BOUND BY MIDNIGHT

CHAPTER 9: The Trace

"If someone sent that message to manipulate us into panicking," Kaelen says, pacing the length of my father's office, "then whoever did it needed access to two things — my Custodian file, to know the evaluation terminology convincingly, and your personal number, which isn't exactly public information."

"That's a short list of people," my father says grimly.

"Shorter than you'd think," Kaelen replies. "It's not a long list of humans who'd have both. It's a very short list of people connected to this household who might also have contact with the Order, the Custodians, or both."

The implication sits heavy in the room. "You think someone in my household is working for one of them," I say slowly. "Or being forced to."

"I think," Kaelen says carefully, "that we should trace the message before we assume anything."

It takes him less than twenty minutes with a laptop borrowed from my father's office to isolate the message's origin point — not spoofed, not routed through some untraceable relay the way Order communications typically are, but sent from a device physically connected to my own household's private network.

My stomach drops. "Who?"

Kaelen's expression tightens as the trace resolves fully. "Marcus," he says, and my father goes rigid beside me.

"That's not possible," my father says immediately. "Marcus has worked for this family for eleven years. He practically raised you, Sera, after your mother passed. There's no version of this where he's involved with the Order."

"I'm not saying he chose to be," Kaelen says carefully. "I'm saying the message came from his terminal, using his access. That doesn't necessarily mean it came from him willingly."

The thought of Marcus — steady, warm, endlessly patient Marcus, who taught me to ride a bike after my mother died and has run this household with quiet devotion ever since — being coerced or controlled by the same forces hunting me sends a fresh wave of nausea through me.

"We need to talk to him," I say. "Now."

We find Marcus at the estate an hour later, and the moment he opens the door to his private quarters, I know instantly that something is deeply wrong. He looks exhausted in a way I've never seen from him, dark circles carved beneath eyes that won't quite meet mine, hands trembling faintly as he ushers us inside.

"Sera." His voice cracks slightly on my name. "You shouldn't have come here."

"Marcus, what's happening?" I ask gently, though every instinct screams at me to demand answers instead of patience. "Please. Whatever this is, we can help."

He's quiet for a long, agonized moment before the composure finally breaks entirely. "They have my daughter," he says, voice raw. "Two weeks ago. I never told you, never told your father, because they made it very clear what would happen to her if I did." His hands shake harder. "They wanted access to household communications. Small things, at first — schedules, security patterns. I told myself it was harmless, that I could manage it without anyone getting hurt. Then tonight, they demanded I send that message to your phone directly, word for word, and threatened to hurt her if I refused."

The revelation reframes everything — not a mole motivated by greed or ideology, but a desperate father trapped in an impossible choice, exactly the kind of dilemma this entire war seems built to manufacture again and again.

"Why didn't you come to us?" my father asks, old hurt and fresh horror warring in his voice.

"Because they showed me proof of what happens to people who defy them," Marcus says quietly. "I couldn't risk it. I'm sorry. I am so sorry, but I couldn't risk her life for information I told myself didn't matter."

Kaelen, who has been silent through most of this exchange, finally speaks. "How long ago did they take her? Do you know where?"

"I don't know where. I have a contact number. That's all they've given me." Marcus's expression turns desperate, pleading. "Please. If there's any way to get her back—"

"There is," Kaelen says, though something careful in his tone suggests he's not fully certain of the odds even as he says it. "But it means moving fast, and it means trusting that whatever the Order's actual endgame is here, taking your daughter was never really about the information you gave them. It was about creating exactly this moment — a household fractured by fear, forced to choose between loyalty and survival."

"You think this was designed," I say slowly, "specifically to make us doubt each other?"

"I think," Kaelen says grimly, "that the Order has spent four hundred years learning that the most effective way to break a bonded pact isn't always direct force. Sometimes it's simply making everyone around the heir too afraid, too fractured, too busy fighting internal fires to notice the real threat closing in."

The realization sends a chill through me. If Kaelen's right, the message, Marcus's coercion, even the fake or real deadline — all of it might be less about immediate danger and more about a slower, more insidious kind of siege, designed to isolate me from everyone who might otherwise stand beside me when the real attack finally comes.

"Then we don't let it work," I say firmly. "We get Marcus's daughter back, we figure out whether the seventy-two-hour deadline is real, and we do it together. No more secrets. No more decisions made alone because someone's afraid of what honesty might cost."

Kaelen studies me for a long moment, something warm and complicated passing behind his careful composure — not quite the confession neither of us has been ready to voice, but something adjacent to it, unmistakable in its intensity even unspoken.

"Together," he agrees quietly.

My father's phone buzzes sharply, cutting through the moment, and the color drains from his face as he reads whatever message has just arrived.

"What is it?" I ask.

He turns the phone toward us slowly, and the message displayed there makes my blood run cold — not from the Order this time, not from the Custodians, but from a number I don't recognize at all, containing only a single line and a location pin dropped somewhere in the city's oldest district.

"You have exactly one hour to come alone, Sera Voss, or everyone you've gathered around you tonight starts paying the price for choices that were never really yours to make."