Malrik POV
Vladan and I left the chamber at last, our footsteps echoing against the marble as we made our way through the cold, cavernous hallway back to the hotel suite. The silence between us was thick, heavy with the residue of that gathering. Neither of us needed to speak we were both still tangled in the chaos of what we’d just witnessed.
Cassian’s behavior lingered in my mind like a stain. It raised more questions than it answered, and none of them sat well with me. I wasn’t just unsettled I was livid. Furious. Not only at the topics thrown across the table but at the obvious collusion behind it all. That meeting had been nothing more than theater, a carefully orchestrated show meant to corner us.
The Nine Families had convened long before the so-called “emergency” was called, whi
