5. Max

5

MAX

" D o we have any idea how many council members there are?" Wade asked. "Even with Tarren as a father, I learned surprisingly little about how they work. I couldn't even name one of them to be honest."

Wade didn't even flinch when he mentioned his father's name—his eyes were cold, expressionless.

He hadn't said much after I told him that Atlas killed their father. I left the gruesome details out, waiting to see if he wanted specifics.

Other than a resounding "Good, if he didn't kill the fucker, I would have," he'd been oddly silent on the topic.

Still, I knew from experience that grief was a gnarly little dickhole that snuck up on you, often when you least expected.

Tarren was an asshole. And he was an absolute prick to Wade especially.

But he was still his father—and the only one he'd ever get.

Evelyn nodded. "That's by design. But as of now, from what I can tell, there are seven." Her lips twisted into a satisfied grin. "And I know where we can find three of them." She shrugged, her lips wavering slightly. "It's not much, but it's a start. "

Eli glanced at her briefly before his focus landed firmly on the wall behind her.

He didn't seem able to look at her for very long, but he kept sneaking glances every few minutes, whether consciously or not, I wasn't sure.

I rubbed my chest, like I could feel his anxiety trapped there, dying for release.

Dealing with his mother and brother both in the same hour was no easy feat.

"Isn't your double agency shot now though?" he asked, his voice quiet. "I imagine they'll change all of their whereabouts if they think you've turned on them."

Her lips curved into a tentative smile as she glanced at him, probably pleased that he was addressing her with less venom in his voice this time.

I couldn't help but ache at the way she looked at him—so much longing, so much pain. I knew very little about her, outside of the few details Eli had shared what felt like a lifetime ago. She'd broken her bond to Seamus and left him and Eli behind—apparently to live with Levi and her second family.

She'd hurt him. Badly enough that he lived most of his life refusing to let anyone get close enough to carve another crater deep into his chest—a similar, festering wound of abandonment.

But something about the way her eyes softened with regret whenever they landed on him told me that there was more to their story than I realized. Maybe even more than Eli himself knew. It wasn't the sort of look I imagined a woman giving a son she didn't love.

She'd abandoned him, yes, but there was true affection—love—in her eyes. Even when his only broadcasted anger and hate back at her.

She cleared her throat and sat up straighter, pride sharpening her posture. "Not if they think I'm dead. "

"You faked your death?" I asked. It was a smart move, and I couldn't help but be mildly impressed by the woman in front of me, as much as I hated her for hurting Eli.

Like most women in The Guild, she had an iron strength. It was impossible not to respect that.

"Borrowed the idea from a friend." She glanced at Bishop, and I noticed that her smirk mirrored Eli's almost identically.

Bishop grunted.

"Well, that's good news at least," Declan said. I noticed she'd scooted herself closer to Eli too, and kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye, like she was getting ready to throw herself between him and his mother if it came down to it, to protect him from the pain that was lining every tense muscle in his body. "If they think you're dead, they won't invoke any kind of protocol to revoke your access. So now it's just a matter of using whatever intel you have to find the stone. We can start by going after the three council members you have access to."

"It might be a little more difficult than that." Charlie's teeth snagged on her bottom lip as her eyes caught mine.

"What do you mean?" Eli asked, that muscle tic in his jaw was back again. He narrowed his eyes. "What aren't you guys telling us?"

"Have any of you watched the news since the fire?" Haley asked, her thin brow arched. "Read a paper?" Her eyes met mine, widening slightly. "Checked social media?"

"Apparently not," Darius said, his voice laced with gravelly impatience.

Charlie cleared her throat, turned to Bishop, then Evelyn, like they were deciding who was going to be the bearer of bad news. Because of course there was bad news. There was always bad news.

"The Guild controls most human governments." Jace ran his thumb over his lips, as he fought for a way to frame whatever he was struggling to say. "In almost every way that counts anyway."

I'd suspected as much, though no one had ever blatantly laid out the details as to how they managed that. Protectors and demons did a reasonably good job of hiding their tracks, but none of us were perfect. Having a hand in human governments would certainly help keep the supernatural communities flying under the radar. Especially in the age of the internet.

I nodded, urging him to continue as he locked eyes with Haley.

She exhaled, then turned to us. "Look, no use sugar coating it—you guys are all wanted."

"Wanted?" I asked. "By whom?"

