I'm already moving away from Amasten and his man in the doorway toward the exit. Bag in hand, seed case left on the table where I set it because I don't have space for it right now and I am not about to carry his bargaining chip into my family's house.
"Benitova—"
"I'll be in touch." I don't stop. Don't turn around. "About the other thing."
I'm through the door before he can say anything else.
I call a cab from the street. Four minutes. I stand on the pavement outside Amasten's building with my phone to my ear getting nothing from the estate line, nothing from my mother, nothing from pack security until the third try when someone finally picks up and gives me the short version.
East boundary breach. Three individuals. Alexandra is hurt but stable. They're gone.
"Gone," I repeat.
"They retreated when backup arrived, Miss Marcel. But they left something. A message — addressed to you specifically."
The cab pulls up. I get in. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
The estate looks untouched from the outside. That's the worst part — same gate, same camera, same quiet street. Inside is a different story. Security at positions they don't usually hold. The particular stillness of a house that has been moved through roughly and hasn't settled yet.
My mother is in the foyer. She's been crying — past tense, eyes dry now, but the shape of it still on her face. She takes my hands the moment I'm close enough.
"She's upstairs. The doctor came. Three ribs, a cut at her temple. She's furious." My mother's mouth does something complicated. "Which means she's fine."
"The message," I say. "Where is the message?"
"Benny—"
"Mum. Where is it."
She points toward the security post near the east corridor. I go.
The envelope is sealed with wax. Old fashioned. A single word on the front in handwriting I would recognize anywhere, have been recognizing in nightmares for four years without meaning to.
BENITOVA.
I take it from the guard without opening it. Carry it upstairs. Knock once on Alexandra's door and push it open.
She looks exactly like my mother said — furious, which is her version of fine. Propped up against the headboard, arm strapped, the stitches at her temple neat and recent. She tracks me across the room with her eyes the way she always does, reading everything before I've said a word.
She sees the envelope.
Something in her face goes very still.
"Close the door," she says.
I close it. Pull the chair close to the bed. Sit. We look at each other for a moment — the long look, the one that has years in it.
"Devereaux," I say.
"Of course." Just the name, landing between us like something we've both been waiting to say out loud for a long time.
I hold up the envelope. "You read it with me."
She nods.
I break the seal.
The letter is short. Two paragraphs, his handwriting — neat, slanted, the handwriting of a man who learned penmanship somewhere expensive and uses it to remind you of that.
I read it once to myself. Then I read it out loud because Alexandra is watching my face and she needs the words, not my reaction to them.
"You have something of mine buried on that land. I've been patient. I won't be patient much longer. Return what belongs to me or the next time I send people, I send more of them — and I send them for you, not your sister."
Alexandra's jaw tightens. I keep reading.
"I've been watching you, Benitova. I know about Zakiel. I know what you are to each other — perhaps better than you do. Consider carefully who you choose to trust with Marcel land. Consider even more carefully who you choose to trust with yourself."
Silence.
The kind that has weight.
"He knows," I say.
"About the bond." Alexandra's voice is careful. Measuring. "Or he thinks he does."
"He was watching us. The crash wasn't random — he used the distraction. Three days of my face in the press next to Amasten's and Devereaux saw an opening and took it." I set the letter on the bed between us. "He's been watching long enough to connect dots I haven't connected myself."
"What dots," Alexandra says. Quiet. Specific. The way she asks questions when she already suspects the answer.
I look at her.
She looks back.
"Benny. What did Amasten offer you today."
The seeds sit in my memory — seven small dark things in a velvet case on a table in a building I walked out of twenty minutes ago without looking back. I left them there. I told myself it was because I didn't want to carry his bargaining chip into my family's house.
I'm sitting here now wondering if I left them because some part of me already decided and doesn't want to admit it yet.
"He offered me access to Marcel land," Alexandra says when I don't answer. "And something in return. Something he knew you'd want badly enough to consider it."
"Alex—"
"What was it, Benny?"
The fire in the corner moves. Outside, the estate is quiet again, security back at their posts, the house settling around the fact of what happened today.
"A way out," I say finally. "Of all of it. Permanently."
Alexandra closes her eyes for exactly one second. Opens them.
"And Devereaux knows Amasten has them," she says. "Which means he knows what Amasten wants from our land. Which also means whatever is buried on that east plot—" She stops. Resets. "We are in the middle of something that started before either of us was born, Benny. And both of them know more about it than we do."
I pick up the letter. Read the last line again.
Consider even more carefully who you choose to trust with yourself.
"I need to find out what's on that land," I say. "Before either of them gets to it."
"I know." Alexandra shifts against the headboard, winces slightly at the ribs. "There's someone who might know. She was pack before our parents' time — old enough to remember what was buried and why. She doesn't talk to Marcels anymore. She doesn't even talk to anyone."
"But she'll talk to me," I say.
Alexandra looks at me with the expression she reserves for moments when she doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified that I exist.
"She knew your father," she says. "Your real one."
The room goes very quiet.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Unknown number. The same one that called four times this afternoon.
I pick up.