All Chapters of Reborn to Rewrite My Fate : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The clearing looked deceptively peaceful in the hour before sunrise, mist curling low across the pale grass, the same ground where I'd died once and bargained twice now holding its breath for whatever Bartholomew Grey intended to send."Positions," Elias murmured into the small, discreet earpiece Damon had rigged for all of us, his voice carrying the same calm, focused edge I remembered from the night at Hollow's Rest. "Bryn's people are a half mile out, ready to close in the moment we give the signal. Nobody moves until Luna's actually in danger, understood? We want whoever Grey sends, not a scattered retreat before we learn anything useful.""Understood," I murmured back, standing alone in the clearing's center, deliberately exposed, every nerve in my body straining against the urge to glance toward the tree line where Adrian, Damon, and two of Bryn's most trusted officers waited hidden and ready.The minutes crawled by, mist slowly burning away beneath the climbing sun, and doubt b

We decided to confront Garrick the morning after Corwin's calculation, reasoning that whatever use he still believed himself to have, pressure applied directly might finally crack the loyalty decades of careful manipulation had built.His quarters, a modest cottage at the edge of the household grounds he'd occupied since before I was born, sat silent and dark despite the early hour."Garrick doesn't sleep past dawn," Elias said, unease sharpening his voice as he knocked a second time, harder, against the quiet door. "He hasn't in the forty years I've known him."The door swung open at his knock, unlatched, and the sight beyond it stopped all three of us cold.The cottage had been stripped bare. Not ransacked, not searched in haste, but carefully, methodically emptied, drawers hanging open and vacant, shelves cleared of the small, personal belongings I remembered glimpsing during childhood visits, a faint, lingering chemical smell suggesting someone had scrubbed the space clean of anyt

The crevice swallowed us into darkness within the first ten feet, Tamsin's careful, shielded flashlight the only illumination against walls that pressed close and cold on every side."Single file," Elias murmured, voice barely above a whisper despite our considerable distance from the guards we'd observed days earlier. "Bryn's team takes point, Damon and Adrian flank, Luna stays center, I take the rear. Nobody moves ahead of position unless I say otherwise."We'd spent the previous three days preparing as thoroughly as the timeline allowed, Bryn's officers running careful drills on silent movement and coordinated extraction, Corwin providing what additional guidance he could glean from increasingly desperate research into Grey's likely defenses. Wren, recovered enough to offer further details despite the visible effort it cost her, had described the cold, breathing sound with enough precision that Corwin theorized some kind of underground water source, possibly connected to the valley

"What did you do with my friends?" I demanded, fury burning hot enough to momentarily eclipse the fear coiling cold through my chest.*Your friends,* Grey's voice rasped, amusement threading cold and precise through the word, *are currently unconscious, Luna Everly, not harmed, merely contained, the same courtesy I am currently extending to you and your two remaining companions. I find unnecessary cruelty tedious. I prefer efficiency.*"That's a strange kind of mercy," Elias said, voice tight with barely restrained fury, "from a man who's spent decades stealing children from their families."*Mercy has nothing to do with it,* Grey replied, cold contempt threading through every carefully measured word. *I require Luna conscious and relatively unharmed for what comes next. Your friends are simply inconvenient obstacles I've chosen to neutralize rather than destroy, since destroying them serves no purpose toward my actual goal.*"Which is?" I demanded, though dread already pooled heavy a

Corwin's study had become a permanent war room by the second day, every available surface buried beneath research spanning centuries of fragmented, half remembered lore about Lunar bloodlines, ancient bargains, and the particular, patient cruelty of a man who'd apparently decided grief justified any cost."There has to be a way to safely disperse whatever's inside that box," I said, exhaustion fraying my voice as I rubbed tired eyes over yet another unhelpful, archaic text. "Grey said breaking it carelessly would release everything at once. That implies there's a careful way to do it instead.""If such a method exists," Corwin said, equally exhausted, "it's not documented anywhere I've managed to locate. Which isn't surprising, honestly. Grey's spent decades, possibly centuries, making certain nobody possessed the knowledge to undo what he was patiently building."Adrian, pacing near the window with restless, barely contained energy, finally stopped. "What about the threshold? The anc