Lorelei recited her talking points once more into the mirror. If the meeting with the president went well, it could cut a lot of red tape for a new factory in Spaercka.

  There was a knock at her door. "Ma'am? You have a visitor."

  "I told you to turn all visitors away this morning," she said without looking over.

  "I understand, ma'am. But it's your brother."

  She turned to the butler. "Victor's here? Tell him I'll be right down."

  Her heart was racing. She'd been wishing for this day for years. Now that it's here, all so suddenly, she didn't know how to act. There was so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to know.

  No, she mustn't barrage him with questions. There would be plenty of time to catch up on their lost years. What's important was to make him feel at home. A real home, and not the one he left.

  Victor was waiting down in the parlor with a gym bag slung over his shoulder. He heard her coming and turned away from the cat plushies on the mantelpiece.

  Her heart stopped. Memories and photographs didn't do him justice. Somehow he loomed even larger in real life.

  He looked just as surprised at the sight of her. She was just a teenager when he ran away. And now she was as old as Mom was when she first had him.

  "H-hi," she choked out.

  "It's good to see you, Lie."

  It wasn't fair. She was stuttering while his voice was as smooth as ever. The baritone he'd inherited from Dad. And the pet name she used to hate. Only he ever called her that. But hearing it now, she didn't mind at all.

  She invited him to the coffee table and a maid appeared with some tea before leaving to give the two of them some privacy.

  "Are you back in the Dominion for good this time?" she asked.

  "I don't have any plans to leave again," he replied.

  "And did you bring . . ." A part of her told her that it wasn't wise to ask. But she had to know. ". . . that woman with you?"

  "Are you talking about Kyra? She stayed behind in Charais Gamor."

  The tinge of sadness in his eyes made her wonder on what terms they'd parted ways. But she didn't want to make their reunion a somber occasion.

  "You should have sent word you were coming," she said cheerfully. "That way Mom and Dad could have been here too."

  "I'm not ready for them yet," he replied.

  It seemed she'd been too rash in her assumptions. Maybe it had just been wishful thinking on her part that they could return to being a family again. She should have been content with the fact that he had reconnected with her. But people at the top of the business world have a tendency to tug things more toward their way.

  "They miss you dearly," she said.

  "Is that why they kept trying to take control of my life?"

  "You mean by buying out your employers? They thought they were keeping you safe."

  "You know it's never about that with them."

  She closed her eyes. What was she doing? This wasn't the mood she wanted to set.

  "I told them you wouldn't see it their way," she said. "But you know how they are. They talked themselves into it. Their plan in taking ownership of those military contractors was to give you access to the best equipment and safest jobs."

  "They never understood me, did they?"

  "That doesn't mean they don't love you."

  He looked away, but not before she caught the flash in his eyes.

  "Let's put all that aside," she said quickly. "Are you hungry? We just got a fresh delivery of caviar from Govinia."

  It was meant for her meeting with the president. But that was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment.

  Victor shook his head. "I've lost the taste for it. But that isn't what I'm here for. Lie, I've got a business proposal."

  Her mind turned immediately to that accursed woman. The promise to send Victor back to her—had it been too good to be true after all? Was he simply the bait being dangled to draw riches from their family?

  "Did that woman put you up to this?" she asked.

  "This is all my idea," he replied sternly.

  Lorelei was used to people coming to her for money. Some for charity, others for investment. It had become second nature to her to regard them all with deep skepticism. For every one good deal, there were a hundred more that didn't deserve the time of day. It wasn't all just greed. Some were in it for vanity. But a whole heap more were well-intentioned but marred by ignorance.

  She hoped that her brother didn't fall into that final camp.

  "Tell me about your idea," she said.

  "I want to start my own mercenary company."

  She had been following her brother's career trajectory with great interest and had noticed a pattern toward greater autonomy. From a soldier in the national army always being told what to do by others, up into the officer's corps, and then into the world of private military contractors. Moving into running his own company was a natural progression.