She snorted. "Take your pick. Literally everyone. You're blacklisted everywhere—any camera so much as picks up a glimpse of you and they'll know where to find you."

I felt Darius tense behind me—it wasn't a movement so much as lack of movement. It was in those moments it became abundantly clear that he was a vampire. It was the kind of stillness that came right before a predator chose when to strike.

"So leaving here is going to be a problem," Haley said, her voice infused with a long drawl like spelling this out for us was going to prove more tedious than she'd anticipated. "If you leave, you risk bringing The Guild to our front door. That would jeopardize everything we've built here—everyone we're protecting. We won't have many chances to get this right, and once we go after one of them, we'll have shown our cards."

Eli shrugged. "Max can teleport. Unless the government is keeping some seriously advanced—and magical—tracking equipment secret, I don't think they can catch her even if they wanted to."

"You misunderstand. It's not just your group." Bishop scrubbed his hand over his face. I wondered how long it had been since he'd gotten a decent night of rest. I had a feeling he hadn't had one since we barged back into his life. "It's everyone who left that night—everyone who they think might have turned on them." He shrugged, then shot me a quick glance. "You're just at the top of what is a very long list."

Charlie's nose scrunched in sympathy. "One of the reasons the vetting process has been so extensive this week—we can't let anyone you've brought in leave this place and then come back until we figure out how to handle the intricacies of all of this. There's too much risk to the people we're protecting here."

"It's propaganda, a corralling strategy," Evelyn said. She shuffled some of the papers in front of her before stuffing them into a manilla file. She hadn't looked at them once since we sat down. I had a feeling she had every word memorized, that she'd pored over every ounce of information she could get her hands on—she had that vibe about her. Reminded me a bit of Seamus in that way. "They're hoping one person steps out of line and they'll draw a perfect link back to you. Also makes sure you can't recruit anyone else from any of the other campuses. You appear like bad guys to the world at large, and it will remain that way so long as The Guild maintains power of the media and humans in powerful positions." She looked up at me, smiling that Eli smirk of hers. "They're terrified of you, which is good, but it also makes them desperate. Desperation can be dangerous. We haven't seen them pull strings to this level—" she considered for a moment, then shrugged, "well, ever, as far as I can tell. They control the human governments, keep an eye on things and make sure that the secrets of our world remain hidden, but they rarely intervene in any real way. But now, they've instituted a full-on hunt—with every arrow aiming for the target they've drawn on your back."

"How…flattering?" My brain felt like it was working a mile a minute, trying to understand and outline all of the myriad ways this would make our next mission even more impossible than it already was. I suddenly felt very claustrophobic, knowing that I' d lost anonymity, that I'd be watched—hunted—wherever I stepped.

"Don't worry, we've got your back and we're working on ways around this. Just might take us a while," Haley said, her tone strangely calm, like this was just another day, just another run-of-the-mill meeting and reveal. Oddly, it helped ease some of the anxiety unfurling in my gut. "We're mostly telling you so that you don't just leave on some secret heroic mission that will just get everyone killed—yourselves included—and because we'll need your help calming those recruits who followed you here. We can't have them balking now that their names and faces are plastered on every local news channel with the label ‘dangerous' printed above their heads." She gave me a stiff nod and smile—but a smile on her looked more like a promise of violence than friendship. She tilted her head. "I have ways of keeping them docile if needed, but I prefer saving those particular skills for the enemy."

I found myself deeply invested in making sure none of us ever ended up in that "enemy" category of hers. She wore that same edge of violence that Darius often donned—only where it excited me on him, on her, it only reminded me how acutely dangerous vampires were.

Jace ran his hand roughly over his jaw. "We're sheltered from a lot of things here, but that doesn't mean things aren't getting worse. There've been unexplained earthquakes and other catastrophic events happening weekly at this point. Things are not going well for humans—the secrets of our world are growing more and more impossible to keep hidden. People are disappearing, ending up dead, attacked by creatures they've only encountered in movies and nightmares, caught in territory wars and fights for freedom."

My stomach clenched with a new wave of fear. I'd been so focused on my team, The Guild, hell, demons. I'd hardly given humans more than a passing thought, but of course they were affected by what was happening. How could they not be?

