Maya’s POV
The Hendersons’ kitchen looked like a crime scene. Crumpled papers everywhere, mugs with cold coffee, the smell of stress soaked into the walls.
I kept folding Elena’s note into smaller and smaller squares, my hands on autopilot while my brain ran circles. Seventeen children. Twenty-two hours. A ritual that could rip the world open.
Voices around me blurred into the same arguments we’d been stuck in all night. Graves pushing for a straight fight. Victoria insisting on intel. Sarah sketching plan after plan until the table looked like it belonged to a paranoid art student.
It didn’t matter. Elena had already won three moves ago.
“Maya?” Kai’s voice cut through the noise, soft but steady. “You’re bleeding.”
I glanced down. My fingertips were raw, tiny red lines from folding
