There's a very specific kind of silence that happens when someone says something so catastrophic that the room needs a moment to file the paperwork.
This was that silence.
Luna broke it, because Luna always broke silences. She'd appeared in the kitchen doorway somewhere between Cole's sentence and the moment my brain finished processing it, crossbow slung over her shoulder like a particularly aggressive handbag.
"Run that back," she said. "Someone has been *listening through the mate bond?*"
"Through a proximity enchantment keyed to the bond's signature," Cole said, like he was describing a leaky faucet. "Traces of it on the eastern wall — residual magic, faint, active since the alley. Possibly since Portland."
"Since Portland," I said.
"Yes."
"Which means—"
"Everything." Darius's
