Lord Faust was alone, so Lukas didn’t bother to bow as he came through the door to her office. With his tablet balanced precariously on top of a pile of folders, it was a matter of practicality, but in truth, Ghislaine hated anything that smelled of court manners.

It was an ongoing argument between the two of them, the question of proper decorum. Ghislaine believed that if anyone judged the Wolf based on bows or the proper address or the correct fork, they were idiots. The Wolf were here to provide a shield between the demons and the Empire, and that should be all that mattered.

Lukas knew, however, that people did judge the Wolf. And he hated that. The clan—Ghislaine—deserved better than snickers at garden parties and subtle, veiled insults whenever they visited the court. So he tried, as best he could, to keep people behaving as they should. When he could do it without Lord Faust noticing.

But today, expedience demanded, and as he heeled the door closed behind him, Ghislaine said, “Sit,” without looking up from the angled screen set into the top of her desk.

Ghislaine was a warrior without peer, towering and vital, but this interval had drained her more than anything Lukas had seen in the fifteen years he’d been at her side.

Lukas had done his best to manage for her, assist her, keep the clan running in perfect order so she could focus on the more important tasks, but no amount of paperwork could hide or ease the essential truth of the situation. That the demons had done more damage to the clan in this one interval than in any of a dozen eclipses put together.

It had been a long months. Hard on the clan. Especially when Ghislaine insisted it was their responsibility to keep it from being hard on the Empire itself. So the Wolf had shielded the rest with their own bodies, their own lives.

This was their job. This was the responsibility every Wolf was born to. This was the responsibility that every expatriate who sought a new home in the Breach system committed to. This was the duty every Lord Faust had embraced since the beginning of the Empire. A thousand years of guardianship. A thousand years of war.

The Wolf fought and died so that the people of the Empire of the Four Suns could live free and safe from the demons that spent their every moment trying to break through and destroy everything and everyone. It was their sacred duty, to the Emperor, to the nima, to the Empire. They couldn’t lose sight of that, not for a single moment of a single day.

Or so Ghislaine had insisted over and over to Lukas. And as he’d watched the weight of it wear at her, year after year, he’d found himself more and more often with the treasonous thought that maybe the Empire could look after itself for a day or two and give the Wolf a fucking rest.

On the back wall of Ghislaine’s office was a large digital display of a clock in countdown mode. For the numbers had been running down, and would continue for , until the start of the next Eclipse. Most of the time, the clock was a warning, a growing urgency as the numbers got smaller and smaller. This time around, the Eclipse would be a relief. When the rest of the Empire stopped flying, it was going to feel like a vacation.

Ghislaine’s focus was still on her screen, but she asked, “Are those the injury reports?”

“Most of them. I’m still waiting on updates from Cradle. Last I talked to Mariam, she said she had three scouts almost ready to rotate back on.”

“We could use them. It would be nice to be able to give our First Class rank a break before the Eclipse starts and they’re the only ones allowed in darkspace.”

Lukas knew this. Ghislaine knew he knew it. It was further evidence of her exhaustion that she thought she had to say it. “In the meanwhile,” Lukas pushed his tablet across the desk, “I’ve drawn up a new duty roster. We’re going to have to extend shifts—again—to take into account the extra activity leading up to Shadow Court. The Dragon and Swan both have sent us flight schedules.” Which meant they were only waiting on the Serpent. The Griffon were still refusing Wolf escorts, even with the increased casualties they’d suffered during the interval. “It’s going to be ten and twelve hour shifts for a while.”

Neither of them looked at the clock, but Lukas was aware of it, counting down, marking exactly how long a while would be.

Ghislaine glanced at the tablet, grunting agreement. Then pushed it aside and finally looked up at him, closing her own screen as she did so. “We have another problem.”

Lukas couldn’t suppress his groan. How many more problems could stack up before it simply became too much? “What now?” slipped out before he could frame a more appropriate response.

But this was Ghislaine and informality had never been her concern. “There’s been a breach on Cradle.”

It took a moment for the words to fit together in Lukas’s exhausted mind. To make sense of what she was saying. And even then, his first response was, “That isn’t possible.”

“Apparently it is.”

