Brendon dropped into one of the chairs and turned to Diana, who was shooting murderous looks at the door. Neil, on the other hand, sulked in his seat, fingers flying across his phone. He looked anxious as hell—jaw tight, shoulders hunched, like he was waiting for something to explode.

  Something was definitely happening here.

  “What the hell is going on?” Brendon asked. “Why is everyone so on edge?”

  Neil shot him a filthy look. Brendon ignored it. Neil was unbearable when he was pissed—and right now, he was practically vibrating with it.

  “Don’t even ask,” Diana bit out, eyes never leaving the door. “Ever since he locked Jordan in that room, he’s gone off the rails. He hasn’t slept a wink since last night—and he sure as hell isn’t letting the rest of us either. He’s working us like mules.”

  She scoffed, yanking the hairpin free. Dark strands spilled loose around her face, softening nothing about the exhaustion etched into her features. The circles under her eyes told the rest of the story.

  “Why don’t you just tell him to go talk to him?” Brendon said lightly. “You know how he settles when Jordan’s around. He’s the only one who can still get through to him.”

  It was meant as a joke.

  It landed like a slap.

  “Shut up, Bren!” Neil snapped.

  The force of it startled even Diana.

  Neil had half-risen from his chair, hands braced against the table, breath sharp and uneven. “How can you even say that?” he went on, voice rising despite himself. “After what that boy did to him? If I were in his place, I wouldn’t have locked him in a room. I’d have put a bullet in his skull and slept better for it.”

  The hostility in Neil’s stare was naked—raw, almost feral.

  Brendon stiffened. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Neil hadn’t even been there. He hadn’t seen Jordan and Moraine together, hadn’t witnessed the fracture, the choices, the impossible aftermath. He knew the stories—everyone did—but this? This venom was personal in a way that made Brendon’s skin crawl.

  “This isn’t you,” Brendon said sharply. “You don’t swallow rumours like cheap liquor. You never have. I know exactly what he did,” He continued, voice dropping into something dangerous. “But Jordan is blood. To us. To Moraine. Even if that’s the only reason he is breathing.”

  Diana slammed her palm on the armrest.

  “Both of you—just shut your holes!” Her gaze cut between them like a blade. “One unstable man is already too many. I don’t need two more puffing their chests while the city burns.”

  She rubbed at her temple, exhaustion finally breaking through her fury. “And for your information, things outside are getting worse by the minute.”

  As if summoned by her words, Brendon’s phone chimed.

  Once. Then again.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. His eyes scanned the screen—and whatever he read drained the colour from his face so fast it was almost frightening. His mouth parted slightly, but no sound came out.

  Then the room erupted.

  Phones began ringing—one after another, overlapping, shrill. Diana’s device lit up in her hand. She looked up at Neil, really looked at him now, and something in his expression made her stomach drop.

  “Pick it up, Neil.” she ordered. “What is happening down there? We need everything. Now”

  Neil didn’t move.

  “Neil,” she snapped.

  He swallowed and finally lifted the phone to his ear. “Say it again,” he said quietly. Then, after a beat, “No. Don’t sugarcoat it.”

  He listened.

  His shoulders sagged.

  Diana turned sharply to Brendon. “Get in touch with your team in Middle Nolan—the ones sent to clear Karla’s territory have run into some troubles. Something’s gone wrong. We might need them.”

  Neil lowered the phone. “They’re not responding,” he said hoarsely. “Because there’s nothing left to respond.”

  The room went dead silent.

  “Did Karla get an upper hand somehow?” Diana asked.

  “Karla didn’t move against us,” Neil went on, words tumbling out now, his hand massaging his forehead as if he was in some deep pain. “She never had the manpower. Someone else hit her first.”

  Brendon felt a cold pit open in his gut. “Who?”

  Neil looked up at them, eyes rimmed red—not with fear, but with the dawning certainty of a man who had finally run out of lies to tell himself.

  “The East,” he said. “Vance Regale is moving finally.”

  Diana swore under her breath.

