Chapter 466: The Trap

"Tell us about him," Sebastian said. "Not the stories. What you know."

Elena had spent four years knowing it. She had never said it aloud to this many people.

"Keres doesn’t delegate what he wants," she said. "He’ll send others to soften a place. Thralls, brokers, hired witches, whoever will take his coin. But the thing itself, the thing he wants, he comes for with his own hands. He always has."

"And he wants you," Lucian said.

"He wants me alive." She made herself say it plainly. "That is the one fact that matters. Keres will burn this estate to the ground and kill anyone in his way, but he won’t kill me. He’ll try to take me. If I’m in danger, real danger, he will come himself, because he can’t stand to let anyone else touch what he’s decided is his."

"That’s a weakness," Ysolde said.

"It’s a habit. A weakness is something I can use." Elena looked around the table. "So I use it."

Sebastian was already shaking his head. "Elena."

"Let me finish."

He closed his mouth. She noticed that. A week ago he would have talked straight through her.

She went to the map pinned on the wall and put her finger on the northern grounds, past the training fields, where the pack’s old apple orchard ran up against the outer wall.

"Here. Three hundred yards beyond the main ward line, but inside the outer perimeter. Open ground, old trees, one gate. On the second night I leave the estate. I take the orchard path toward the northern road."

"And Keres’s watchers see it," Dorian said slowly.

"His watchers have been on this estate since the resurrection. I’d stake my life on it." A dry sound came out of her that wasn’t quite a laugh. "I am staking my life on it. They’ll see me run. They’ll report it. And he’ll do what he always does when I run."

"He’ll come," Victoria said quietly.

"He’ll come."

Victoria lifted her cane and rested it against the table edge. The black veins had climbed past her collarbone since morning, and her hand on the wood was steady only because she was forcing it to be. "A body that has outlived its death is held together by something old and stubborn. It is a thread. Death magic can find a thread." She met Elena’s eyes. "I can hold a ward in that orchard that finds his. That reminds the body what it forgot."

"A ward of that scale will cost you," Dorian said.

"Yes."

"Victoria...." Sebastian began.

"I know what it costs, Alpha." She said it gently. "I’ve been counting it for weeks."

Nobody spoke. The fire popped.

Ysolde broke the silence. "My people can lay the outer lines. Binding, silence, a dampener against thrall-magic. We’ll need a day. We can have it done by dusk on the second night, if your wolves keep the grounds quiet."

"They’ll keep it quiet," Sebastian said. He was looking at Elena again. "I still don’t like it."

"I’m not asking you to like it."

"You’re a guest under my roof."

"I’m a person under my own," Elena said.

She hadn’t meant it as a blade. It came out that way anyway, and she watched it land. Then she watched Sebastian’s face change. There was something close to a wince in it, and then, to his credit, something close to a nod.

"Lilith said something like that to me," he said. "Four days ago."

"Then she’s wiser than both of us."

Lucian let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. "She’s been right more often than either of us would like."

Dorian pushed off the window. "I’ll tell you what a vampire would know about how Keres hunts, and none of it is comforting." He walked to the table and set both palms on it. "He doesn’t rush. He circles. He lets the quarry feel him close for days before he moves. He will almost certainly want her to see him first. To know it’s him. He wants the fear."

"Good," Elena said. "Let him look."

"He’ll bring thralls ahead of him. Dozens."

"Then the wolves hold the line, and the trap does the rest."

"And if the trap fails?" Callum asked from the door. It was the first thing he had said.

Elena didn’t answer right away. Everyone looked at her.

"Then I’m taken," she said. "And you go on without me, and you don’t come after me. That isn’t a request."

"Not a thing I’ll promise," Lucian said at once.

"Then promise me you’ll finish Lilith’s war first."

He glared at her. After a long moment, he looked away.

It was close enough to yes.

***

Later, when the room had emptied and the maps were rolled and the plan had a name that nobody had spoken aloud, Elena stood at the window and let herself remember.

She hadn’t wanted to. She never did. But the orchard was in the plan now, and four years of not remembering had worn thin.

She had been away that night. A day’s ride to the coast for herbs, a week late and annoyed about it. She came home at dawn, and the hill road smelled wrong. Not smoke. Something cold and clean, like a cellar.

The circle was on the hilltop. Fourteen white robes in a ring, exactly where they stood every new moon. The candles were still lit. That was the part she never got past, even now. The candles were still burning.

Ilse’s hand had been stretched toward the center of the ring. Toward where Elena would have stood.

Elena had knelt there for a long time. She did not scream. She had thought, with strange clarity, someone will have to bury them. And then she had done it, one by one, with her hands, until the sun went down.

She breathed out. The window glass fogged and cleared.

Four years, she thought. Let it be four years and no more.