The Last Three Vials

Chapter 1 The Revoked Authority

The traitor's blood was still wet on my blade when Kaelen entered the council hall with Serena on his arm. I had come straight from the cleanup, and every capo at the long table knew it.

She smiled at the grim-faced capos and held Kaelen tighter. An obsidian access band circled her wrist, resized to fit her.

Until that morning, it had hung from my dressing mirror under my private clearance.

My husband stopped beside my seat without looking at me. He caught the black-gold iris on my tactical vest and tore it free, ripping the fabric. I had worn the Madre's insignia for five years.

The pin skipped across the polished table and stopped beside a capo's hand. No one picked it up.

The emergency lights turned red.

Alarms sounded through the command center. White text flashed on the main screen: CORE KEYHOLDER SIGNATURE INVALID.

Chairs scraped back. The capos reached for their weapons as the east-node feeds blinked out, followed by the outer gates. Kaelen looked at me first, as he had for five years.

“Elara, isolate the east-node breach.”

His gaze dropped to the iris on the table.

He pointed at the console. “Fix it. And don't turn this into another one of your tantrums.”

I stayed in my chair. Without the Madre's iris on my vest, the console would reject every command I entered.

Pain cinched beneath my ribs and crept toward my heart. My dose was already late.

I pushed back my chair and walked past the guards. Halfway to the door, the pain dug into my chest. I kept one hand against my vest until I was out of Kaelen's sight.

My antidote was kept in the subterranean cold storage, three levels below the council hall. I took the service stairs because I couldn't wait for the secure lift to reset.

The vault door opened with a low hiss. The cold hurt my lungs. My medical safe stood among the family's most sensitive assets, its velvet rack built to hold three vials of antidote.

One month's supply. Without it, the neurotoxin would begin dissolving my organs.

The safe stood open.

Its door shifted in the cold draft.

The velvet rack inside was empty.