The meeting, when it came, wasn't the ambush either of them had braced for. Marcus Cole arrived alone at the cabin an hour past noon, driving himself in an unremarkable sedan, no security detail visible, and stood at the edge of the property with his hands loosely at his sides in a posture that read, unmistakably, as a man who had come to talk rather than to collect.

"I assume Vesna reached you," Ezra said, stepping onto the porch, Lucien close behind him.

"She did." Cole's composure, usually so carefully maintained, carried something different today — a tiredness that hadn't been present at the gala, or the rooftop, as though...