Chapter 200

Kade

By ten that night there was nothing left for me to do, and I couldn’t stop doing it.

Ryan had the trucks. Five of them, fueled and loaded in the yard, with chains on the tires and the emergency packs Malachi had told us to carry stowed under the seats. Twenty-two men, and Kaia, who had come to Ryan herself that afternoon and stood in front of him in her training clothes until he put her name on the list. Liam hadn’t argued. I had watched him not argue, and I knew what it cost him.

Garrick would hold the house. I had asked him that afternoon, in the corridor outside the dining hall, while the Council’s cars were still pulling out of the yard. He had looked at me for a while, leaning on his cane. Then he had said, “Your father asked me that once,” and nothing else, and nodded.

Imogen had rung Agnes. The coven would be waiting at Elspeth’s house above Blackridge. Vincent had rung me. His men had pulled back off the mountain, every one of them, and we