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I turned on him. “Someone watched my men move material from a room nobody knew I was emptying to a location nobody knew I’d chosen.”

“We don’t know that.”

I shoved the photograph into his chest. “We fucking do.”

Rafe looked down.

I stepped closer. “He got into Blackthorn.”

“Alaric—”

“He got to Bethany.”

“We don’t know⁠—”

“He knows where I moved the archive.”

My voice dropped. “And every fucking road leads back to her.”

Rafe went silent.

Good.

“Nyssa doesn’t leave this house.”

The words came before I could stop them. Knox looked away. Rafe didn’t. I heard them after I’d spoken. Not protection. Something else.

A rule.

A lock.

So this is a cage.

Nyssa’s words from that first day resounded through me.

The house has rules.

Before they were there to protect me…

And now.

They were there to protect her.

A cage.

Yes.

That’s exactly what I’d built.

Nyssa’s face flashed through my mind.

I should’ve taken the words back.

I didn’t.

Fear wouldn’t let me.

“No one approaches her without one of us present.”