"Not to mention the increasing number of tears between realms that have been cropping up around the world," Jace continued, "unregulated portals that will have consequences we can't even begin to imagine. We probably only know about a very small fraction of them as it is. Humans are finding themselves confronted with supernatural powers and demons who are only trying to learn how to exist in this realm after escaping hell. Humans may not know about our world, or have the language yet to understand or explain what's happening, but they're not unintelligent.

"Even they can feel the magic changing in the air. It's static, electric. Time is not on our side. We don't have the resources to fight what's coming while protecting their gentle sensibilities and world views." He folded his arms in front of his chest, the jovial humor now gone from his expression, revealing some of that lethal power incubi kept tightly latched. He was just as dangerous as Haley—but that was the power of incubi. They pulled you in close with smiles and promises, so when the time came to strike, you were almost begging for it, laying your neck out to be sliced.

Instead of finding myself terrified by these two new acquaintances, I was excited. They were a formidable pair to fight alongside—and the stronger they were, the better their chance of survival.

"So," Haley continued, "to protect themselves, The Guild will do everything it can to mobilize humanity against you. Humans tend to react poorly to fear. In some ways, they become even more dangerous than supernaturals. They need a target—someone they can hate when they are afraid. Right now, that target is you. And The Guild is taking care to paint it with as much precision and detail as possible. "

Eli snorted. "We're the ones who are trying to save them—to keep the realms from literally collapsing in on themselves."

"Yes," Charlie tilted her head to the side, "but they don't know that. And we don't have the power or ability to spell it out for them en masse. The Guild does. And history's shown time and time again that those who wield that kind of power shape reality."

"We start planning immediately then." I clasped my hands together, trying like hell to keep the panic coursing through my body from revealing itself in the soft trembling of my fingers. I needed to be strong—this fight would be too big to tackle if I let the odds of our success weigh too heavily on my mind. "The more time they have to get ahead of this shit, to mobilize the human world and the rest of the protectors against us, the more impossible this mission will become." I turned to Evelyn, steeling myself. I had no idea if my powers were at the level Lucifer needed them to be for his ritual. But we couldn't wait much longer. And in the meantime, we needed to locate the stone and the nexus. "The information you have on those three council members—gather it. The more we know about them all, the better our chances. Finding that stone needs to be our number one priority. And maybe we'll stand a better chance if we strike before they even realize we're looking for it."

She didn't blink as she studied me, her expression unreadable. After a long, drawn moment, she nodded, her fingers tightening around the edges of the folder in front of her. "Once we hit them, we lose all element of surprise, so we'll need to be strategic about where we start as well. The more time and room we give them to hide what we're after, the more infinitely difficult this will become."

I didn't like the woman, but she had a good point. Something about having her level-headedness in the room, when the rest of us were so quick to lash out, was calming—almost like Cy or Seamus were in the room with us .

"Alright." Jace stood, stretching, his good humor already shifting back in place, like a filter he could just switch on and off. Was that an incubus thing or was that a Jace thing? If the former, I needed to learn that shit. I had the unfortunate habit of broadcasting my emotions like a goddamn siren. "Let's adjourn for now and we can discuss details tomorrow afternoon, once Evie has the intel we need."

Evelyn grimaced at his jovial familiarity, which just made Jace's smile widen, both seductive and lethal. When he winked and she flushed, I wondered if the two of them had a past…or a present.

I stood with the others, my thoughts racing as I tried to process everything we'd just learned.

I felt Darius inch closer to my back, his energy wilder than it usually was, darker as it lapped against me. It had been building for days, but between the med center and Atlas, we hadn't had much time to chat—and any time I broached an even remotely serious conversation with him, he'd immediately loosened up and changed the subject.

When I moved towards the door, Evelyn's eyes latched on to mine again.

"Max, a word if that's okay?"

Charlie and the others filtered from the room, but my team stopped in their tracks, folding around me.

Evelyn cleared her throat. "Alone, if you don't mind."

Darius stiffened, and I watched the muscles work in Eli's jaw.

No. Like fucking hell I'm leaving her with you.

I could have sworn I heard Eli speak the words, harsh and rigid, but his lips were firm, unmoving as he glared at his mother.

Coffee.

Izzy was right—I desperately needed a good night's sleep. But until then, I needed to get better about properly caffeinating.

I ran my hand over his back and nodded. "Yes, that's fine. I'll meet you guys out front in a few."

For a moment, I wasn't sure Darius and Eli would leave, but I focused on them, trying like hell to convey that I'd be okay—I promised—with my eyes, that I'd call them if I needed anything.

