Eve's POV
The doors closed behind Seraphine.
The sound of it echoed in the stone room and then faded and then it was just them.
Eve. Damian. Damon. Silas and Raphael.
The throne at the far end.
The cold thing somewhere in the walls getting closer.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Eve looked at her mates.
At the three men who had been beside her through every room that had led to this one. Who had stood outside buildings and held her together in corridors and sat at archive tables at two in the morning and held her through things she didn't have words for.
Who had driven, who had stepped through portals and cleared rooms and made coffee and stolen from her plate and held the estate together for three weeks across a distance that had almost broken all of them.
She looked at all of it.
Felt all of it.
"I need to say something," she said. "Before we do this."
Nobody interrupted.
