THE PHONE CALL
1656 Words
Chapter Eight
The east gate was empty.
Not just empty — wrong. The two guards who were supposed to be stationed there were on the ground. Not dead. Unconscious. Breathing, pulse steady, but completely unreachable.
Selene stood at the edge of the gate and looked at them.
"They were put down," Cain said. "Cleanly. Whoever did this didn't want them dead. They wanted them out of the way."
"Why?" Selene said.
"Because dead guards cause immediate lockdown," Draven said. He was crouching beside the closer guard, checking his pulse himself. "Unconscious guards cause confusion. Delay." He stood. "Someone bought themselves time."
"Time for what?"
Draven looked at the gate. At the empty space beyond it where the border ran into the city.
"Time to leave something behind," he said.
Cain held up an evidence bag.
Inside it — a small object. Round. Dark. Carved from something that wasn't stone and wasn't wood. Covered in markings that Selene didn't recognise.
"What is that?" she said.
"A marker," Draven said. His voice was carefully controlled. "The Umbra Circle uses them. They plant them on a territory they intend to return to." He looked at her. "It's a claim."
"They're claiming your territory?"
"They're claiming access to it," he said. "Specifically." He looked at the marker in the bag. "To you."
Selene looked at the carved object.
Something about it made her skin feel wrong. Like it was watching. Like something was looking through it from the other side.
She took a step toward it.
"Don't touch it," Draven said immediately.
She stopped. "What happens if I touch it?"
"It locates you," he said. "Precisely. Down to the room you're in." He nodded to Cain. "Destroy it."
"How?" Cain said.
"Fire. Iron. In that order."
Cain walked away with the bag.
Draven turned back to Selene. "We're moving you to the inner rooms tonight. Higher floor. Better coverage."
"I don't need—"
"This isn't a discussion," he said. Not unkindly. Just final.
She looked at him. "You said I wasn't a prisoner."
"You're not." He held her gaze. "A prisoner is moved without explanation. I'm explaining." He paused. "The marker confirms the Circle has been here. Physically. Tonight. While we were in the ceremony." His jaw tightened. "I miscalculated. I thought we had more time."
"How much more?"
"Days," he said. "Maybe a week." He looked at the unconscious guards. "We have hours."
Selene looked at the guards.
At the empty gate.
At the city beyond it, lit and ordinary, completely unaware.
"Alright," she said. "Inner rooms. Higher floor." She looked at him. "But Draven — we need to talk about training. You mentioned it last night. I can't keep breaking windows every time I get angry."
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Tonight—"
"Selene." He touched her arm briefly. One hand. Brief contact. "Tonight I need you safe. Tomorrow I'll teach you to burn the world down in a controlled direction." He almost looked like he meant it as comfort. "That's a promise."
"You make very strange promises," she said.
"You ask for very strange things," he said.
They walked back to the palace.
---
The new room was on the fourth floor.
Larger than the first one. Corner facing — two walls of windows, both reinforced, both with a clear view of two different approach vectors. Selene had not known she was learning to think like that. She was apparently learning to think like that.
She sat on the edge of the new bed and looked at the city lights and thought about markers and Seers and Mara's eyes.
Her phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
Caden.
She stared at it for three rings.
Then she answered.
"I told you not to call," she said.
"I know." His voice was different from the last time she had heard it. Not the careful Alpha voice. Not the performance. Something underneath it — tight, urgent. "Selene, I need you to listen to me."
"You have thirty seconds."
"Diana isn't who she said she was."
Selene was very still. "What?"
"I found something. In her things. A comm device — not a phone, something else, something I've never seen before. And files." His voice dropped. "Selene, she has files on you. Going back years. Before we met. Before I even knew your name."
"Caden—"
"She knew what you were before any of this," he said. "Before I rejected you, before the announcement — she already knew. She wasn't just my chosen mate she was—" He stopped. "I don't know what she was. But the files, Selene, there's a name in them. An organisation. The Umbra—"
The line went dead.
Not dropped.
Dead.
The specific quality of a line that has been cut.
Selene looked at the phone.
The call duration frozen on the screen. Mid-sentence. Mid-word.
She was already at the door.
She pulled it open.