I could fucking light the building on fire or teleport outside of it if I needed to for crying out loud. My safety wasn't a logical concern right now.

Their eyes widened briefly, Eli's lips parting in a soft shock.

Darius gripped his shoulders, sent a dark look towards Evelyn, and pushed him towards the door, whispering a quiet, "not here."

Eli shook his head, like he was dazed, but then he respected the clear request and allowed Darius to move him gently away from me.

His hand lingered on the doorframe, like he was second-guessing it, but he fought the resistance and his fingers peeled away one-by-one, until he closed the door behind them both.

It was strange, being in this room alone with Eli's mother—she seemed smaller somehow, no longer surrounded by her friends, sadder almost.

She stared at the file clutched in her hand and nodded for me to sit back down.

I took the seat across from her, the chair still warm from Eli sitting in it.

"What can I do for you?" I broke the awkward silence, not entirely sure how to act around this woman. I hated her for what she'd done to Eli, but I also knew that, right now, she was our best chance at going after The Guild. We needed her. And, as much as I hated her on Eli's behalf, I also wanted her to like me. It was an irrational, annoying desire that I did my best to shove down and ignore—but she was the mother of the boy I loved. Part of me desperately wanted her to think I was good enough for him, even if she wasn't.

She didn't look up from the folders in front of her, but her lips pressed into that Eli-smirk again. My stomach clenched at the sight of it. It was just as disconcerting as seeing Wade's eyes set in Tarren's face. Features I adored in my team, set in the faces of parents who'd treated them cruelly. It was unsettling, to say the least.

For a moment, I studied her, hunting for more traces of her son on her face. On the surface, she didn't obviously share any of his features. Her hair was cropped in a severe reddish-brown bob, several shades lighter than Eli's. Her eyes were hazel, the greens weaving through threads of brown, where Eli's held more golden tones. Her build was more petite than most protectors, her skin a shade or two paler than his.

When she was stationary, it was only her mouth that immediately gave their relationship away—both had the same shape, the same smile. But when she moved, the similarities between them became more obvious. Their expressions in motion carved clear lines of connection—the arch of her brow, the teasing intelligence behind her eyes. Eli was etched into her plain as day in the moments between frames.

"I was hoping we might have a few minutes to talk," she started. For a moment I wondered if she was as nervous in my presence as I was in hers. If that yearning for approval that I felt echoed in her. She cleared her throat, pushing on, "Levi is quite fond of you, and Eli—" her voice cracked on his name, but it was only a brief break in the armor she wore with a fluid confidence, "I thought I should meet the girl bonded to my son. Especially when she's tangled up in more danger than perhaps anyone in the world right now—and therefore so is my son, right along with her."

My jaw clenched. "Oh? "

It was the only word I could bring myself to say. I swallowed back the anger raging through me on Eli's behalf. She'd hurt him, left him. Seamus too. What right did she have to fill the role of protective mother now?

But some of my own guilt lingered amongst it. She'd, perhaps unknowingly, tugged at a fear I'd been doing my best to keep tightly coiled. I couldn't control the fact that I was Lucifer's daughter, that I was the catalyst between realms.

That didn't mean I wasn't absolutely terrified about what that meant for my team. The stronger our bonds became, the more danger I put them in, whether intentionally or not. I was an anchor and with every touch, every moment we spent together, every wall we knocked down, the bonds became ropes tying them to me. I could already feel that rope turning to steel—unbreakable.

The only way I could survive the fear of what I'd eventually have to do was by convincing myself that when it was time for me to sink, those tethers would uncoil and gracefully release. Otherwise, I'd have to cut them myself.

Evelyn narrowed her eyes as she watched me, glassy amusement evident in their depths. "You don't like me very much, do you."

It wasn't a question, merely an observation—no hurt or accusation lacing her tone.

I tensed, but I didn't deny it. I couldn't. "Do you blame me?"

She deflated slightly, the chair squeaking pathetically as she leaned back into it, like it was expressing some of the sorrow she couldn't. The harshness of her presence softened, like a statue grown weary from years of weathering.

"No, I suppose I can't, can I?" Her fingers picked at the worn fabric on the arm of her chair as she wrestled with some emotion I couldn't quite parse. Like Eli, she was difficult to read. "You may not understand it, Max, or even believe it, but I do love my son. Both of them. Fiercely. More than anything in the entire world."

