The silence of the Sanctum had shifted. It was no longer the heavy, velvet quiet of a private sanctuary; it was the hollow, ringing silence of a tomb that had been disturbed.
Silas stood over the console, his face illuminated by the ghost-white light of the monitor. The message—Protect the daughter—seemed to burn into the screen. His hand, still slick with the amber oil he had used on Evelyn's feet only minutes before, gripped the edge of the obsidian desk until his knuckles were white enough to crack. The transition from the raw, desperate intimacy of the massage to this cold, digital nightmare was so violent it felt like a physical blow.
"Trace it," Silas commanded, his voice a jagged whisper that cut through the ozone-thick air.
Evelyn was already moving. She had scrambled off the table, her bare feet hitting the floor with a soft slap. She didn't look for her dress; she grabbed Silas's discarded tuxedo jacket and threw it over her silk robe, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a frantic, lethal speed. The "V" had returned, but this time, the ghost was haunted.
"I'm running a recursive scan on the internal server," Evelyn muttered, her eyes reflecting the cascades of green code. "If the message was sent from inside this house, there should be a localized ping. A heartbeat. Something."
"And if it wasn't?" Silas asked, his gaze fixed on the heavy double doors of the study as if he expected them to melt away.
"Then we're dealing with a timed-release virus that has been dormant in my mother's code for a decade. But the metadata... Silas, the metadata says this packet was created three minutes ago."
She stopped. Her breath hitched in her throat.
"The source," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It's not coming from the mainframe. It's coming from the nursery. The North Wing."
Silas didn't hesitate. He reached for the heavy black cane leaning against the desk. He didn't use the wheelchair. He moved with a limping, predatory speed that ignored the pain radiating from his spine. "Marcus! Lockdown! Section Blue! Now!" he roared into his comms.
The North Wing was a part of the estate Evelyn had never visited. It was the "museum" of the Nightwood past, a hallway filled with dust-covered furniture and portraits of children who had long since grown into monsters. The air here was colder, smelling of stale lavender and the slow, inevitable rot of history.
As they moved down the hallway, the only sound was the rhythmic thud-drag of Silas's cane and the frantic beating of Evelyn's heart. The strobe lights of the security system flickered overhead, casting long, distorted shadows against the walls.
"The nursery was sealed after the crash," Silas said, his voice low and tight. "My father couldn't stand the sight of it. It's been dark for ten years."
They reached the door—a heavy piece of white-painted wood, now gray with age. The electronic lock was dead, its red light unblinking.
Silas pushed the door open with the tip of his cane.
The room was a frozen moment in time. A hand-carved rocking horse stood in the corner, its wooden eyes staring into the darkness. A cradle, draped in yellowed lace, sat near the window. But the air in the room was warm. Too warm.
Evelyn walked toward the small desk in the corner—a child-sized table where a vintage laptop, a model from a decade ago, sat open. Its screen was glowing with a soft, pulsing blue light.
"It's a localized transmitter," Evelyn said, her hand hovering over the ancient keyboard. "Someone set this up... recently. They bypassed the entire estate's security by using the old analog wiring in the walls. It's a ghost in the wires."
She leaned in, looking for a physical clue. And then she smelled it.
It wasn't the scent of Silas. It wasn't the sandalwood of the estate. It was something sharper, more clinical. The smell of a hospital—and a faint, lingering note of a very specific, very expensive brand of French cigarette.
The same cigarettes Julian Vane smoked.
"Silas," Evelyn whispered, pointing to the floor beside the desk.
In the dust, there was a single, fresh footprint. A man's dress shoe. Narrow, elegant, and pointed.
"Julian?" she asked, her voice a mix of fear and confusion. "How could he get in here? This wing is a fortress."
Silas didn't answer. He walked to the window, his eyes narrowing as he looked out at the darkened gardens. He reached down and picked up something from the windowsill—a small, silver coin. A Nightwood family crest was on one side. On the other, a date: 2018.
"Julian Vane is a vulture," Silas said, his voice turning into a cold, hollow stone. "But he's not a ghost. He doesn't know the layout of this wing. He doesn't know about the analog bypass."
He turned to Evelyn, his eyes burning with a dark, terrifying suspicion. "Someone gave him the keys, Evelyn. Someone who lives in this house. Someone who has been waiting for the Chrysalis to wake up."
"You think I—"
"I don't know what to think!" Silas roared, the frustration of the interrupted night finally exploding. He moved toward her, pinning her against the nursery wall, his hands slamming into the plaster on either side of her head. He was so close she could feel the heat of his rage, the scent of the amber oil still clinging to his skin, mocking the intimacy they had almost shared.
"My mother's message said Protect the daughter," Evelyn hissed, her own anger rising to meet his. "If I were working with Julian, why would I lead you straight to the transmitter? Why would I show you the footprint?"
"Because you're a master of the long game!" Silas growled, his face inches from hers. "You've been a ghost for ten years, Evelyn. How do I know this isn't just another layer of the mask? How do I know you didn't send that message yourself to see if I'd finally break?"
The tension between them was no longer about desire; it was about survival. The "Golden Cage" had suddenly become a interrogation room. Evelyn looked into the eyes of the man she had almost given herself to, and she saw the monster returned in full force.
"Then search me," she whispered, her voice a lethal, quiet challenge. She pulled open the tuxedo jacket, revealing the thin silk of her robe, her body a pale, defiant line in the darkness. "Search the room. Search my code. But don't you dare think I'd use my mother's ghost to play a game with a man like you."
Silas stared at her, his breathing ragged. His gaze traveled over her body—the bruises on her lips, the pulse jumping in her throat, the raw vulnerability of her bare feet. The anger in his eyes flickered, replaced for a second by a look of profound, agonizing conflict.
He didn't search her. He let out a long, shuddering breath and pulled back, leaning heavily on his cane.
"Marcus," he said into the comms, his voice sounding ten years older. "Sweep the North Wing. Every inch. If you find so much as a stray hair that doesn't belong to a Nightwood, I want it analyzed. And Marcus... check the basement. The old servant tunnels."
"The tunnels?" Evelyn asked. "I thought they were collapsed."
"So did I," Silas replied, not looking at her. "But it seems the dead in this house aren't as buried as I thought."
He walked toward the door, stopping only to look back at the glowing blue screen of the ancient laptop. "Tomorrow, we don't go after the Vance subsidiaries. Tomorrow, we find out who the third shadow in this house is. And Evelyn?"
She looked at him, her heart heavy with the weight of the new distance between them.
"Until I know for sure... you stay in the West Wing. Locked. No monitors. No code. Chapter fourteen, section one: Trust is a luxury the Nightwoods can no longer afford."
He disappeared into the hallway, the thud-drag of his cane sounding like a funeral march.
Evelyn stood in the dark nursery, the blue light of the laptop painting her face in the color of a bruise. She looked at the cradle, then at the single footprint in the dust.
She wasn't just a partner anymore. She was a suspect.
But as she reached out to close the laptop, a new line of text appeared on the screen. It wasn't code. It was a single word, written in her mother's elegant, slanted hand.
Clockwork.
Evelyn froze. It was a code word they had used when she was six years old—a signal that someone was listening.
She didn't tell Silas. She didn't call Marcus. She simply closed the laptop and walked out into the cold hallway, the tuxedo jacket wrapped around her like a shield.
The game hadn't just changed. It had gone silent. And the most dangerous person in the Nightwood Estate wasn't the one with the gun, or the one with the code.
It was the one who was still breathing behind the veil.