"He is not here to complete the commission," my mother said. "He has been in the forest for six days and he has not moved on the cottage once. He is waiting."
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said. "The water does not give me motivation. It gives me position and direction." She looked at Zevran. "But you know who it is."
It was not a question. Zevran had gone very still.
"Yes," he said.
"Who?" I asked.
He said a name I did not recognize. Erix Nocturne.
Nocturne. My father's name. My name.
"He is Court?" I asked.
"He was raised by Cael," Zevran said. "Your father took him in when he was newly turned, about two hundred years ago. He has been with the Court his entire life. He is twenty years old in appearance. He is one of the best fighters I have ever seen. And Valdrik gave him your commission."
My father's ward. Raised by my father. Given the assignment to kill my father's daughter.
I went outside.
Erix Nocturne was standing at the tree line exactly where my mother's vision had placed him. He looked young. Not twenty, closer to eighteen in appearance, with the straight posture of someone raised in disciplined environments and the careful hands of someone trained to be dangerous. He was assessing me with the particular attention of someone who had been assessing me from a distance for a long time and was finally doing it directly.
"You are the one they sent to kill me," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"And yet here I am. Alive."
"Yes," he said again.
"Why?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Because Cael raised me," he said. "And you are Cael's daughter. And I could not put both of those facts in the same place."
No justification. No defense. Just the thing he could not resolve, stated plainly.
I understood that more than I wanted to.
"How long have you been watching the cottage?" I asked.
"Six days," he said. "Before that, two years. Cael asked me to keep informal track of your movements. Off record. He could not do it himself."
Two years. My father had been watching me through Erix for two years while under Court restriction. I had spent two years thinking he was absent.
I pressed my jaw tight and held it.
"The commission was assigned six months ago?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Cael does not know."
"Valdrik used a secondary channel. Standard for family-adjacent targets."
Family-adjacent. Court language for someone who was a problem because of who they were connected to. Not what they had done. Just who they were connected to.
"You have a choice," I said. "You can go back to the Court and report that the commission requires more time to execute. You can come with us. Or you can try to complete the commission right now." I met his eyes. "Only one of those options ends with you still breathing."
He looked at Zevran, who had come to stand behind me. Some communication passed between them, the fast language of people who had a history in the same spaces.
"What are you trying to do?" he asked. "With the Orb."
"Break the Dual Malediction."
He stared at me.
"That is not possible."
"That is what everyone keeps saying," I said. "About things I then proceed to do."
Zevran made a sound that was almost a laugh. Erix looked at him. Looked back at me.
"Valdrik will not stop," Erix said. "Even if the curse breaks."
"I know that," I said. "That is a separate problem. We have eleven days before the Ashenmoon and a commission hunter in my tree line and a Faction leader who wants to use me as a symbol. The curse is the first problem."
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he stepped out of the tree line and onto the borderland path.
He stepped out of the tree line and I exhaled. And then my mother's voice came from the cottage doorway, sharp and stripped of its usual control: Selene. Come inside. Now. The ward was screaming. Not the coven signature from Vesra's visit. Something else. The specific alarm frequency my mother had set for one single category of intrusion. One that had never fired in the seventeen years the ward had been running. Court authority. Obsidian Court. Senior level. Not a patrol. Not a surveillance operative. Someone at the very top of the Court's power structure had just put their hand on my mother's ward. And there was only one person at the very top who would come to the borderlands personally.