I bit my lip, trying to keep my doubts from spilling forward.

Her eyes shot to mine, clearly seeing them written on my face regardless. She sat up, the sleek, powerful mask back in place. "You shouldn't pass judgment on things you don't understand. Has our world taught you nothing in your brief exposure to it?"

I arched my brow, but swallowed my tongue, uncomfortable with speaking about this without Eli present.

"You love him too," she nodded, adding more to herself than to me, "that's good. You wouldn't be filled with that righteous anger if you didn't care for him. I'm glad he has you."

The silence stretched so long that it became uncomfortable, thick with the awkwardness of the situation—until I couldn't take it for another moment.

So, I told her the truth.

"I don't like you, no. How could I after what you've put him through?" I took a deep breath. "I can also concede that I don't know the details of your past. But that doesn't matter, not with everything happening. Family trauma is a whisper into the void compared to what we're up against. I do believe that you are here because you believe in this place—in the truth. I will work with you, to save as many people as we can. So will Eli, no matter how much doing so pains him."

"What I've put him through," she echoed, nodding, her lips quivering slightly as they formed the words. "I have put that boy through more pain than he's ever deserved, there is no question there." Her voice was soft, filled with a sadness that twisted inside of me. I hated myself because, in that moment, I didn't hate her. I couldn't. No matter how badly I wanted to on his behalf. I understood the grief that lingered inside of her, that sense of loss. "I don't owe you an explanation, Max, though I do owe him one. Seamus too. Despite what you may think you know, I care deeply for them both. Leaving them was the hardest thing I've ever done," the side of her mouth curved into a sad smile, "and I have lived no easy life."

"But you did—" I said, "leave them, I mean."

She nodded. "I did. I had to." Her head tilted as she watched me, and suddenly it seemed as though she could see every errant thought in my head, reading me with far more ease than I could her. "But is it so impossible for you to imagine? Loving more than one person at once? Loving someone that everyone in your life tells you that you shouldn't? Forsaking that life for one that keeps those you care for safe, alive, even if doing so breaks your heart in half?"

My breath caught in my chest. I didn't know who Levi's father was, why she couldn't be with him and Seamus, like I was with my team.

I wanted to ask her questions about her past, about why she left, why she chose Levi instead of Eli, but I realized as soon as I opened my mouth that she was right—she didn't owe me these answers. And pulling them from her when Eli wasn't here felt like a betrayal that I'd never forgive myself for.

I was already betraying him as it was—betraying them all—every moment that I didn't tell them the truth about Lucifer's ritual.

When it came down to it, I'd end up leaving him just as she had.

"You're right," I said, my throat suddenly raw, "I don't know the details of your situation." I considered her for a long moment, the version of her I'd conjured in my head reshaping into someone more complex than I'd imagined before. She was no longer this phantom figure—the original antagonist in Eli's story. Now, she was colored in shades of gray, like us all, I supposed. There were no perfect heroes or villains in this story. "But if you truly love Eli as you say you do, you owe him that story—your truth. If he wants to hear it, that is." I licked my lips. "And until he does, you should understand that my thoughts about you don't matter. As far as we're concerned, Eli is my priority, not you."

She nodded, considering me for a moment. "Fair enough. I'm glad to know that if he doesn't want me in his corner, he at least has you there."

We were silent for a few long moments, but before I could break the heavy stretch, she beat me to it.

"You remind me of her, you know. It wasn't immediately obvious at first, but the signs are there if you know to look for them. You have her fire. Her fierce loyalty." The shadow of Eli's smirk reappeared on her face again. "Her stubbornness."

The words hit me like an iron bar to the gut.

"Like who?" I asked, even though I knew the answer. There could be only one.

She looked up, the smirk turning into something softer. "Your mother."

"You know who my mother is?" I wracked my brain, trying to remember who all I'd told. But it was only my team, my friends.

Hurt flashed sharp and hot in my belly—had everyone known about Sayty? This whole time I'd been a part of The Guild, had people been seeing her written into my features, the way I saw Eli mapped into his mother's? Was I the only one Cy had kept this secret from—the one who cared most about uncovering it?

