Kaelen led the Warlords to the library for "private negotiations," leaving the Architects in the drawing room under Valeria's watchful, suspicious eye.
I didn't stay. I waited until they were distracted, then slipped into the service corridors. I knew the mansion's blueprint better than Kaelen realized. I had installed the new surveillance nodes in the library myself during my "taming" phase.
I reached my new laboratory, the one with no locks. I sat at the terminal, my heart hammering against my ribs, and activated the audio feed from the library.
"...the integration is at ninety-eight percent," I heard Kaelen's voice. It was cold, clinical—the voice of the man who had studied me like a specimen.
"And the final stage?" Dorian asked. "The Council is losing patience, Kaelen. The Inquisition is closing in on the Hunter line in London. We need the Phoenix Protocol now. We need the one Source who can stabilize us all."
