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“I have no comment.”

“That’s not a no.”

“It’s also not a yes.” She sipped her wine. “I feel like we’re getting distracted from the lavender thing.”

Fiora’s eyes were on the creatures by the fireplace. Amber. But at the edges, not quite amber anymore — working toward lavender.

“Huh.”

Bexley reached for a thirteenth pen.

“You said twelve.”

“I said eleven. Gerri got the twelfth. This is for the lavender situation.”

“The thirteenth pen is lavender.” Bexley’s eyes moved from the creatures to the pen, to Mirelle. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Mirelle agreed.

Rowan moved the cork one final time, wrapped her feet beneath herself, and seemed to consider the matter settled. Gerald slept by the door. Mirelle held her wine and let the room be warm around her. The shame that had driven her here — the boardwalk story she’d rehearsed to avoid telling the other one — hadn’t disappeared. It lingered, but it was no longer the biggest thing in the room, and for now, that was enough. The creatures danced with jolly glee by the fire, glowing lavender at the edges, without so much as a crackle.

EIGHT

TOR

Drayce’s guys’ nights ran as strategy sessions, a fiction they all maintained because it was useful. Real data sheets. A whiteboard. Tor genuinely used the whiteboard. None of that changed what the evening was for: Drayce getting done what he’d decided needed doing, with plausible deniability. Tor had known Drayce for thirty-one years and held no illusions. He arrived at the house on Cliff Road to find Pike settled in the armchair nearest the fire, the good chair, claimed before anyone else could — a social maneuver dressed up as coincidence. Maelin sat at the table with the printed data Tor had sent around earlier in the week. Drayce poured whiskey, unhurried and precise, admitting nothing about how carefully he’d turned this evening into an itinerary.

The whiskey was good. It always was at Drayce’s, which Tor suspected was part of the strategy. He took his glass. “The tether data.” Tether was their working word for whatever pulled at Mirelle from outside. “Fifteen-forty,” Maelin confirmed, eyes still on the page.

“Consistent across four sessions.”

“Consistent, deliberate, externally sourced.” Maelin closed the folder. “Not stray Rift energy.” Tor nodded.

Drayce handed Pike a glass. Pike accepted it and let the data discussion run its course. He had his own agenda. They worked the problem for an hour. The timing pattern. The cracked pillar. The modified creatures and the decisions they’d made at the cliff that ordinary Rift creatures couldn’t have made. Maelin raised the patrol rotation. They reviewed it. By any measure, it was a real strategy session.

Tor knew it wasn’t what they were there for. The whiskey in his glass was about a third gone when Pike settled back in the armchair, eyes on the ceiling, and said, “You stared at her for eleven straight minutes during the boardwalk incident.”

“I was watching the area.”

“You were emotionally haunting her,” Pike said confidently. “There’s a distinction. Drayce, back me up.”

“I’m staying out of this.”

Drayce had orchestrated the entire evening. The data session. The whiskey. The seating arrangement that put Tor facing the fire with nowhere to deflect. Now he stayed out of it, having set up this endgame six moves ago.

“You timed it,” Tor said.

Pike drank his whiskey. “I had my phone out. You happened to be standing there. Eleven minutes total. Creature situation wrapped up in four. That leaves seven minutes of you being deeply concerned about a specific person.”

“I was watching the area.”

“The area was Mirelle.”

Maelin raised his eyes from his glass. “She settles faster near you than anywhere else in the data.” He went back to his glass. The room held the silence that followed Maelin’s observations, which always landed harder than their word count warranted.

Tor set his glass down. “She’s my mate.” He said it fast, because fast was easier than working up to it, like removing a splinter.

Pike opened his mouth.