Page 102 of Fractured Loyalties
"We trained in shadows, but some ghosts don’t stay buried. The next one you lose won’t be nameless."
My breath catches.
It’s a threat.
No—it’s a prophecy.
And whoever sent it knows about Mara.
Rafiq steps in from the doorway, reading the expression on my face before he sees the screen.
"Problem?"
I kill the monitor and stand. "He knows I’m watching. And now he wants me to bleed for it."
"So what now?"
I lock the door again. Reinforce the old traps. "Now we bait him back. But on my ground."
Rafiq frowns. "Are you going home?"
"No. I'm taking the war to him."
He doesn’t ask more, he just nods once.
We leave through the back, stepping out into the hard morning light. And every part of me is vibrating with two truths:
Vale wants to take something from me.
And I’ll tear out his fucking throat before I let him.
The sun has risen fully now, slanting through the alley in narrow beams that catch the dust in the air like smoke. The ground steams from where night moisture still clings to the stone, and I taste rust on my tongue. Not from the air. From the memory of blood. My blood. Theirs. The kind that never dries right.
Rafiq peels off after we round the corner. No goodbye. No plan. Just vanishes like good ghosts do. He knows better than to stay close once a fuse has been lit.
I slide back into the car and shut the door with a calm that feels borrowed. Everything inside me is moving too fast. Not panic. Velocity. Precision under pressure.
I call Lydia.
She answers before the first ring finishes. “Tell me.”
“EIDOLON was flagged.”
Silence.
Then: “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
She exhales hard. I hear keys clicking in the background. “Where?”
“Marseille node. The nest. Someone wanted me to find it.”
“And they know about her?”
“They didn’t say her name. But they don’t need to.”
Lydia goes quiet again. When she speaks, her voice has hardened. “What’s the next move?”
