Page 87 of Nikolay

“What makes it worse,” she said, “is that neither coven has disclosed what Ironwood wanted and that they aren’t the only covens approached, just the only ones I know for certain.”

The room seemed to contract around that sentence.

Verdant Hollow and Astral Spire. I knew the names, of course. Any man raised where I had been raised knew them. Old witch power did not shout, but neither did it vanish. It endured in secrecy, land, ritual memory, and the kind of collective discipline that made ordinary intelligence work feel like fishing in black water. If Ironwood had gone to them, it had not been for decoration.

“Nothing at all?” I asked.

“Nothing useful,” Amelia said. “Astral Spire gave one of my sources a line about ‘private consultative matters’ and then closed ranks so hard it might as well have been a warded tomb. Verdant Hollow did better, which is to say worse. They said absolutely nothing. Not denial, not confirmation beyond what I had already gleaned, not the courtesy of pretending innocence. Just silence.”

“Verdant Hollow has always enjoyed theater through omission,” Bohdan murmured.

“Yes, well, I don’t.” Amelia leaned back in the chair, one ankle crossing over the other. “Because now we are left with possibilities instead of answers, and I despise possibilities when witches are involved.”

I heard the quickened edge beneath her clipped tone and knew she was more alarmed than she wished to advertise.

“What possibilities?” I asked.

She ticked them off with the same hand that held the token.

“Alpha succession complications requiring ritual intervention. A vulnerability in the bloodline they cannot solve internally. Some forgotten rite tied to land claim, pack hierarchy, or inheritance that needs reconstruction from older magical records. It could be an issue with mating law. It could be an issue with lineage purity. It could be a territorial custom so old none of the living wolves remember the mechanics of it, and they need witches to recover or interpret whatever survived.”

Her gaze sharpened on me.

“It could be any number of things. That is the problem. I do not know.”

Bohdan set his glass down with great care. “And not knowing is dangerous. And you dislike dangerous things.”

“I like it even less when the people withholding the answer are a wolf pack built on polite separatism and two covens famous for dying before they become cooperative.”

My hand had flattened against the carved wood of the chair arm at some point during her report. I noticed it only when the grain pressed half-moons into my palm. My jaw hurt faintly. I had locked it without realizing.

Maddie’s name did not enter the room.

It did not need to.

Ironwood’s interest in witches. Ironwood’s attention to mixed-species spaces they should by all rights disdain. Ironwood’s alpha looking at the woman fate had tied to me as if she were a strategic opening.

None of it arranged itself into comfort.

I said, “How long has this been in motion?”

“Long enough to be deliberate,” Amelia replied. “Not long enough for anyone to grow careless about it, apparently.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Ironwood hasn’t been throwing money around publicly or using obvious intermediaries. They’ve approached through old channels, private introductions, favors owed. Quietly. Expensively. With restraint.” Her mouth tightened. “I hate restraint. It usually means intelligence.”

Bohdan folded his hands loosely on the desk. “They’ve only held full Council recognition for three years. Their history alone makes secrecy an indulgence they should be too cautious to exercise unless the matter is serious.”

“Exactly,” Amelia said. “A newly sanctioned outlier pack with a reputation for keeping to its own kind does not start courting ancient covens for novelty. If they were after spectacle, they’d fund a museum wing. If they were after ordinary counsel, they’d stay within wolf channels. This—she flicked the token once, metal flashing—is something else.”

I heard the bass through the wall again, dim and steady. It made a strange counterpoint to the conversation, as if below us desire still obeyed simpler laws, while in this room three people sat tracing shadows across an unseen board.

“Could it concern Sloan?” I asked.

Amelia shrugged one shoulder. “Anything could concern anybody until proven otherwise. But if you’re asking whether I think the younger sister’s employment here was random, the answer remains no.”

Bohdan’s gaze shifted to her. “No, because you have evidence?”