Twelve minutes.
She ran the variables the way she ran everything — quickly, without sentiment, letting the honest picture surface rather than the comfortable one.
Thirty-six Moon Council operatives in the southeastern column. Trained, coordinated, moving with updated orders from someone still embedded in Blackstone. The outer perimeter breached, which meant Kael’s border forces had either been overwhelmed or—
“Veth,” she said.
“I know.” Kael was already moving up the stairs at a pace that required her to match it without effort, which told her something about how he functioned under pressure — not faster, not louder, but more concentrated, every movement stripped to pure necessity.
“He didn’t just communicate with them,” she said, keeping pace. “He gave them override codes. That’s the
