Snow still clung to Leo's jacket when they made it back to the resistance aircraft. Nobody spoke on the way back to their safehouse in Warsaw, but the silence wasn't peace — it was a taut wire ready to snap.
Jack broke it first. "We should've put a bullet in her head when we had the chance."
Leo turned sharply. "She's my mother."
"She's a warlord in the making," Jack shot back. "And you hesitating just put the rest of us in her crosshairs."
"Enough," Eleanor said. Her voice cut through the tension like a blade. "We don't win this by tearing each other apart."
---
Three nights later, they struck a Black Division supply line moving through Prague. It was supposed to be quick — hit the convoy, grab intel, get out. But the convoy was a trap.
The first explosion tore through the street in a burst of fire and glass. Gunfire followed, echoing between the buildings. Leo dropped behind an overturned car, scanning for targets.
"Where's Ava?" he yelled into his comm.
"Rooftop!" her voice came back. Then there was a burst of static — and silence.
---
They fought their way out, but Ava didn't.
By the time the gunfire stopped, she was gone. The only thing left behind was her rifle and a single black feather.
Leo stared at it in the flickering light of the burning convoy. The Black Division's calling card.
---
Back at the safehouse, the air was heavy with blame. Jack slammed his fists onto the table. "They knew we were coming. Someone sold us out."
Eleanor's gaze swept the room. "We all know who had contact with Seraphine recently."
Leo's jaw tightened. "You think I told her?"
"I think she got into your head," Jack said. "And now Ava's paying the price."
---
A coded transmission arrived an hour later — a live feed from an unknown location. Ava sat in a steel chair, hands bound, blood on her temple. Behind her, Seraphine stood with the calm of someone who owned the room.
"Leo," she said into the camera, "you have a choice. Come to me willingly, and she lives. Refuse, and you'll watch her die."
The feed cut to black.
---
The team argued for hours. Eleanor wanted to mount a rescue, but their intel was thin — they only had a trace on the transmission pointing somewhere in Istanbul. Jack insisted it was suicide.
Leo said nothing, but his mind was already set.
That night, he left alone.
---
Istanbul's undercity was a maze of tunnels older than the city itself, carved from stone and lit by swaying bulbs. He followed the trail of Black Division operatives deeper until the air grew damp and cold.
Two guards stood at the entrance to a chamber. They never saw him coming — one went down to a knife, the other to a silenced shot.
Inside, Ava was there. She looked up when he entered, and for a heartbeat, relief flooded her eyes.
Then the click of a hammer stopped him cold.
Jack stepped from the shadows, a pistol aimed at Leo's chest.
---
"You?" Leo breathed.
"Black Division offered me something better than dying in a basement for a cause that's already lost," Jack said. "I told them where to find her. I told them where to find you."
A figure moved behind him — Seraphine.
"You can still choose, Leo," she said. "Jack did."
---
Leo glanced at Ava. Her lips moved silently: Don't.
He raised his hands slowly, calculating distance, timing, everything. Then the world erupted — a thunderclap of gunfire from the corridor behind him as Eleanor stormed in with a squad of resistance fighters.
The fight was chaos — muzzle flashes in the dark, shouts, the ring of metal on stone. Jack vanished into the smoke. Seraphine didn't. She stood at the far end of the chamber, meeting Leo's eyes one last time before slipping into a hidden passage.
---
They got Ava out, but the cost was high. The resistance squad left two bodies behind, and Jack was now deep in the Black Division.
In the aftermath, Eleanor laid it out. "They're moving toward Phoenix Ash. If they trigger it, every major intelligence network in the world goes dark — permanently."
"And we don't know where they'll do it," Ava said, her voice hoarse.
Leo closed his hand around the black hawk pendant. "Then we find out. And when we do, I finish this — with Seraphine, or without her."