Bile surged up the back of Elias’s throat as the gunshot echoed through Sander’s office. Mattias had the phone on speaker, the volume turned up.

Chey covered her mouth with her hand while Leander growled in fury.

A moment later, the line went dead.

The last two hours of planning had possibly been for nothing. Elias paced the length of the office in agitation. Had the men actually shot Sander’s knee—or had they shot Sander and killed him?

He was not alone in his agony.

“What do we do now?” Chey asked with a shaky voice.

“They didn’t give us a meeting point. If Sander’s still alive, they’ll call back. They have to, or they won’t get what they want,” Mattias said. The words were tight with suppressed anger. He held himself together better than Leander, who unapologetically let loose a string of curses.

Elias didn’t stop to think about the shift happening within. Distantly, somewhere outside the current crisis, he recognized that he’d come to care for Sander insofar that he did not want the man to die. At the moment, he was consumed with the fear that they might be too late.

As if to prove Mattias’s prediction, the phone rang.

“Yes?” Mattias said. He had not taken the phone off speaker. The same man’s voice that had been on the phone before echoed through the office.

“We will meet at sunrise. Send Elias alone to Macor and have him go inside. Once he is secure, you will withdraw any and all personnel involved in Elias’s travel. There is to be no one in or around Macor, do you understand? If you do not follow our rules exactly, the next contact you receive from us will be proof of the king’s death. A video we will share not just with you but with everyone.”

The line went dead.

“Macor,” Leander snarled.

“Where Sander sent Paavo to live out the rest of his life. And where Paavo died,” Mattias said. “That isn’t a mistake. They chose that location deliberately. I’d say they’re still in Latvala and haven’t crossed any borders.”

“I agree,” Leander said.

“How will you protect Elias if he has to go to Macor alone?” Chey asked.

“We can’t send entire troops to the location. They’ll see. I think we go in under cover of darkness and wait in the woods near the ruins. Put snipers in the trees. Pick those bastards off one by one when they get there,” Jeremiah said.

“What is Macor?” Elias asked. He absorbed the news of this Paavo person but did not ask details. There would be time later for that.

“Macor is an old ruin at the edge of the hinterlands,” Mattias said. “I agree with Jeremiah. I think we leave as soon as possible and wait through the night. We’ll position snipers everywhere, have them blend in with the landscape. In the meantime, we’ll have our team here continue to work to find the traitor in hopes we can get information beforehand. If we’re really lucky, we’ll find out where they’re keeping Sander now and coordinate a strike before we ever have to deal with Macor.”

“I’ll go round up the snipers,” Jeremiah said, and departed the room.

“Are you still willing to be bait?” Mattias asked.

Elias didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Just tell me what I need to do.”

A half hour after new plans had been drawn up, Elias departed Sander’s office en route for his own suite. Chey had informed him he had his own apartments upstairs, where clothes and shoes would be waiting. Elias couldn’t very well wear what he had on.

He hadn’t gone very far when Inari appeared at the end of the hall. Elias’s steps slowed. No one had told him she’d flown over from Kallaster.

“Hello, Elias,” she said when they were within speaking distance.

“Hello. I didn’t know you were here.”

“I’ve been here for a few hours, actually. But everyone was busy. Also, I was told that I needed to warn my family of a possible strike, so I’ve been on the phone with my father.”

“Better to be safe than sorry, or so they say. Did you get everything taken care of?” Elias studied Inari’s features. Like Chey, she was holding herself together well. Calm, patient, yet alert. He wished he could say the things he knew she wanted him to say—confessions of love, that his memory had returned, that he cared and would see her when he got back.

He could not in good conscience tell her those lies. He did not feel love, although he was not as averse to these strangers as he had been upon waking in the hospital. That was forward progress, at least in his book.

“Yes. Except for telling you that I hope we can spend some time together when all this is over. Nothing extreme—maybe dinner or a walk in the gardens. Maybe even breakfast in the morning.”

Elias realized then that Inari did not know about their plans to leave this evening. That he was serving himself up as bait, and that he might or might not make it back tomorrow. Mattias had wanted to keep the details contained, and so he did not mention them.

“I’m not opposed to a walk in the gardens.” He needed to start slow. In his mind, dinner seemed a little too much like a date, and he wasn’t currently ready for that. “I’ll have to get back to you about anything else.”

“All right. How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Actually, I have somewhere I need to be. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go. But as for your question, I’m feeling about the same as before.” No return of his memory, wounds healing well. He stepped past after a brief nod and headed for the staircase.

Time to get his game face on and prepare for war.