  Neil closed his eyes. “I told you something was wrong,” he murmured. “This isn’t chaos. This is preparation. He didn’t clear her out the way Salvor did with Qurais. He knew that it only helped us. So Karla wasn’t erased—she was replaced. Her second-in-command, Imara, led the charge. Backed by Vance.”

  He exhaled slowly, as if naming it made it real.

  “Another proxy,” he continued, quieter now. “And this time—”

  “…in a golden territory,” Brendon finished.

  The words settled heavily between them. And for the first time, Brendon understood something he had been circling since Neil’s first outburst.

  Neil hadn’t been anxious because he was afraid.

  He had been anxious because he had already seen the board.

  “That border touches Kazan,” Brendon said slowly. “Moraine only just secured trade routes through there. If Vance takes that—”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “—he cuts us off without firing a shot,” Diana said, clicking her tongue as the last piece slid into place. “But we still have the Docks. We control them better than anyone. He can’t—”

  “He can.”

  The door slammed shut behind the voice.

  Moraine stood there, framed in the doorway like something dragged out of fire and smoke. One hand was wrapped in a fresh bandage, already blooming red through the gauze. His hair had fallen loose around his face, usually immaculate lines abandoned. His mouth was set in a flat, merciless line.

  No one asked where he’d been.

  “Our sources sent an SOS,” Moraine said. His voice was calm. Too calm. “They’re moving for a naval blockade.”

  The room inhaled as one.

  “A blockade?” Diana snapped. “Who in their right mind is letting him do this?”

  Moraine didn’t answer at once. His gaze drifted—not to any of them, but toward the corridor beyond, where a single locked door waited out of sight.

  “The better question,” Neil said quietly, “is who can stop him.”

  He looked at Moraine now, openly.

  “Whole of Nolan’s cabinet is already in the man’s pocket,” Neil continued, tone flat, almost distant. “Those old bastards never forgave Middle Nolan for being declared neutral. They’ve been circling it ever since, waiting for a reason—any reason—to tear it apart. They lacked the spine to try and Salvor never had the intention. Vance has both.”

  Diana shifted uneasily but Brendon said nothing.

  “They worship him,” Neil added, quieter now. Not fear—certainty. The kind that came from running in the same circles as him. “He can burn a city and they’ll call it necessary. He can massacre at border and they’ll call it restraint. He’ll one day call West - the land of the Risen - and we’ll be sacred as heaven. It’s ridiculous but it is true.”

  Moraine felt something cold and precise click into place inside him.

  “Not this time,” he said.

  The room stilled.

  He straightened, palms flattening against the table, eyes dark and focused. The strategist had replaced the diplomat—sharp, ruthless, unburdened by illusion.

  “I warned Conti,” Moraine went on. “I told him that if war came again, the East would finally taste the chaos we’ve lived in for decades. They didn’t listen.” His jaw tightened, an old fury surfacing beneath his composure. “They never do.”

  He turned to Brendon. “Activate the sleepers in Middle Nolan.”

  Brendon blinked. Once. Then again.

  “…What?”

  “Tell them it’s time to act.” Moraine didn’t hesitate. “They wanted a civil war in the West. Let’s show them how it feels when the fire starts under their own feet.”

  Silence fell hard and heavy.

  Brendon’s mouth opened, then closed. His gaze flicked instinctively to the map—then away. “Moraine,” he said carefully, “that would plunge Middle Nolan into chaos.”

  “I know.”

  Askai was still there.

  The thought hung unspoken but suffocating, tightening Brendon’s chest. The boy—no, the weapon, the liability, the fulcrum of too many futures—was standing in the middle of the very territory Moraine was about to turn into a battlefield.

  “That’s hasty,” Diana snapped, breaking the tension. She pushed back from the table, arms folding tight across her chest. “This was never the plan and you know it. Those agents were contingencies—not triggers. This is exactly what Vance wants. For you to show all your cards.”

  Moraine didn’t look at her.

  “This is a distraction,” Diana pressed, frustration bleeding into her voice. “Imara is no Tommie. The blockade won’t hold. It can’t. We have reserves—deep ones—and the East knows it. They’ve always hated it, but they’ve never challenged it because they know better.”

  As Diana caught the hard set of Moraine’s eyes, she threw her hands up in open frustration.

