Someone Inside

"We have a problem."

Marco's voice cut through the quiet of the breakfast room before Eliora had even lifted her cup. Severin looked up, his fork stilling mid-motion.

"What kind."

"The kind that doesn't wait." Marco set a tablet down on the table between them. "Overnight chatter across three different channels. Someone's confirmed Miss Aster's exact location. Not the estate in general. This house. This wing."

Eliora's stomach dropped. "How is that possible? I haven't left this house in two days."

"That's what worries me," Marco said. "Whoever's talking isn't guessing from outside. They know things only someone inside would know."

Severin's jaw tightened. "Details."

"The chatter mentions a west wing bedroom. Overlooking the water." Marco's eyes flicked to Eliora, then back. "That's not public information. That's not even information most of the household staff would have reason to know."

The room went very quiet.

Eliora set down her cup, hands unsteady. "You're saying someone here is talking to whoever's after me."

"I'm saying it's possible," Marco said carefully. "I'm not accusing anyone yet."

"But you suspect someone."

"I suspect several someones, which is worse." Marco's voice was grim. "There are maybe fifteen people with regular access to that wing. Staff, security, a handful of family. Any one of them could have said something they didn't think mattered. Or one of them could be doing it on purpose."

Severin stood, pushing his chair back with more force than the moment required. "Pull the access logs. All fifteen. I want to know who's been near that hallway in the last forty-eight hours, and I want to know who they've spoken to outside this house."

"Already started," Marco said. "I'll have something by this afternoon."

He left, and the silence he left behind felt heavier than before he'd arrived.

"This is what you meant," Eliora said slowly. "Yesterday. When you said we needed to talk somewhere you could trust."

"Yes."

"You already suspected this."

"I suspected it was possible," Severin said. "I didn't want to be right."

Eliora pushed her plate away, appetite gone entirely. "So while I've been sitting in this house, feeling safer than I have in days, someone's been telling people exactly where to find me."

"We don't know that for certain yet."

"But you think it's true."

He didn't answer right away, and that silence told her more than any words could have.

"I think," he said finally, "that whoever we're dealing with has more reach than I initially believed. That worries me more than almost anything else that's happened this week."

They spent the morning in Severin's study, the door locked, curtains drawn against windows that suddenly felt less like a view and more like an exposure. Eliora paced while Severin worked through reports on his desk, both of them too unsettled to sit still for long.

"I keep thinking about Agnes," she said. "She knows things. About my mother. About you. If someone wanted information about me, she'd be an obvious person to—"

"Agnes has been with this family for over forty years," Severin said, without looking up. "She raised my son. She was here the night I brought you home unconscious and never left your door unwatched. I trust her the way I trust almost no one else alive."

"I'm not accusing her. I'm just saying, if I were looking for someone to pressure—"

"I understand what you're saying." His voice was patient, but firm. "And I've already had the same thought. I don't like it either."

Eliora stopped pacing, arms crossed. "Then who? Who else has access to that wing?"

"Household staff. A rotating security detail. Lucien, myself, occasionally Caius when he still lived here full time." He set down his pen. "I've already asked Marco to look at all of it. Everyone. No exceptions."

"Even yourself?"

Something flickered across his face, not offense, exactly, but a kind of tired acknowledgment. "Even myself. Trust doesn't mean exemption. Not in this house."

Eliora studied him, some of the anger draining out of her at the plain, unflinching way he said it. She'd expected defensiveness. She kept expecting it, from everyone, and kept not finding it here.

A knock interrupted them. Lucien stepped inside without waiting for a response, and one look at his face told her whatever he'd found wasn't good.

"You have the logs," Severin said.

"I do." Lucien's voice was tighter than she'd ever heard it. "There's a pattern. Phone activity, timed against staff shift changes. Someone's been making calls from a burner during the overnight rotation, three nights running, always right after the west wing goes quiet for the evening."

"Who," Severin said.

Lucien hesitated, glancing once at Eliora before he answered.

"I don't have a name yet. The calls route through relay towers, deliberately scattered to avoid tracing to one person." He set a printed sheet on the desk. "But the timing narrows the list considerably. Whoever it is, they have detailed knowledge of the night rotation. That's not casual staff. That's someone close to the security schedule itself."

Severin's face had gone completely still, the way Eliora now recognized as his version of real alarm.

"How many people know the night rotation in that kind of detail," he asked quietly.

Lucien's jaw tightened. "Fewer than ten."

"Say it."

"Marco knows it. I know it." Lucien's voice dropped lower, reluctant. "And so does Caius."

The room went silent.

Eliora felt the floor shift beneath her, the careful safety of the last two days cracking open all at once. "Caius," she repeated. "You think Caius is the one talking to whoever's after me?"

"I think it's possible," Lucien said carefully. "He has motive. He has access to the rotation from his years living here. And he's angry enough, right now, to do something he wouldn't have considered a week ago."

"He wouldn't put me in actual danger," Eliora said, though even as she said it, she wasn't certain she believed it anymore. "Whatever else he is, he's not—"

"Desperate people do things they never thought themselves capable of," Severin said quietly, cutting her off, not unkindly. "I know my son. I'd like to believe he has limits."

"But you're not certain."

He looked at her, something dark and unguarded moving behind his eyes for just a moment before the calm settled back over his face.

"No," he admitted. "Not anymore."

Lucien cleared his throat. "There's one more thing."

"What," Severin said.

"The last call. Two hours ago." Lucien's expression hardened. "It wasn't just chatter this time. It was a location transmission. Live GPS coordinates, sent from somewhere inside this house."

Eliora's blood went cold. "Coordinates for what?"

Lucien looked at her, and for the first time since she'd met him, something like genuine fear crossed his carefully composed face.

"For this room," he said. "Right now."