  "I have people who will join me," he continued. "I just need a license and some seed money."

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  It made sense that he would come to her for this. The government wasn't going to let just anyone operate their own armed forces within the country's borders.

  "How much do you need?" she asked.

  "Twenty million. And I retain full control of operations."

  The number wasn't right. She was familiar with the finances of these mercenary companies from the time their parents had her do the legwork to buy out one of Victor's previous employers.

  "In between wages and equipment, you're going to need two hundred million at least," she said.

  "Twenty will be enough," he said confidently.

  She was prepared to give him the twenty million. Even two hundred million was worth it as a show of faith in her brother.

  But something about this still bothered her, and she couldn't help but feel that woman's fingerprints all over it somehow.

  "None of this money is going back to her, is it?" she asked.

  "Lie—"

  "No, Victor, listen to me. I'm happy to give you the money. I'll even make it an unconditional gift. You can do whatever you want with it. You can even give it all to her if you'd like. All I ask is that you tell me the truth."

  She expected him to lash back. For a full-throated display of indignation. Just like that time when they were teenagers and he sneaked his girlfriend into the stables. When Lorelei confronted him about her missing pony, Victor denied letting anyone ride him. It wasn't until she found Sturgeon alone in the western paddock with glitter on his saddle horn that he finally came clean.

  But their teenage years were long in the past, and so much had changed in the time they'd been apart.

  Victor pulled a binder from his backpack and placed it on the table. "I'm serious about this. This is a business plan I prepared. And you will be given full access to the company's finances. None of it will be going to Kyra."

  "Are you still in contact with her?" she asked.

  "She's a good person. I think the two of you would get along, seeing how much you are alike."

  "I never want to hear you comparing us again," she said sternly.

  She picked up the binder and flicked through it. She'd read thousands of these and knew exactly what to look for. Something immediately caught her eye.

  "You don't expect any revenue in the first quarter?" she asked.

  "I'll be spending that time training up my team," he explained.

  "I thought you were recruiting an already-experienced team."

  "I'll be training them for something new. Something no one else in the world will be prepared for."

  There was something in his voice that made her put the binder down. "What's going on, Vic?"

  "Can you keep a secret, Lie?"

  The mood completely shifted in that moment. All thoughts about business and numbers fell away and she could only feel an anxiety over what her brother had gotten himself into.

  "You must promise not to tell anyone. Not even Mom and Dad."

  "Have I ever told them any of your secrets?" she replied.

  He grinned and looked over to make sure the parlor doors were closed before continuing. "There's going to be a great cataclysm."

  She closed her eyes. "Oh, Victor."

  "You think I'm crazy, but just watch."

  He pulled an ice pick from his bag and then placed his other hand down on the coffee table. He raised the pick and her mind hadn't put together what was about to happen until it was too late.

  The tea set bounced into the air and shattered, releasing a torrent of tea. The pick had been driven into his hand, nailing it to the wooden table.

  "Oh my god, Victor!"

  He yanked the pick out and raised his hand to reveal that it had been punctured straight through to the palm. He pointed to the table, where she saw the hole where the pick had continued into the wood, where blood was pooling before draining down onto the white tiles below.

  "Put that away!" she urged. "I'll get you some bandages."

  But she couldn't get to the door with him blocking her way. How did he move so fast?

  "Just keep watching," he said.

  He held his injured hand up but she wasn't sure what she was meant to see. That was until she noticed the flesh stretching across the hole and closing it up.

  She was startled by a knock at the parlor door. "Is everything all right, ma'am?" It was the butler.

  "All's fine!" she called out, doing her level best to sound calm.

  They both listened while the butler's footsteps faded away and then she turned her attention back to Victor.

  "My body can regenerate," he explained. "And that isn't the only thing I can do."