She nodded, her expression distant, like she was trapped in a memory. "I didn't know Sayty nearly as well as Cy did but, yes, she was around our team a lot and we were friends, more or less. When you joined The Guild, I had my suspicions about who you might be, why he'd taken you in—he'd always had such an uncharacteristic soft spot for her." The sharp corners of her eyes softened. "It was sweet. Seamus never confirmed, of course. He'd never go against his brother' s wishes, even for me—but seeing you now, it's undeniable."

Her stare met mine, harsh and unrelenting. "If others don't see her in you, it's because they aren't looking. The Guild hated her, did everything they could to erase her from our collective memories. But she was a good person, Max. And so was Cy. I don't know what happened to her in the end, but I'm glad that you had him, and that he had you—and I'm sorry that, like her, he was taken from you too." I had to turn away from the compassion pooling in her eyes, unsure what to do with it. "I'll admit, the thought of Cyrus Bentley parenting an orphan girl is a surreal, amusing one. I'm truly, very sorry that he is gone. We didn't always get along or see things the same way, but the world certainly grew dimmer when he left it."

My throat was tight, words difficult to form. I swallowed, blinking back the film over my eyes. But a flash of hope sparked at what this meant.

Evelyn was perhaps the only person in this realm who knew my mother.

"My family—" I licked my lips, the phrase sticking strangely on my tongue when used to refer to anyone other than Cy and Ro, "Sayty's family, I mean. Do you know them? Cy said she had a brother—a twin. Saif. Have you met him?" My fingers drummed anxiously on the cool tabletop. I pulled them back to reign in my nerves, my desperation. "Or her line of protectors—could you point me to any of them?"

Her brows lifted slightly, the only evidence of her surprise. "I didn't know that Sayty had a brother, no." She paused, considering, "In truth, I knew very little about her in general—and almost nothing about her family, where she came from before The Guild." She shook her head, "Even the council has sparse details of where—who—she comes from."

That small spark of hope dimmed, until it died out altogether. "Right. It was a long shot. "

"But I do know several people from other lines of protectors." She smiled, her brow arching slightly. "In fact, so do you."

I sat up straighter, folded my hands nervously in my lap. "I do?"

She nodded. "And you don't have to go looking far at all."

"I don't?"

"From my understanding, The Lodge and Lake Cadaver are owned by one of these lines. Protectors who split from The Guild many years ago, as far back as records go, who have long hated what that institution stands for—it makes sense that they would be the foundation of the group building a resistance against it, does it not?"

"Charlie—" I started to ask, but Evelyn shook her head.

"I don't really know the details. Protectors, and supernaturals in general, are private people. Trust is a complicated practice when lives are at stake. But from what I understand, Charlie doesn't own this place. She's just inherited the restaurant from an absent uncle who passed years ago. The traces of protector in her blood, however, I assume are from such a line, yes." She paused for a moment, her smile reaching all the way to her eyes now. "I hear you are particularly fond of our nurse."

"Greta?"

She nodded again. "She worked at The Guild for most of her life, but she did not grow up there. Her family is from a line of protectors who turned away from The Guild. And she was always quite fond of Sayty. She might be a good place for you to start on this search."

I chewed on the information for a moment, revisiting my memory of Greta and laying this new insight to her past on top—an overlay that provided new depth.

Did she know that I was Sayty's daughter? She'd taken an instant liking to me, seemed to trust me from the moment I stepped foot in The Guild's med ward. There was also something different about her—she always seemed to be just a little bit, I don't know… more than the other adults at Headquarters. Cy had said that protectors from that line—or those lines, perhaps they'd branched even further over the years—had a different kind of power, a different kind of magic. One that hadn't diluted over time like The Guild's, because it honored balance rather than destroying it.

Was that what I'd been sensing in her—a likeness, a familiarity, a connection to my mother's community?

Why hadn't Greta ever said anything to me?

Evelyn's head tilted to the side slightly, sympathy etched into the soft lines around her eyes. "I know how alluring uncovering the past might be for you, Max. How tempting it is to dig out a family history when you've just laid a part of your family to rest."

My stomach tightened at the warning, laced with pity.

"Find the answers you seek, but make sure they don't come at the expense of what truly matters right now." She took a deep, steadying breath, like she was folding the sadness encasing me back into herself. Then she pulled a thin file from inside the larger one in front of her, and slid it across the table until the words printed on the tab were face up for me to read.

Max Bentley.

I glanced up, not bothering to hide my surprise. "What is this?"

"Levi found the information they have on you, during one of his clandestine perusals of Headquarters."

