Ann gathered all of the notes and shaped them into a clean, blunt summary.
'Ely's constructs show clear signs of his pact with Eromaug. The King's travel patterns suggest that he too is involved. Movements suggest he renews that pact on a regular cycle. Portalcraft texts warn that hidden pacts warp the anchors of a gate or a portal, making them unstable. Cleansing one requires every detail to be spoken aloud and made public.
In plain terms: the Lycan King is already bound to Eromaug, or close to being so. Any gate or portal that he is able to touch will be corrupted or weakened. To protect ours, every portal must be built with layered defenses, magickal countermarks and redundant failsafes, or it will collapse under his influence if he ever gets close enough.'
She sent the summary to Eva and flagged it for Adam with a single line. Read before council.
Her hand hovered on the keyboard. She could picture Adam's face when he read it, his fury boiling up and his desperate attempts to slide the thin layer of control over it.
She could hear the elders too, protesting at the mere notion, half denying, half scrambling to cover the names and the votes that had led them here.
And over it all, she could almost hear Lexi now, cutting through the noise with that unimpressed voice that just didn't give a shit what anyone thought.
"Half of you are cowards, the other half are liars. Pick which one you are before you waste anymore of our time. All of you are pathetic, with your incessant hand-wringing. If you aren't going to act decisively and help find a solution, then get the fuck out of the way and let the adults fix everything that you broke."
"You hate that she isn't here to argue with you about footnotes and theories," Maeve said softly, "You hate it so much that you could scream."
"Yes...she would have so much to say on this." Ann said as she leaned back and closed her eyes, hoping to find something that would drown out the space that opened inside her whenever she thought of Lexi's absence.
She counted to ten, opened her eyes, and returned to the computer screen with a resigned sigh.
She pulled a stack of Enclave memos and dug into a set of closed-door meeting notes someone had tried to bury in the wrong folder. Narcissa's name showed up twice on the attendance list. The agenda was disguised under a fake title about sanitation, but the real subjects were clear enough: training, loyalty, and preparation for service.
Ann read the cold, stripped-down language. She didn't slam the desk or curse. She simply sent Eva two words: Found them.
She cross-checked Narcissa's sign-ins with the orphan program records. The overlap was too consistent to be coincidence.
She added to her summary: "Narcissa attended the loyalty training sessions. The timeline lines up exactly with the growth of the orphan program."
She stared at the last line she had written and her stomach turned as she saw what lay ahead of them clearly.
"This is the part where you tell me to stop needling you," Maeve said. "Because despite the fact that this problem just seems to keep getting bigger, you have a plan…right?"
"I think so…"
"And you're afraid of what it will demand of you."
"Yes."
Maeve went quiet for a moment.
"Then say the fear out loud. Not to me. To yourself. Name it. Even if the room is empty."
Ann hated this, putting words in the air that could be overheard and used against her, but the room was empty, and the other voice in her head already knew.
"I'm afraid of being right," she said. "Because if I'm right, we aren't facing a king with an army and a taste for cruelty. We're facing a king whose power won't end when his body breaks. We're facing a pact that won't die with him unless we cut the ties to the source."
Her hand trembled against the table. She held the edge until it steadied.
"There it is," Maeve said softly. "And you're terrified of what this means for Greyson...and to Lexi if he dies…"
Ann's mouth set in a grim line as she drafted one last order to the blacksmiths:
"Add countermark set B into every portal frame. No comments. No substitutions. Priority build. Report when complete." She attached the drawings and locked the file with a double password.
She shut the screens down and closed her eyes, picturing the chalked foundation on the grounds, the frame rising, the marks etched into metal. She saw the moment it would open and she could see exactly what would happen if she had missed even a single step.
She opened her eyes and quickly checked the marks again as she sipped from her mug. The tea had gone cold but it didn't matter. She set it down, saved everything again, and stood.
She pressed her palm flat on the desk and spoke one more line aloud into the room.
"Knowing all this can help us, and it can hurt us if the knowledge falls into the wrong hands, but, I'm still going to use it."
"Good," Maeve snarled, "Because I'm not interested in losing to a king who put a leash around his own throat and called it a crown. Fucking idiot."
Ann closed the files, pocketed the keys, and stepped into the corridor. She didn't look back as she made her way back to her room.
At the corner, a runner skidded to a halt in front of her with a sealed note.
"For you, Alpha Queen." He held it out with both hands.
Ann broke the seal and saw Eva's quick, neat handwriting:
I've pulled your texts. Confirming your readings. One correction in "Crown and Gate," page nine. Gate anchor corrupts at the point of declaration, not at construction. Will brief you in the morning.
Ann folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. Declaration, not construction…she corrected the notes in her head and shifted the long risk assessment that ran constantly inside her head.
Ann kept moving knowing that Adam would be in his office or out on the grounds. She would find him and they would go through the summary together. He would rage. She wouldn't stop him. Then she would lay out the steps for dealing with the current shitstorm that this would unlock.
She pushed open Adam's door without knocking and he looked up, taking in her face, the notes in her hands, and the way she filled the doorway.
"What did you find?" he asked with a resigned expression, knowing that it couldn't be good.
Ann stepped inside and shut the door. "Enough."