The Rock was nearly empty, as it had been for days. All the Wolves who had earned their way into the bar were now on double and triple shift rotations, which put everyone either out in darkspace or crashed out, trying to snatch a few short hours of sleep.

Which turned the once-popular bar a strangely perfect place for a private meeting.

Ghislaine, Lord Faust, was in here, waiting for Roman, with Lukas at her side. Three beers were sitting on the counter. Hers was already half gone. Lukas’s was barely touched.

Ghislaine was a towering, powerful woman, with only the barest trace of gray hair at her temples and the tiniest lines at her eyes and mouth to betray her age. She was bold, radiantly confident, a leader you could follow into hell without ever questioning that she’d bring you back out.

When Roman had received the summons to meet with her, he’d felt a flare of panic. Had Andreas talked to someone about the report Roman had never actually made? Had someone else witnessed something in Roman’s behavior? Had he given himself away?

But Ghislaine didn’t have the look of someone here to mete out discipline. If anything, she simply looked tired.

Roman doubted he looked any better. It wasn’t like he was getting enough sleep these days. The dreams…those hadn’t stopped.

He sat down in front of the third drink, took a swallow. “Ghislaine.”

“Roman.” She finished her own drink and rapped on the bar for another. “How are you holding up?”

Again, a flare of worry. Did she know something? Or was this simply an honest inquiry, a question she’d ask any scout right now?

If he let paranoia take over, he would definitely look suspicious. He bought himself an extra couple moments with a drink, then shrugged. “I’m tired, but who isn’t? I’m doing okay.”

“If this keeps up…”

She didn’t have to finish. Roman knew the end of that sentence. The long interval ahead. The drain on the clan. The lives they were going to lose.

“Other clans are pushing back against our escorts.”

Roman lifted his head, surprised. “You’re shitting me.”

Lukas said, “The Griffon loudly. The Swan quietly. Both saying they don’t need our help.”

“They’re going to get their own people killed. What are they thinking?”

“Exactly,” Ghislaine said. “What are they thinking?”

Lukas answered the rhetorical question. “That the danger doesn’t apply to them. That they’ll be lucky. That we don’t know what we’re talking about when we say that darkspace is an order of magnitude more deadly than during a normal interval.”

“Or they think the danger will stop,” Roman mused. Then he looked at Ghislaine. “Will it stop?”

“Fuck if I know.” Ghislaine drained her glass. The second since Roman had arrived, and who knew how many she’d drunk before he got there? The bartender brought her another, then retreated back to the far end where he was polishing glasses and pretending not to listen.

“This has happened before,” Lukas said in his soft, reasonable voice. “It isn’t common, but when I go through the records, I’ve found references. Maybe once every hundred years we get an interval where the demons don’t go back to sleep. Always hard on the clan and the rest of the Empire, but things do go back to normal after the next eclipse.”

“What we don’t know is why,” Ghislaine continued. “What causes this. How to predict it. How to prepare for it.”

Now she came to it, the reason she’d brought Roman here today. “You’re the strongest hikmaic in the pack. So you tell me. What’s changed? What’s different? Have you seen anything out there? Felt anything?”

Only the demon who had talked to him, who now haunted his dreams. But Roman was too deep in that lie now to admit it, especially not to Lord Faust herself. “I’ll have to think about it.”

By the way her hand clenched around her glass, that wasn’t the answer she wanted. Not that Roman could see how the truth would have given her any more to work with. Roman’s fixation aside, it wasn’t like anything he’d seen offered any hint of why the demons were still active.

“Think about it,” she said. “Keep your eyes open. Be watchful for any sign.” But she was still tense, staring forward, rather than looking at him.

“The pack is strong,” she said. “Every year, every generation, we get stronger than we were. We’ll survive this. And maybe…”

She trailed off. Roman took a breath to ask her, maybe what? But on the other side, Lukas gave a quick shake of his head. He wore a tight frown. Whatever was going through Ghislaine’s head right now, Lukas knew, and he didn’t like it.

Ghislaine pushed back from the bar and stood. However much she’d drunk, it didn’t show. She was steady on her feet as ever. “Let me know if you think of anything. And be careful out there. The clan needs you, Ro. If my idea…” She stopped again. To what looked like Lukas’s relief.

All Roman could think to say was, “For the pack.”

“Exactly.” With that, she left, Lukas trailing behind.