Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 50

KIAN POV"You are not walking into a meeting with a woman who has spent thirty years orchestrating your mother's murder. Alone. By sundown tomorrow, on her terms."I said it with more force than I intended, and Elira's eyes flashed in response, that familiar stubborn fire I'd fallen for twice now rising to meet me."I didn't say I was going alone because I want to," she said. "I said I was going because if I refuse, she'll simply find another way to reach me, and next time it might not be a controlled meeting. It might be another cellar. Another window. Another child in the crossfire.""Then we bring an army.""An army guarantees she never shows herself again," Marcus said quietly from the corner of the room, arms crossed, watching this argument unfold with the weary patience of a man who'd clearly seen this exact fight play out a hundred times in other rooms, other centuries. "Isolde has survived thirty years underground precisely because she never takes unnecessary risks. If she see

KIAN POV"She hasn't triggered the signal. Forty minutes in, and she hasn't triggered it."Silas kept his voice low, professional, but I could hear the same fraying thread of worry running underneath it that had been building in my own chest since the moment Elira disappeared through that warehouse door."No signal doesn't mean trouble," Callum said, monitoring a small screen from the back of the surveillance van. "It could mean the conversation's actually going somewhere useful.""Or it means she's being held and can't reach for it," I said, pacing the cramped space, every instinct in my body screaming to storm that warehouse regardless of the plan we'd all agreed to less than an hour ago."Kian." Silas's hand landed firmly on my shoulder. "You promised her a perimeter, not an invasion. Trust the plan."I forced myself to still, though every muscle remained coiled tight enough to strike. Fifty two minutes. Fifty three. I counted each one like it might be the last thing standing betwe

KIAN POV"Move. Now."I had the car door open before Elira had even finished dialling Silas, both of us abandoning every careful strategy in favour of the single fastest route to Dmitri's building."Callum's team is three minutes out," Silas's voice crackled through the speaker, tense and clipped. "I've got Marcus's people moving too. Kian, stay on the line.""Rhys," Elira kept whispering, over and over, phone clutched so tightly her knuckles had gone white. "They took Rhys."I pushed the car harder than was strictly safe, weaving through empty predawn streets, every second stretching unbearably long. "Wren's hidden. She followed her training. That's not nothing, Elira. That's everything.""It's not enough," Elira said, voice cracking. "It's not enough if they find her too."We reached the building in what felt like both an eternity and no time at all, and I was out of the car and moving before it had fully stopped, Elira a half step behind me, both of us taking the stairs three at a

ELIRA POV"She's supposed to be in council custody. Someone tell me how Marisol is standing in a courtyard two hundred miles north instead."I heard my own voice come out sharper than I intended, fury and fear tangled together so tightly I could barely separate them.Silas was already on his phone, jaw tight, and the answer came back within minutes, grim confirmation of exactly what I'd already feared."She escaped custody four days ago," he said. "During the chaos after the duel. Nobody flagged it immediately because attention was focused on Dorian's escape instead, and whoever helped Marisol out clearly wanted it to go unnoticed.""Isolde," Kian said. "She's been quietly reclaiming every asset this conspiracy ever produced. Robert. Torren. Now Marisol."I stared at the frozen image on the screen, my son walking across that courtyard flanked by armed guards, and something inside me hardened into a resolve I hadn't fully felt since the morning Robert threw me out of my childhood home

ELIRA POV"Let him go, or so help me, I will finish what I started in that council chamber weeks ago."I said it with Rhys pressed tight against my hip, my whole body angled between my son and the three people who had spent eighteen years trying to erase everything my mother had been."There's nothing left to let go of," Isolde said, calm despite the chaos still raging around the compound's edges. "You already have him. This was never really about the boy, Elira. It was about proving exactly how far you'd go once the choice became personal instead of theoretical.""A test," I said, fury burning hot enough to steady my voice instead of breaking it. "You kidnapped my son as a test.""I needed to know whether you'd fight or flee when it actually cost you something," Isolde said. "Now I know."Robert stepped forward slightly, and something in his expression stopped me cold, an unfamiliar rawness I'd never once seen from him in twenty two years of trying to earn his approval."Elira," he s