The moment the last word left the lips of the Grand Marshal, every finger in the living room that belonged to the DiLaurentis family turned as one toward the three women standing at the center of it all: Serena, Margaret, and Rosalie. It was as though generations of buried resentment had been waiting for this moment to find its direction.Margaret gritted her teeth, her voice tight. “Don’t go too far. This has nothing to do with us, and you would do well to remember that before you make accusations you cannot take back.”Uncle Felix snorted and puffed his chest. “It’s not our fault that you don’t know how to control your own son-in-law and daughter, or keep them from plotting against the very family whose name they carry.”“This is complete nonsense!” Rosalie stomped her foot, her eyes blazing. “We don’t recognize that trash in our household, and anything he has done tonight is entirely of his own doing. It has nothing to do with us.” She turned towar

Meanwhile, at an unknown location...The bedroom was the kind of luxury most people only ever saw in photographs: an immaculate space with high ceilings and soft lighting that gave everything within it a warm glow. Silk sheets and dark mahogany furnishings. And at the center of it all, a young man lay sleeping.He would have looked perfectly at peace, if not for the chains.His arms were stretched wide to either side, each wrist locked into a heavy steel restraint bolted directly into the reinforced frame of the bed. His ankles were the same, spread apart and anchored, his entire body pinned open like a star, held down by mechanisms that looked less like something out of a hospital and more like something designed by people who understood exactly how dangerous the person wearing them could be.Doctors and nurses moved around him in white uniforms, quietly checking monitors, adjusting readings, and pressing instruments against his skin. signs. They circled him from every angle, filli

“I...” Before Elijah could find the words, she cut him off again.“You must be in shock seeing your wife here. Happy at the same time. So it’s a mixture of emotions. That’s what you could be thinking about...” The suspicious look on her face broke into a bright smile, then dropped almost immediately back to flat. “Or not?”Her moods shifted like weather, fast and without warning. For anyone else, it would have been strange. For Elijah, it was simply Tessa.He moved to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and looked out.Water. A gentle, dark expanse stretching outward, and far ahead, the lit outline of buildings along the outskirts of Brooklyn Heights.He wasn’t in a building at all. He was on a ship, anchored along the coastal stretch of the city, the part that opened into the wider ocean cutting across Sorevia.If Tessa had come by ship rather than a private flight, this wasn’t a simple intelligence visit. Those armed doctors and nurses hadn’t just been medical staff. They were par

The new day arrived quietly, the rising sun pushing its light through the open curtains and casting warm, unhurried rays across the room. At its center was Elijah Langston, sitting with his legs crossed in a Burmese meditation posture, his eyes shut, his hands resting calmly in front of him, his entire being settled into a stillness so complete that the room itself seemed to hold its breath around him.He had been cultivating through the entire night without pause, and now his core was back to its peak, brimming and full, the energy inside him humming at its natural frequency once more. The sunlight seemed to sense it. The rays that touched him carried a warmth beyond ordinary warmth, and where they fell on his skin, a faint golden hue bloomed and stretched slowly into the air around him, the kind of reaction that only pure spiritual energy could draw from the world around it.The door unlocked.The moment it pushed open, Elijah’s eyes opened with it,

“Is that all you have?” the two soldiers asked at the same time, their eyes fixed on the two women standing before them.It was early that morning, and Grace Ainsworth stood at the threshold of the entrance door, still dressed in her nightclothes, watching from a distance as her grandmother, Eleanor, conversed with the two military officers at the foot of the stepsEleanor Ainsworth smiled pleasantly. “My Ainsworth family has always abided by the law, so we have nothing to hide. If anything else comes to mind, I will be sure to reach out. But what I have given you is entirely accurate, and it should lead you exactly where you need to go.”One of the officers gave a short nod. “Your information lines up with what we’ve already found on our end, so we have no reason to doubt it. I apologize for the inconvenience this early in the morning. We won’t trouble your family again.”“Oh, don’t mention it.” Eleanor waved a hand lightly, the smile never leaving her face. “We all have a duty to su