I grunted, not bothering to ask how Levi always seemed to be in places he shouldn't be—how he always seemed to walk away undetected, unscathed. I knew she wouldn't answer.

"I didn't want to scare you, to drop this bomb in front of everyone." She scrunched her nose, leaning back in the chair. "I know how uncomfortable it can be to have that kind of spotlight on you when you're trying to process so many big things yourself. It seemed only fair that you decide when and with whom to share this information—to process it before everyone jumps into action."

"What does this say?" I asked, staring at the closed file like it might explode if I touched it.

She considered me for a long moment, ran her teeth gently over her bottom lip, like she was finding a way to coax the words out. "Since the night of Cy's death, it seems the council has devoted a significant amount of their resources trying to uncover exactly what—or who—you are. I don't know how, but they know the truth now, or something close enough to it. They may not know with scientific confirmation that you are Lucifer's child specifically, but they suspect it. And they know that you are at the heart of things, that your power is connected to the hell realm's."

My focus drifted up from the folder until I met her eyes—unwavering and sure. She hadn't reacted when I'd told Charlie and the others the truth about my father. At the time, I thought it because, like most protectors, she was uncharacteristically good at bottling up her emotions.

"You knew—Levi too."

She nodded. "Like I said, Levi was able to get this information and, after sitting on it for a few months," she grunted, rolling her eyes, "he gave it to me." The amusement and gentle affection for her son melted into something sharper. "But there's more in that file Max, than just a hypothesis about your father. The council wants you. More specifically, they want your powers. And they will do whatever it takes to get them. To harvest your power and use it for their own purposes. I suspect that they'll tell the rest of The Guild that they'll use them to repair the realm, to restore the balance—that you alone are responsible and to blame for the tearing of worlds, that they are the only thing standing between you and the death of us all."

My blood turned cold, every muscle in my body freezing until I was half-convinced that even my heart had stopped beating its steady rhythm.

Her jaw stiffened. She held my stare, hard and demanding. "You can't let them capture you, under any circumstances. If they drain your power, if they find a way to harness it, they will mold it into something for their own needs. Judging from the words in that file, they hope that your power will find them a way to not only trap all demons in hell irrevocably, but to eradicate them entirely. Until theirs is the only power left." She tilted her head a few degrees, "do you understand what I'm saying, Max?"

I swallowed, my throat thick and scratchy. If the choice came between my death and letting them steal my power, allowing them to use it to further their own, there was only one choice.

I nodded.

It was an easy concession. This would inevitably end in my death anyway—that was the lot of holding this power, of being a catalyst.

"You don't seem entirely surprised by this possibility," she said, as if she had plucked the thought from my brain. She leaned closer, her voice hardly a whisper. "This plan of yours. This power you wield—" her eyes narrowed as she studied me, "it only leads to one conclusion, doesn't it?"

I cleared my throat, my lips parting.

Her posture slumped, her expression horrified as she read the truth that I couldn't voice on my face. "Do they know?" She paused, reigning in her emotions until her expression hardened again. "Max, does Eli know that you'll?—"

Die .

She let the word drift in the air between us, heavy and unspoken, but loud as a roar all the same.

I shook my head, my eyes darting to the door, where I knew they waited only a few walls away .

Her expression fell, a sadness pulling down at the corner of her eyes, her lips—whether for me, or for the grief her son would inevitably be put through, I wasn't sure.

"I'm sorry," was all that she said.

I nodded, unable to latch onto any words.

"You're so young. You don't deserve the burden that you bear." Her hand reached forward until it found mine across the table. Her skin was cool to the touch, soft—unexpectedly comforting. "But they deserve the truth—the chance to say goodbye, when the time comes."

My vision blurred as I fought back tears, emotion clogging my throat.

When the time comes.

It hadn't escaped me that the harder I pushed to go after the council, the closer we got to uncovering the stone, the more I bonded to my team—that I was simultaneously pushing the needle closer to my own end.

I nodded, feeling a rebellious tear carve a path down my cheek.

I wiped it quickly with a sniff.

They did deserve the truth, I just didn't know how to give it to them.

Because once I did, everything would change.

Because once I did, I'd have to do the very thing that made me hate every last drop of power that I had.

I'd break their hearts.

I'd spent months convincing each of them that hurting them was the last thing I'd ever do.

And, as a twisted and cruel fate would have it, it would be.