The laughter reaches me before I understand what I am hearing, because at first it blends into the distant howls and the low rumble still trembling through the walls, but then it sharpens into something deliberate and unhinged that does not belong to panic or fear, and the sound crawls down my spine as I turn slowly toward the hallway.
It echoes through the house again, louder this time, and there is no mistaking it.
Lucian.
Axel and Atticus burst into the war room seconds later, both of them breathing harder from the chaos outside, and the moment they see my face they go still because they hear it too.
The laughter spills down the corridor and into the open doorway, manic and unrestrained, and it carries the kind of certainty that makes my stomach twist because it sounds like someone