  “This is not the time—”

  To start a war.

  The words lodged in her throat and died there, because she understood, with a sinking clarity, that this was precisely what Moraine was doing.

  This was retaliation.

  Not born of ambition or pride—but fear.

  The West was his. His people were in the West. Jordan was back in the West. Any war fought on this soil—no matter how brief, no matter how “contained”—would not be abstract. It would be personal. The strike would not land on borders or banners, but on Moraine himself and everyone whose name was tethered to his.

  That was what Diana saw now. That was what chilled her.

  What she didn’t understand—what gnawed at her unease—was the East’s sudden obsession with Middle Nolan. Since when did they care about that land of poor middle class? Why retaliate so viciously over a territory they had once been content to dismiss as an inconvenience?

  The timing was wrong. For everyone.

  Brendon knew the other half of the answer.

  And that knowledge weighed on him like a stone in his chest.

  He had grown up under Askai’s shadow—trained by him, shaped by him, trusting him the way one trusted blood. Askai was not foolish. He was not blind. Emotions did not deceive him the way they deceived other men.

  And yet—

  Brendon had seen it. Every time Vance’s name surfaced, a flicker of something unsettled crossed Askai’s eyes. Not denial or ignorance.

  Resistance.

  Every word that implicated Vance was met not with dismissal, but with tension—as if Askai were fighting a quiet war within himself, seated right across the table. Askai would never make excuses for a man unless there was something real anchoring him there. Something earned.

  That frightened Brendon more than open loyalty ever could.

  If Vance had locked Middle Nolan down—if he had seeded distractions for Moraine while tightening the noose—it could only be for one reason. He was trying to find Askai in a city that could explode any moment.

  Askai didn’t know it yet. He had been away from this shit for quite a while. Jordan’s presence had been little more than ceremonial, a shadow allowed to linger because Moraine, for all his open fury, had always kept a quiet shield around him. He barked, he threatened, he raged—but he would never truly harm Jordan.

  Or Askai.

  That much Brendon was certain of.

  But Vance wouldn’t know that. He was distracting Moraine, to keep him from hurting the boy he cared about. If that boy wasn’t Askai, maybe Moraine would have been interested.

  Damn it all.

  If he knew Askai at all—and he did—Askai had always been a magnet for disaster. Trouble didn’t just find him; it rearranged itself around him, bent its trajectory until he stood dead center of the blast.

  He should never have been in the middle of this. Everything was about to spiral out of control. Fast.

  Middle Nolan had always been a half-militarized fault line, stretched thin and unstable since Tommie’s time. Tommie had known exactly what he was doing when he had planted the gangs—he had counted on the East’s retaliation, counted on them moving in, and when they did, he had intended to make the land theirs through blood and necessity.

  Moraine would never surrender it.

  Tommie had known he wouldn’t live to see the consequences. So he had planted them in advance. He hated Moraine to that extent.

  Moraine, busy turning the West End into a functioning state, had never noticed the rat scurrying beneath his feet.

  And now the bill had come due.

  Brendon needed to get out.

  He needed to warn Askai—now, before the streets turned into kill zones and exits sealed shut.

  He shifted, barely rising from his seat.

  Moraine’s attention snapped to him instantly.

  “Where are you going?”

  The room seemed to narrow.

  “I think it’d be better if I return to Middle Nolan,” Brendon said carefully. “Before they shut us out.”

  It was an excuse. A thin one. But it was all he had.

  Askai can’t be in there alone.

  Moraine studied him for a long, unreadable moment.

  “And that would be permanent,” he said at last. “Riots will erupt the moment the authorities move in. They always do.” His voice hardened. “I don’t want any of you trapped in that region.”

  He straightened, dominance settling into every line of his posture.

  “My men are trained for this day,” Moraine continued. “They’ll handle themselves.”

  His gaze swept the room, sharp and absolute.

  “This lounge is now our control room. No one—” his eyes locked onto Brendon, “—and I mean no one—steps out of my sight.”

  The words fell like a final lock clicking into place.

  And Brendon knew, with a sick certainty, that Middle Nolan was already burning—whether they could see the flames yet or not.