Chapter 32

Richard

The inner chamber was colder than I remembered. Not by temperature—by energy. These men and women had built kingdoms with their silence, and today they brought that silence to me in layers. Folded, intentional, sharpened.

I took my seat at the head of the long oak table. Every page in the packet before me had been vetted, revised, combed for missteps. Every policy line was technically sound. That didn’t mean it would survive the room.

“Shall we begin?” Elder Thorne asked, his voice gravel and suspicion.

We began.

For the first forty-five minutes, the discussion stayed where I expected: tax reform, pack subsidy ceilings, border security updates. But David was waiting. I could see it in how still he sat, how he only flipped pages he already knew by heart.

He struck just after a round of proposed adjustments to the southern territory patrol budget.

“There’s a growing concern,” David said, “about internal bias within your administration. Namely, the influence of your newest intern.”

He didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to.

“She’s a political science student, not a policy architect,” Elder Soren muttered.

“She’s a child,” another added. “One with unusually broad access.”

My jaw tensed. I did not rise to meet them. I spoke evenly.

“Amelia’s insights have helped refine three key proposals currently under elder review. Her presence is noted because her work merits it.”

David leaned back in his chair, smug. “Noted, yes. But what does it say that she is the only civilian consistently allowed behind these doors? What conclusions might the public draw?”

“From what I’ve seen,” Elder Rhee cut in sharply, “she’s the only one who asks the right questions.”

Silence spread like wildfire. David’s expression flickered, and for once, he shut his mouth.

I stood before the conversation could move on.

“Excuse me a moment.”

Outside, Amelia was pacing the hall. Her eyes snapped to me as I opened the door.

“I didn’t mean to become a liability,” she said quickly.

“You aren’t.”

My voice was firmer than I expected. “You’re the reason I still believe we can win this the right way.”

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t speak. I could see the question behind her lips. The one neither of us could afford to ask.

I didn’t answer it. I just nodded once and slipped back into the chamber.

Amelia

The summit was shifting. I could feel it in the way people spoke more carefully, the way even the air in the estate felt weighted. Today was the final round of policy discussions with the council elders. Richard was meeting them behind closed doors, and I’d been given a carefully curated sliver of access.

A curated sliver... and complete responsibility.

My job was to organize the agenda and verify that every piece of supporting documentation had been reviewed, formatted, and digitally logged. The folder I’d been granted access to wasn’t thin, but it was redacted within an inch of its usefulness. Still, I printed what I could, cross-referenced older drafts, and made myself indispensable. Emma sent over an encrypted batch of old budget audits that she’d managed to recover from the internal server. I annotated them until my fingers cramped.

The archive room was always colder than the rest of the estate. I’d brought tea, forgot it, and found it again cold as stone. I was thumbing through a 1994 policy amendment on elder appointment reform when the door creaked.

I turned.

Adam stood in the doorway, clearly startled to see me. He was holding a binder—not from the section I’d been working in.

He recovered quickly. “Didn’t expect anyone in here.”

“Same,” I said, too flat to be polite.

He cleared his throat. “I was just looking for formatting templates. For the campaign output reports.”

“Those are digital,” I said. “We haven’t archived physical copies in two years.”

He gave a sheepish smile and backed away too fast.

I waited until I couldn’t hear his footsteps before pulling out my phone. I messaged Emma:

Just ran into Adam in the archives. Said he was looking for formatting templates, but didn’t log anything. Can you keep an eye on him? I’m tightening document access just in case.

Then I sat down and reset every clearance level below my own. I added two-factor authentication to the sensitive files and rewrote the digital access log to flag any unauthorized downloads. Just in case.

Later that afternoon, Dario texted me: Got something. Can I stop by?

He arrived with a manila folder, yellowed at the edges, and a wary look in his eye.

“This was in our pack’s archive. It’s signed by a former Clearwater elder, early ‘00s. Thought it might mean something.”

I pulled the paper out carefully. The signature at the bottom was unfamiliar, but the phrasing—stilted, formal, almost coded—matched exactly with what I’d seen in the anonymous folder from weeks ago.

“What made you think to bring this to me?”

“I remembered something you said at the session. About finding patterns in buried files. And I figured, if anyone might recognize buried language... it’d be you.”

I stared at him for a beat. “Do you mind if I make a copy?”

He nodded. “That’s why I brought it to you.”

I scanned it, encrypted the file, and sent it to one of my offsite contacts who specialized in archival decryption.

As Dario left, he glanced back over his shoulder. “I think you’re onto something bigger than a summit.”

“So do I.”

The elder council meeting took place in the estate’s inner chamber, the kind of room that smelled like dust and history and things people would rather forget. I wasn’t allowed inside, but I was stationed just outside, ready with extra printouts and my phone.

The guards stationed near the door gave me a few sideways glances, but I kept my head down and focused. I organized a last-minute folder of citations for Richard, highlighting phrases in green that I knew he preferred, and sent them in with a runner.

The voices inside were muffled, but tone didn’t need words. There was tension. Then louder voices. Then one I recognized as David’s, smooth and smug:

“—and it’s worth considering whether the presence of certain staff members compromises the neutrality of this process.”

My stomach clenched.

Another voice followed. Female, sharp-edged, unfazed.

“From what I’ve seen, she’s the only one who asks the right questions.”

Silence followed. No rebuttal.

Then the door opened, and Richard stepped out.

I was pacing. He caught me mid-turn.

“I didn’t mean to become a liability,” I said before I could stop myself.

“You aren’t.”

His eyes didn’t waver. “You’re the reason I still believe we can win this the right way.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. But I felt the shift again—not the political one. The one between us. The one that had no name yet.

He lingered for a second longer, then went back inside.

That evening, just before midnight, my phone buzzed. One new message from my contact.

Decoded and translated. Attached below.

The letter described a list of abuses committed during the final years of the war—disappearances, blacksite detentions, unethical bonding trials. It was signed anonymously, but one name came up more than once: Red Fang.

I sat up straighter. That name had appeared in the original anonymous folder.

I clicked through to the second page of the attachment. There were references to experiments conducted in border zones, subjects with unstable bonds, handlers referred to by animal codenames. Red Fang was listed twice, once in a footnote and once in a margin scribble: Clearwater handler. Senior. Unclear allegiance.

My hands were cold. I downloaded the file and printed it on the old machine in the hallway, then tacked it up on the wall above my desk. One page turned into two, then four. I used red thread to connect Red Fang to the elder letter, and Clearwater, and finally, reluctantly, to Richard’s name—with a question mark between them.

I stared at it until my eyes burned.

Whatever this was, it had just become bigger than me.