ELENA'S POV
I made him wait two hours before I gave him an answer.
Not because I needed two hours to decide. I had decided before he finished the sentence. But I needed two hours to talk to Seraphine and Viviana and Ryker and to build around the decision a structure that looked like caution and deliberation rather than strategy.
Seraphine's response when I told her I was going to allow the examination was a silence that lasted exactly four seconds and then a single question.
"What do you want to learn from it?"
"What he actually does when he thinks he has access," I said. "What he's looking for. How he looks for it. Whether anything he does matches what you know about resurrection cult methodology."
Another silence. Shorter. "And if it does?"
"Then we have confirmation we didn't hav