Calculations, plans, concerns became a chaotic jumble in Lukas’s head. “How did you find out? Who knows? What happened? Is there a suspect—” He stopped himself, took a breath. “As I’m sure you were about to tell me.”

She gave him a grin that fell away almost instantly. “I don’t know what happened. Ancestors are with us so far that I haven’t gotten any reports of infestation.”

“Then how—” Lukas pressed his lips together. He knew better than to interrupt, but this was—he still hadn’t gotten the facts to settle in his mind.

Ghislaine hadn’t seemed to notice. “One of the scouts reported an anomaly in darkspace. Since the roster’s so tight, I went myself to investigate. At first it looked like nothing more than a new ripple, but when I got close, I could feel the remains of a breach. And when I went through, it led me right to Cradle.”

This time, she paused for real, leaving him space for the questions he was still trying to organize in his head. “Who else knows?”

“No one. You’re the first person I’ve talked to about this, and we haven’t had any other reports.”

So that was one box checked off. “How is this possible?”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

A breach on Cradle. That was disaster. Unthinkable, even for Lukas, whose job was to figure out everything that could possibly go wrong.

While Bulwark was the planet closest to the breach and the official capitol of the Wolf clan, with Castle Faust its largest fortress, Cradle was the original homeworld the Wolf had settled on. It had been a paradise world to start with, quick and easy to terraform into habitability. While Bulwark housed the bulk of the clan’s military, Cradle was the place they fought to protect. It was their haven.

Families lived on Cradle. Soldiers retired there. Vacationed there. Children were raised and taught. Cradle provided the clan’s food, their infrastructure, their industry. It was the place for those wounded in mind and body by the endless war to recover.

And it was supposed to be safe from demons. For hundreds of years, it had been.

“I want you to look into this,” Ghislaine said. “I don’t trust anyone else. Until I know what happened—what this means—we can’t afford for this information to get out.”

As a whole, the clan was stretched to the breaking point. To learn of a threat to Cradle—that children and families who were supposed to be safe might be in danger… “If there’s anything that could start a panic, this would be it.”

Ghislaine nodded. “Exactly.”

And that was when the rest snapped into place. “If someone did this. If one of our people…” It was a betrayal on the scale Lukas could hardly even imagine. “What do we do?”

“We investigate.” From the chaos on her desk, Ghislaine pulled a slim folder. “I have an akashic in mind. She’s a transplant. No hikmaic gift. She’s a pilot, and should know the territory well enough by now.”

Lukas glanced through the folder. Rinn, no family name. All the records were from after she came to Cradle. One of the foundational tenets of the clan was that if you came here to help in the fight against the demons, the Wolf didn’t care who you were before or what you did. Privacy was an absolute. “You trust her?”

“I had a long interview with her when she first arrived.” Which was unusual enough to get Lukas’s attention, but he knew better than to ask what Ghislaine knew.

And in fact, Ghislaine didn’t give him any specifics. But she said, “Rinn isn’t anyone who would have been involved with demon summoning. And she’s well equipped to help find the people who are.”

That was a start. “We’ll need someone with a hikmaic gift helping her.”

“No.” There was a sharp finality to her tone. “For any Wolf to be involved in this heresy is such a betrayal of everything—it’s unbelievable. But that breach was there, and someone with a hikmaic adaptation opened it. And if any Wolf could do this, then every Wolf is a suspect.”

“Not every Wolf, surely.”

“Every Wolf. It would be different if I still had—”

She stopped and Lukas held his breath, recognizing the start of the one discussion that always ended in a fight, in Lukas crawling away with his figurative tail between his legs.

This time, she let it go. “Who is our best empath?”

That was an easy question. “Varya Satsu.”

Ghislaine nodded. “Do you trust her?”

Lukas didn’t even have to think about it. “Absolutely.”

“Good. Because I don’t want anyone who’s going to get nervy.”

Satsu was steady and had given the Wolf years of exceptional service. She was a friend, someone Lukas had spent plenty of time with. “She’s steady. And not likely to flinch from a demon.”

Ghislaine pulled out a folder and handed it to him. “This contains what information I have. I want her down on Cradle immediately. I’ll contact Rinn. We need this settled before the eclipse.”

“I’m on it.” Lukas stood. “If there’s nothing else?”

“Go.”