Chapter 40 - The Seventh Cradle
The sunset turned the sky into bruised shades of violet and crimson when Marcus walked back into the nursery, his face suddenly drained of all color.
He wasn't carrying a weapon. He was carrying a small, wax-sealed wooden box that had just been delivered by a courier from the Saint-Germain archival vaults in Geneva.
"Clara. Lauren. Sophia," Marcus said quietly, closing the heavy oak door behind him. "The federal marshals just completed the inventory of Castlereagh’s private safe deposit boxes in Switzerland."
Sophia frowned, carefully laying my daughter back into the crib and rising to her feet. "Castlereagh’s personal holdings were liquidated this morning. Everything was transferred."
"Not everything," Marcus replied. He placed the wooden box onto the coffee table.
Upon the lid was not the falcon. It was a carving of seven stars circling a serpent biting its own tail—the ancient, mythical ouroboros of the continental founders.
Sophia’s breath hitched. "No... that’s impossible. That seal belongs to the Primordial Council. They were dismantled a century ago."
Lauren reached forward and opened the brass latch.
Inside lay a single sheet of vellum paper, dated exactly one week ago. On it were three high-resolution ultrasound scans. But they were not scans of Lauren’s baby, nor mine.
They were scans of four more children, carried by four surrogate mothers located across four different continents, each bearing the identical genetic markers of the Mercer bloodline.
Attached to the scans was a handwritten note in an unknown, elegant script:
*Dear Sisters: You were never the whole trinity. You were merely the first batch. Four more sisters are waiting in the dark, and their auction begins tomorrow night in Macau.*
Beneath the note lay an ornate black invite ticket, stamped with the name of the highest bidder:
*Buyer: The Sovereign Heir of the Dubois Bloodline.*
Lauren looked at me, her eyes wide with mounting horror.
May you like
Sophia’s hand instantly dropped to the concealed blade beneath her sweater.
The nightmare hadn't ended. It had only multiplied.