Lockdown

"Move. Now."

Severin was already crossing the room, one hand closing around Eliora's arm, pulling her away from the window before she'd fully processed what Lucien had said.

"Someone's coming here? Right now?"

"We don't wait to find out." Severin's voice had shifted into something harder, faster, every trace of the calm philosopher from moments ago replaced by a man moving through practiced motion. "Lucien, seal the study. Get Marco on the radio."

"Already on it." Lucien was speaking into his earpiece before Severin finished the sentence, his composure snapping back into place like armor.

Eliora's heart pounded as Severin guided her toward the study's side door, away from the windows, into the narrow interior hallway she hadn't known existed.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere without a clear line of sight from outside." He didn't slow down. "The coordinates were for this room. That means whoever sent them knows the layout well enough to be specific. I'm not giving them a target to aim at."

They moved fast through a servant's corridor, dim and narrow, emerging into a small windowless room lined with monitors, a security hub Eliora hadn't seen before. Marco was already there, headset on, eyes scanning six different camera feeds at once.

"Report," Severin said.

"Perimeter's clean so far. No vehicles on the coastal road, no unusual activity at the gates." Marco didn't look up from the screens. "Whoever transmitted those coordinates, they're not approaching from outside. Not yet."

"Then how—"

"They might not be planning an approach at all," Lucien said grimly, stepping in behind them. "The coordinates could be for someone else. A hired shooter. A drone. Something that doesn't need a car and a driveway."

Eliora's stomach turned. "A shooter. You think someone's about to try to shoot into that room."

"I think we don't take the chance to find out," Severin said.

Marco's radio crackled. "Sir, we've got movement. South tree line. One person, on foot, no vehicle."

"Show me," Severin said.

Marco pulled up a feed from a camera angled toward the trees below the garden wall. Grainy, but clear enough, a single figure, dressed in dark clothing, moving with deliberate care along the tree line, something long and narrow held close against their body.

"That's not a hired shooter's approach," Lucien said slowly, studying the screen. "That's someone who knows this property. Look at the path. They're avoiding every motion sensor we have."

"Someone with detailed knowledge of the grounds," Severin said, his voice flat.

Eliora felt the weight of what he wasn't saying land heavy in the room. "You think it's Caius."

"I think whoever it is knows this estate the way only a handful of people alive actually do," Severin said carefully. "I'm not naming anyone yet."

"Sir," Marco said, tension sharpening his voice. "They're heading toward the old maintenance gate. The one that doesn't show on the main perimeter map."

"How would anyone outside this family know that gate exists," Lucien said quietly.

No one answered. They didn't need to. The silence in the room said everything.

"Send two men," Severin said. "Quiet approach. I want them taken alive, whoever it is."

"On it." Marco was already relaying orders into his radio, calm and clipped despite the tension in his shoulders.

Eliora sat down hard on the edge of a nearby chair, her legs finally giving out under the weight of everything happening too fast to fully absorb. "This is insane. Two days ago I was planning centerpieces. Now someone's sneaking through a hidden gate with a weapon, and everyone in this room thinks it might be your own son."

"I know how it sounds," Severin said, crouching slightly to meet her eyes, his voice gentler now despite the chaos around them. "I'm sorry you're living inside it."

"I don't need an apology. I need this to stop making sense the way it keeps making sense." Her voice cracked. "Every terrible possibility fits. That's the worst part."

On the screen, the figure had reached the maintenance gate, pausing there, checking something on a small device in their hand before continuing through.

"They've breached the outer perimeter," Marco said. "My men are two minutes out."

The room held its breath as the figure moved closer, weaving between the old stone walls of the lower garden, still keeping carefully clear of every camera angle Eliora could see.

"Wait," Lucien said suddenly, leaning toward the screen. "Pause that."

Marco froze the feed. Lucien stared at it for a long moment, something shifting in his expression.

"That's not Caius's build," he said slowly. "Too tall. Wrong stride."

Severin leaned in, studying the frozen image with the same intensity. "You're right. That's not my son."

Relief and fresh fear crashed into Eliora at the same time. "Then who is it?"

"I don't know," Severin admitted, straightening. "Which might be worse."

Marco's radio crackled again, urgent this time. "Sir, my men have eyes on the target. He's stopped moving. He's just, standing there. Near the fountain."

"Standing," Severin repeated.

"Like he's waiting for something."

Everyone in the room went still, watching the frozen image of a stranger standing motionless in the garden below, weapon still held close, patient in a way that felt deliberate, almost theatrical.

Then Marco's radio crackled a third time, and this time his voice had changed entirely, sharp, alarmed, stripped of its earlier calm.

"Sir. He's not armed with a weapon."

"What is it," Severin said.

"It's a phone. He's holding a phone." A pause, heavy with static. "Sir, he says he has a message. For Miss Aster specifically. He says he'll only deliver it to her directly."

Eliora's blood ran cold.

"Absolutely not," Severin said immediately.

"Sir, he also says—" Marco hesitated, and even through the radio, Eliora could hear the reluctance in his voice. "He says if she doesn't come, he'll deliver the message to every Commission family himself by morning instead. And he says she'll want to hear it first."

The room went utterly silent.

Eliora stood, her legs unsteady beneath her, every instinct in her body screaming at her to stay hidden behind these walls.

"What could he possibly know," she whispered, "that's worth walking through a hidden gate to tell me himself?"

Nobody answered. On the frozen screen, the stranger stood perfectly still beside the fountain, phone raised, waiting patiently in the low morning light for an answer only she could give.