Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 65

Hades~

My ears were ringing as I watched the footage. This was probably the fifth time I had replayed it. My security cameras were state of the art—why wouldn’t they be? Yet, right in front of me, the videos of Ellen had no audio. None at all.

"What the…" Kael muttered, shock shading his voice. "This doesn’t make sense."

Like hell it didn’t. She was on the phone, clearly agitated, tears gathering in her eyes, her knuckles white from gripping the phone so hard. She was clearly upset, but I couldn’t hear a single thing she was saying. From what little I knew of lip-reading, it looked like she was speaking with her mother.

A flash of hurt crossed her face, like Queen Lyra was saying something very unfriendly. That was all I could deduce as my mind raced through possibilities and probabilities.

"How could the audio be deactivated?" Kael turned a threatening glare on the security officials, who were kneeling on the floor.

"I...I have no… no idea," one stammered, looking to his colleagues, who appeared equally lost, as though his world had come crumbling down. Maybe it had. "We were… monitoring," he promised. "Nothing was… odd… or out of place." He continued, trembling.

My skin crawled as the realization sank into my bones. We had been compromised. Infiltrated. This had never happened before. It only started with… Ellen. Her phone had been bugged, and intel couldn’t be collected. When I found out, I destroyed the phone. She had been present when the bomb went off. Even the security cameras hadn’t picked up any audio in her room.

My skin prickled as I ordered Kael to pull up footage from my room after Ellen was moved into it. The security team scrambled to access the files, already sweating under the weight of my gaze. They knew the stakes.

"Go back to the beginning. Every call she received. Play it again," I instructed, my voice low with barely-contained anger.

The footage flickered as we rewound to moments when Ellen had been on the phone. But each time, every recording was the same—mute. Completely stripped of sound. No static, no distortion, just impenetrable silence.

Kael clenched his jaw, turning to me, his unease mirroring my own. "This doesn’t feel like a simple malfunction," he muttered.

"Malfunction?" I laughed, the sound hollow. "State-of-the-art technology, Kael. Security so tight even I wouldn’t have expected a single flaw. And now, this." My voice was cold. I looked at the trembling team, who had gone back to kneeling. "How could you let this happen?"

The head of security swallowed, clearly desperate to keep his composure. "We… we monitored everything, Your Majesty. There were no signs, nothing that would indicate interference. It was as if—"

"As if someone disabled the audio without touching a single switch," I finished for him, my tone deadly calm. "Without any evidence left behind." My fist clenched, tension building within me. The control I’d always commanded felt as if it were slipping through my fingers.

Kael shifted. "We’re being toyed with."

I nodded, my mind racing, trying to hold onto that control. Someone had slipped through our defenses as if they knew every blind spot, every vulnerability. Someone was watching, listening, and I couldn’t reach them. The very thought made my jaw clench.

This had never happened. Not even when Silverpine and Obsidian were at loggerheads. It was a completely outlandish situation.

"It’s obvious what’s happening here," a feminine but firm voice said from the doorway. I didn’t need to turn to see who it was or how her perpetually red lips would twist into a sneer.

"And what might that be, Felicia?"

"It’s the mutt."

Cerberus reared his head at the mention of the slur. _{frёeweɓηovel.coɱ}

"Think about it, Your Majesty," she continued, her heels clicking on the marble tiles as she walked into the room. "None of this ever happened until she came." Her voice took on a thoughtful tone. "Her ’saving’ my son was a front. She did this, and what better way to keep suspicion off yourself than by making the perpetrator appear to be the victim? I searched the security cameras myself, too. One moment my Elliot was just on his own; the next moment, he had a bomb around his neck." Her voice trembled slightly, but not from fear—she was angry. "That girl is a damn spy. As if Darius would ever make peace, especially after what he did." Every syllable dripped with venom.

My jaw clenched. She was being logical, her words making sense. Still, something held me back from fully embracing the reality.