ELARA POV
"Where is Mira?"
Silas didn't look up from the window. "Reassigned."
I stopped in the middle of the room. "What do you mean reassigned."
"She no longer works this floor." He said it like it was nothing. Like he'd moved a piece of furniture and I was making a big deal out of it. "Her duties have been redirected to the south wing."
"You fired her."
"I reassigned her."
"Because of me." I crossed my arms. "You fired the one person in this entire palace who actually talked to me because…why? Because she brought me breakfast?"
He finally turned from the window. His face was doing that closed-off thing. Jaw set, eyes giving nothing. "The staff assigned to the east tower have been replaced. All of them. New ones will be vetted and briefed before they begin."
"Vetted." I stared at him. "You're vetting the people who bring me food."
"I'm ensuring the people with access to you are trustworthy."
"Access to me." I laughed. Not because anything was funny. Just because I didn't know what else to do with that sentence. "Silas. I don't need to be managed. I need…"
"You're carrying the heir." His voice came out harder now. Not loud. Just final. "Every person who comes near you is a potential threat. That's not negotiable."
"And the tower?" I said. "Did you also lock the tower? Because I tried to go down to the garden this morning and the guard at the bottom told me the east wing is restricted until further notice. Your orders."
Silence.
"Silas."
"The garden isn't safe right now."
"It was safe yesterday."
"Yesterday you weren't confirmed pregnant."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "So now that I'm actually carrying your child I get … what … less freedom? Not more? That's the logic here?"
"It's not about freedom."
"Then what is it about?"
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved in his expression … not quite guilt, not quite anything I had a clean word for. "Sit down," he said. "Eat something."
I looked at the table he gestured toward. There was food on it. A full spread … more than I'd been given any morning before. Hot food. Actual hot food, still steaming, which meant he'd brought it up recently.
He'd brought it up himself.
I looked at the food. Looked at him. "Did you carry that up here."
He didn't answer which meant yes.
"Silas." I pressed my fingers against my forehead. "You can't do this."
"You need to eat."
"I know I need to eat. That's not what I'm talking about and you know it." I dropped my hand. "You can't fire my maids and lock my tower and bring me food yourself and call it protection. That's not protection. That's a cage with nicer furniture."
"You're already in a cage." He said it flat. "You've been in one since the Chamber. I'm just making sure the one you're in doesn't get you killed."
That landed somewhere uncomfortable. Because he wasn't wrong and I hated that he wasn't wrong.
I sat down at the table. Not because he told me to. Because my legs were tired and the food smelled good and I hadn't eaten since the night before.
He stayed by the window. Watching me.
"Stop watching me eat," I said.
"I'm not."
"You are literally standing there watching me eat."
He looked away. Out the window. Close enough.
I ate. The food was good … better than anything that had come up on the trays before. I didn't ask where it came from. I just ate and tried to think through everything I knew and everything I didn't and figure out what came next.
The prophecy in the library. Hidden behind two books on a shelf in the middle of the room. The surrogate must die for the heir to live. He hadn't answered me yesterday when I asked if he knew. Which meant he knew. Which meant he'd known before the ritual and he'd stood across that altar from me and said the words anyway.
I should bring it up. I should just say it right now, across this room, and watch his face.
I wasn't ready for his face yet.
"The veins are spreading," I said instead. "Past my shoulder now. Close to my neck."
He turned from the window.
"I noticed," he said.
"Is that … is that normal? For the pregnancy?"
Something shifted in his expression. "There's no normal for this pregnancy."
"That's not actually an answer."
"No." He moved away from the window finally, came and stood on the other side of the table. Not sitting … just standing there, hands at his sides, looking down at me. "It's not normal. The Void is … it moves fast when it finds the right vessel. Faster than it should."
"The right vessel." I kept my voice level. "You mean me."
"Yes."
"Because I'm an Omega with a touch that stops the noise in your head."
He went very still.
"I read about Omega blood," I said. That was a lie … I hadn't read anything, I'd just been thinking about it since the ritual. But he didn't need to know that. "Certain Omega bloodlines carry something older than pack magic. Something that can interact with things like the Void." I held his eyes. "Is that why I was chosen."
The muscle in his jaw moved.
"Julian chose you," he said carefully. "The Council…"
"I know the Council chose me. I'm asking why." I pushed the plate aside. "Because Julian stood in that Chamber and called me a nobody. An Omega with a parlor trick. But nobodies don't get chosen for something like this. So what is it about my blood that the Council wanted in that ritual room."
He didn't answer.
"What am I." Quieter now. Not soft … just direct. "What is my blood doing to this baby."
"Elara…"
"Tell me."
"It's amplifying it." The words came out rough, like he'd been holding them back and just ran out of room. "Your blood … what's in it … it's not just a touch that stops the noise. It's a frequency. An old one. And the Void responds to it like…" He stopped. "The heir is growing faster than any Vane child has ever grown. Your body is feeding it something mine couldn't."
The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago.
"How fast," I said.
"Fast."
"Silas. How fast."
"Weeks instead of months." He said it quiet. "Maybe less."
I sat with that for a second. Weeks. The thing inside me was growing in weeks instead of months. The moving veins on my arm. The staff pressing themselves against walls when I walked by. The food he was bringing himself because he'd fired everyone else.
"Stand up," I said.
He blinked. "What."
"I need to say something and I can't say it sitting down, it feels wrong, just…" I pushed back from the table and stood up. "Stand there and listen."
He stayed where he was. Which was close enough.
"You don't get to lock me in," I said. "I understand that you're scared. I understand that whatever is happening is moving faster than you expected and that makes you want to control every single thing around me. I get it. But I am a person. I was a person before the contract and I'm still a person now and if you take away every bit of choice I have left I will lose my mind in this tower and that will not be good for me or the baby or anyone." I stopped. Breathed. "So you're going to unlock the garden. And you're going to let Mira come back. And you're going to stop standing in my room watching me eat. Deal?"
Silas looked at me for a long moment.
"No," he said.
"Silas…"
"The garden, maybe." His jaw was set. "Mira, no. She knows too much now just from being in your proximity. And I'm not going to apologize for making sure you eat."
"That's not…" I felt it before I understood it. A heat behind my eyes. Not tears. Something else. Something that moved up from my chest and into my face and pressed out through my eyes like pressure behind glass. "You are so…"
I stopped.
Because Silas had gone completely still.
Not the normal kind of still. The kind of still that meant something had changed and he was processing it. His eyes were fixed on my face and his expression … for the first time since I'd met him … looked genuinely thrown.
"Your eyes," he said.
"What about them."
"They just…" He took one slow step toward me. His head tilted slightly. "They flashed."
"What."
"Purple." He said it like he was saying something impossible. "They went purple. Just for a second. The same…" He stopped. Looked at me like he was seeing something new. Something that rearranged the way he'd been thinking. "That's not wolf. That's not Omega. That's…"
He didn't finish.
But I saw it on his face. The moment it clicked. Whatever math he was doing behind those grey eyes, it came out to an answer he wasn't ready for.
He took a step back.
Looked at my arm. The veins. Looked at my face again.
"The baby isn't just taking from the Void," he said. Slow. Like he was figuring it out as he said it. "It's giving something back." Another step back. His voice had gone strange. "It's rewriting you."