Camille

"I need to call Camille."

Eliora was already reaching for her phone before Severin could respond. Two missed calls from the last hour. A voicemail she hadn't listened to yet.

"Wait," Severin said. "If Santoro already knows about the pendant, I want eyes on anyone close to you before you make contact."

"She's my business partner, Severin. Not a threat."

"I didn't say she was a threat. I said I want her protected before you tell her anything that makes her one."

Eliora's hand paused over the screen. The logic landed harder than she wanted it to.

"Fine," she said. "But I'm calling her. Now."

Severin nodded to Lucien, who stepped out of the room already dialing someone on his own phone. Eliora waited a beat, then hit call.

Camille picked up on the first ring. "Eliora, thank God. Where have you been? I've called you six times."

"I'm safe. I'm sorry, it's been—" Eliora glanced at Severin. "Complicated."

"Complicated doesn't cover it. There are rumors everywhere. Someone's saying Caius's father basically stole you away from him in front of half the Commission. Is that true? Please tell me that's not true."

"It's not what it sounds like."

"Nothing about your life sounds like anything anymore." Camille's voice cracked, worry bleeding through the sarcasm. "I've had two clients cancel this morning. Someone came by the office asking questions about you. I didn't like the look of him."

Eliora's stomach dropped. "What kind of questions?"

"Whether you still worked there. Whether I knew where you were staying. He didn't ask like a curious stranger, Eliora. He asked like he already knew the answers and was checking if I'd lie."

Severin's expression sharpened. He gestured for the phone.

"Camille," he said, taking it gently from Eliora's hand. "This is Severin Virelli. I need you to listen carefully."

A pause on the other end. "I know who you are."

"Then you understand I don't waste time." His voice was calm, controlled, the same steady authority Eliora had heard in the courtyard the night of the attack. "I'm sending two of my men to the office within the hour. They'll stay with you until we understand what's happening. This isn't optional."

"Is Eliora in danger? Am I?"

"Possibly, yes." He didn't soften it, and somehow that felt more honest than if he had. "I'd rather be cautious and wrong than careless and right."

Eliora watched his face as he spoke, the careful weight he gave each word, the complete absence of the performance she expected from a man used to being obeyed. He wasn't trying to sound reassuring. He was simply telling the truth as plainly as he could.

"Okay," Camille said finally, her voice smaller now. "Okay. Send them."

"Stay inside until they arrive. Lock the doors."

He handed the phone back to Eliora.

"I'm scared," Camille whispered, once it was just the two of them again.

"I know. Me too." Eliora's throat tightened. "I'm so sorry I dragged you into this."

"You didn't drag me into anything. Some man in a suit did that all on his own." A shaky breath. "Just — tell me you're actually okay. Not the version you'd give a client. The real one."

Eliora glanced at Severin, who had stepped toward the window to give her what privacy the room allowed.

"I don't know," she admitted quietly. "Everything I thought I knew about my life might not be true. My parents' accident wasn't an accident. There's a necklace with half a symbol in it that apparently people have been looking for since before I was born. And the only person who seems to actually know anything about it is a man I met two days ago."

Silence on the line. Then, softly: "That's insane, El."

"I know."

"Do you trust him? The father?"

Eliora looked at Severin's back, the careful stillness of him, the way he'd stopped his own son with one hand and a single sentence without raising his voice once.

"I don't know yet," she said honestly. "But he hasn't lied to me. Not once. Even when the truth was ugly."

"That's something, I guess."

"It's something."

They talked a few minutes more, logistics, reassurances, Camille promising to stay put until the security arrived. When the call finally ended, Eliora set the phone down and found Severin watching her.

"She'll be safe," he said.

"You don't know that."

"No," he admitted. "But I'll do everything I can to make it true."

Eliora sat down heavily, exhaustion pulling at every part of her. "This is spreading faster than I can keep up with. A stranger at Camille's office. Santoro knowing about a pendant that's supposed to be secret. Someone dead in your own custody." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "How many people already know about me?"

"More than I'd like," Severin said grimly. "Which tells me something important."

"What?"

"Whatever your father hid, whatever that symbol means, it isn't a small secret between two men who died protecting it." He came and sat across from her, his voice low and certain. "It's something a lot of powerful people have spent a very long time either searching for, or hoping stayed buried."

"And I'm standing in the middle of it."

"Yes." He didn't try to soften that either. "I won't lie to you and say otherwise."

Eliora looked down at the pendant resting against her collarbone, the small broken piece of metal that had somehow rewritten the entire shape of her life in the span of two days.

"Then help me understand it," she said. "All of it. Not pieces. Not what you think I can handle. Everything you actually know."

Severin studied her for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes, not reluctance exactly, but the weight of a decision he'd clearly been putting off.

"Some of what I know," he said slowly, "I've never said out loud to anyone. Not even Lucien knows all of it."

"Then it's time someone did."

He nodded once, like he'd finally agreed with something inside himself.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll take you somewhere private. Somewhere we can't be overheard. And I'll tell you everything, starting with the night your father died."

"Why not now?"

"Because Santoro's call means someone is already watching this house more closely than before." His eyes moved toward the window, scanning the tree line out of old habit. "And what I need to tell you isn't safe to say inside walls I can't fully trust anymore."