CELESTE'S POV
We found the mole eleven days after Petrov, and we found him the way you find most rot in a house like mine — by watching who flinched at the wrong moment.
We found the mole eleven days after Petrov, and we found him the way you find most rot in a house like mine: by watching who flinched at the wrong moment.
His name was Mark, a logistics man who had worked for us for four years. We'd been looking for the person who had leaked Petrov's location, the information that had allowed someone inside our own organization to reach him while he was still in our custody. Mark had been answering Dario Voss's calls for eight months. More importantly, he'd sold Petrov's location the same night we brought Alec and Jace home.I did not enjoy what came after, though I want to be honest that I did not lose sleep over it either. There is a version of myself, from before Kane, who might have. That version of me had the luxury of pretending the business my family built could stay bloodless if I simply wished it hard enough. I no longer had that luxury, and some nights I mourned her nearly as much as I mourned him.
What mattered, from what Mark finally gave up before the end, was this: Dario Voss hadn't only wanted Alec and Jace watched. He wanted to know the moment either of them left the estate without an escort, which meant he was waiting for an opening, not simply gathering information.
I went to warn Jace myself that night. I found him in the library, restless, a book open on his knee that he clearly hadn't read a page of. He looked up when I came in, and something in his face did the thing it always did around me, went careful, assessing, cataloguing.
"You look like a woman with bad news," he said.
"There was a man in my organization selling information about you and your friend to Dario Voss," I said, no softer than the facts deserved. "We've handled him. But Dario Voss knows more about your movements in this house than either of you should be comfortable with. I'd rather you hear that from me than discover it the hard way."
He absorbed that with more composure than I expected from most men, though I was beginning to understand that composure was simply the only language Jace had ever been permitted to speak fluently. "Why tell me yourself," he asked. "You could have sent anyone."
"Because you're mine to protect now, whether either of us particularly chose that." Something in his expression changed. I heard the word only after I'd said it.
Mine.
I meant responsibility. Protection. The particular obligation I'd taken on the night I brought him into this house. Judging by his face, he had heard something else. Neither of us corrected it.
"Protected," I corrected.
His mouth moved slightly, without becoming a smile. "Those aren't always the same thing."
"No," I said.
Something about the answer seemed to surprise him. After a moment, he looked away. "You could have sent someone else to tell me, but I'm glad you didn't."
He waited for a moment and then said, "You knew these men before the warehouse."
I looked at him. He had noticed something in the way I'd spoken about them. I could see the question forming, the same quiet curiosity he'd shown when he'd found the photograph months earlier.
"This isn't only about us, is it?"
"No," I said.
He held my gaze for a moment. I knew he could have asked what else it was about. He could have asked what had happened before he and Alec ever entered that warehouse. He didn't.
"Does that change anything for us?" he asked instead.
"No. You're still in danger."
"All right." He didn't ask again.
CLAIRE'S POV
Alec took the news of the mole with the same unnerving stillness he took everything, which I was beginning to suspect was less a personality trait than a survival skill worn in so long it had become indistinguishable from one. I found him in the courtyard afterward, staring at nothing in particular, and sat myself down beside him uninvited, the way I do most things.
"You're not going to ask if you're safe," I observed.
"I already know the answer," he said. "Nowhere connected to me has been safe in months. I'd rather understand why than be reassured about it."
"That's a very grim way to live."
"It's an accurate way to live," he said, and something about the flatness of it, not self-pitying, simply honest, caught at me.
"Then be accurate about this too. Someone inside this house gave Dario information about you. Until we know exactly how much, you don't go anywhere alone."
"Wasn't planning to."
"Good."
"You sound disappointed."
"I had a much longer speech prepared."
"You can give it anyway."
"Don't tempt me." I glanced towards the corridor. "Come on. I'm walking you back."
Alec raised an eyebrow. "I know the way to my room."
"I'm aware. Humour me."
He followed without arguing. At the entrance to the north wing, I stopped to check that one of the guards was still stationed near his room. The man straightened when he saw me. "Stay here tonight. No one comes through without clearance."
"Of course, ma'am."
Only then did I turn back to Alec. He watched me for a moment. "You really are taking this seriously."
"I generally do when someone threatens someone in my house."
"Right."
"Goodnight, Alec."
"Goodnight, Claire." I waited until he was inside before heading back down the corridor.