Draven was in the corridor. He had clearly been close — close enough that the look on her face told him everything before she spoke.
"The call," he said. "I know. Cain is already—"
"Someone cut it," she said. "From inside the palace."
"Yes."
"From inside." She looked at him. "Draven, that means—"
"Someone in this palace is working with the Circle." His voice was flat. Certain. The voice of someone confirming something he had already suspected. "Yes."
"How long have you known?"
"I suspected," he said. "Tonight confirmed it."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet."
"Then everyone is a suspect."
"Everyone except Cain," he said. "And Sera."
"How do you know?"
"Because I have known Cain for fifteen years and Sera for twelve and I would stake my life on both of them." He looked at her. "I am staking your life on both of them."
Selene looked at him.
"That's a lot of trust," she said.
"Yes," he said. "It is."
She heard it — the weight of what he wasn't saying. That trust was not something that came easily to him. That he had given it twice before and been wrong. That he was giving it now anyway.
"Okay," she said. "Cain and Sera. Nobody else."
"Nobody else," he agreed.
She turned back to the room. Stopped in the doorway.
"Caden was trying to warn me," she said. "Whatever he found — it was real. He was genuinely scared."
"I know."
"Whatever you think of him," she said, "he was trying to help."
Draven was quiet for a moment. "I'll have Cain reach out to him through a secure line," he said. "Get the full information."
"He won't talk to Cain."
"Why not?"
"Because Cain terrifies him."
Draven looked like he found this entirely reasonable. "Then I'll go myself."
"You'll—" She turned. "You would do that."
"He has information I need," Draven said simply. "And apparently he has a conscience. That makes him potentially useful." He held her gaze. "Does that bother you? Me speaking to him?"
She thought about it honestly.
"No," she said. "It doesn't." She paused. "That probably should feel strange."
"Does it?"
"Not even a little," she said. "Which tells me something."
"What does it tell you?"
She looked at him standing in her doorway in the fourth floor room with the city lights behind her and the palace around them and the Umbra Circle somewhere in the dark deciding what to do next.
"That I'm further from Silverstone than just geography," she said.
Something moved in his expression.
He opened his mouth.
A sound came from the corridor.
Not loud. Not alarming, on its own. The sound of a door. Normal. Ordinary.
Except it was two in the morning and this corridor was supposed to be empty.
Draven turned.
His hand went up immediately — the signal she had already learned meant *stay.*
She stayed.
He moved into the corridor.
She counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
"Draven," she said quietly.
Nothing.
"Draven."
Silence.
She moved to the doorway.
The corridor was empty.
Draven was gone.
She looked left. Right. The corridor stretched in both directions, lit, ordinary, completely empty.
Her heart was hammering.
"Draven." Louder now.
A hand closed around her wrist from behind.
She spun.
Draven. Right behind her. He had come from the room — had gone in through the connecting door she hadn't noticed.
She breathed.
"Don't do that," she said.
"There was someone at the end of the corridor," he said. Low. Urgent. "They're gone now. But they were there."
"Inside the palace."
"Yes."
"The spy."
"Or the Seer," he said. "Or both." He looked at her. His hand was still around her wrist. "We're not staying on this floor tonight."
"Where are we going?"
"My rooms," he said.
She looked at him.
"Not—" He caught her expression. "Not like that. My rooms are the most secure in the palace. Three layers of warding. Access to two exit routes." He held her gaze. "It's tactical."
"Tactical," she said.
"Entirely."
"You have a lot of tactical reasons to spend time near me."
Something moved in his face. "I have a lot of actual reasons," he said. "I'm choosing tactical."
"Because?"
"Because you asked me to go slowly."
She looked at him.
His hand was still around her wrist.
Neither of them moved.
"Your rooms," she said finally.
"My rooms," he confirmed.
"Tactical."
"Completely."
She looked at the empty corridor. At the city lights through the window. At the hand around her wrist that he still hadn't moved and she still hadn't pulled away.
"Lead the way," she said.
He did.
And somewhere in the palace, in a corridor they had just left, a shadow detached from the wall and pulled out a small device and sent a single pulse of light into the dark.
And somewhere far away, in a room that had no windows, a phone received that pulse.
And a voice said: "She's on the move. Stay close."
- Writer