  Hands that can conjure fire. Muscles that can bend steel. She was waiting for him to reveal that these were all just tricks. But Victor had never been that sort of person.

  "This magic," she said at the end of his demonstrations. "Does it have anything to do with . . ."

  Seeing the look in his eyes, she let her question trail off.

  He sighed. "Kyra is very important to me, and I don't wish for there to be bad blood between the two of you."

  His answer told her all she needed to know.

  She found herself surprisingly at peace with it. While she still didn't trust the other woman, she wasn't ungrateful that her schemes had led Victor back to her. As long as he was safe—as far as that word ever applied to her brother—she was willing to maintain the unofficial truce between them.

  "Very well," she said. "But you're still going to need more than twenty million."

  Every evening Lori made a journey to sit at her mother's bedside. She had to catch three different buses—it used to be two from Kyra's—and it took more than two hours because there was only one hospital in Lacris-Cheree equipped to provide long-term care for coma patients.

  Her magic didn't work on Mom. Well, it did and it didn't. She could get a glimpse into Mom's head and tell that something was wrong. But whenever she tried to trace the problem, it left her feeling disoriented. All those neurons created a labyrinth more confusing than the catacombs beneath Lacris-Cheree. And she was afraid to touch anything in case it broke something important.

  The door opened and a man slipped inside. He plopped his bag against the wall and pulled up a chair beside her.

  "Any luck today?" Tristis asked.

  She shook her head. "I don't know why I keep coming. It hurts seeing her like this."

  "Love makes us do painful things," he said gently.

  They sat together in a silent vigil for a few minutes more before Lori rose to her feet. "Let's get to our other duty."

  "Wait." Tristis grabbed his bag and pulled a small box from it. "I got you a present."

  She accepted the box and stared at the logo. There was only one thing it could be. "A smartphone? For me?"

  "I also got you a prepaid sim," he said. "There should be enough credit that you won't run out for a good year."

  Her hands trembled. "You didn't have to do this."

  Back when she was working for Rastane, she'd sold off everything she owned to pay for Mom's care. There was no point keeping anything because there was nowhere safe to store it, as valuables had a tendency to go missing from the lockers. When she moved in with Kyra, she was able to slowly start putting her life back together, but Kyra had a rule against anything that could be used to connect her to Kyra's home. That meant no phones. Not that she could have afforded one anyway.

  "I'll help you set it up tomorrow," Tristis said. "This way you can receive the dungeon coordinates."

  It took her a couple of seconds to switch on to what he was saying. "We won't be driving to the dungeons together anymore?"

  "Only when I'm in town," he said. "But I'll be spending a lot more time abroad. What I've been doing till now is fine if it's all about installing me at the top of the future hunters association. But I want to look beyond that and lay the groundwork for what I'll be doing once I'm there."

  "How are you going to get to A-rank in all this?"

  "I won't. But that's already unlikely with the way we're going. The best we can hope for is B-rank. And if I'm going to be B-rank either way, I'd rather be B-rank with a few more friends in high places."

  She felt uneasy but wasn't sure how to voice her concerns.

  "Don't worry," he said. "I didn't just decide this on my own."

  But that wasn't what she was worried about. "What about me? If I can't get up to A-rank, that could hold back my research."

  He nodded sympathetically and cast an eye at her mother to convey that he understood which field of study was of particular concern for her.

  "You won't be doing it all alone," he said. "For a matter this complex, individual ability is less important than having the time and resources to dedicate to the work."

  He was right. If the treatment was as simple as getting to A-rank, it would have been discovered in a previous timeline. To get what she wanted, she had to be prepared for the long haul.

  "In that case," she replied, "maybe I should come and assist you on your trips abroad. To make extra sure we'll get all the support we need."

  He smiled. "That works for me."

  She looked over at her mother's sleeping form. Being abroad meant that she could no longer make daily trips down here. She wondered if Tristis had intended it this way or if it was just a happy coincidence.