no idea what it seemed like."

Helena stopped in front of what looked like a plain wooden panel at the corridor's end, pressed her palm flat against it, and a section of the wall slid open with barely a sound.

"In," she said. "Both of you."

The room beyond was small, windowless, and lined with cold steel. Mira stepped inside first, then Lena right behind her.

"You're not coming?" Mira asked, turning back.

"Someone has to seal this from the outside," Helena said. "It only locks properly from out here."

"Helena—"

"I have survived worse nights than this one, Miss Voss," Helena said, and for just a second, something gentle crossed her tired face. "Stay quiet and stay still regardless of whatever you hear."

The panel slid shut, sealing them into darkness broken only by a thin strip of emergency light along the floor.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Mira pressed her palm flat against the cold steel wall, as if she could feel through what was happening on the other side.

"He'll be fine," Lena said finally, sitting down against the far wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. "He has survived worse than Corin's men before."

"You keep saying that you know him better than I do."

"I did, once." Lena's voice went soft, almost sad. "Doesn't mean I still do. People change, especially people who spend three years pretending to be dead."

Mira slid down the wall to sit across from her, the strip of emergency light casting a thin orange line between them. "Why did you really come back tonight, Lena? And don't give me the version you gave Adrian. Give me the real answer."

Lena was quiet for a long moment.

"Because I was tired of being a card someone else got to play," she said finally. "I wanted to choose something for myself, even if it meant walking straight back into danger to do it."

Before Mira could respond, something scraped against the outside of the steel wall.

Both women went still.

"That's not Helena," Lena whispered.

The scraping stopped directly outside the hidden panel, and then, low and unhurried, a voice spoke through the steel, close enough that it sounded like it was standing right beside them.

"I know you're in there, little bride. Did you really think one locked door was going to stop me?"