He had not been fighting.
That was the thing Katherine registered in the same moment she registered that the five remaining hunters had shifted their approach, had changed from the direct engagement that had been losing them the battle to something different, a distribution across the square that was not fighting the group but creating space within it, occupying attention on multiple sides simultaneously without pressing any of them to conclusion.
Creating a gap.
She understood what the gap was for at the same moment she understood what Sebastian was doing.
He was moving through the square with the specific precision of someone executing a task that required proximity to specific targets, not fighting anyone, not engaging with the battle, moving through it the way a person moves through a crowd — not part of it, navigating it, using the specific knowledge of how the chosen ones fought and moved and where their attention was at any given moment to be in the spaces between their attention.
He was going for the blood.
Not from all seven at once. One at a time, the sequence Victor had described to the hunters in the room below the street, the ritual's requirement, and Sebastian moved through the battle with three hundred years of specific knowledge of witches and chosen ones and the particular expression of someone executing a purpose with full competence.
The first cut was Carlyle.
Small. Precise. The heel of the palm, the specific location that produced a small wound easily, and Carlyle registered it in the way you registered things that happened at the edge of your attention during a fight — a fraction of a second of awareness before the attention was reclaimed by the immediate threat in front of him, which was a hunter who had been positioned to occupy exactly that attention at exactly that moment.
Katherine saw it happen.
She was too far.
She moved toward it and the hunter she had been managing moved with her in the specific way of something that had been positioned to prevent exactly this correction, and by the time she had dealt with the hunter Sebastian had already moved to the next.
Niall.
The same cut. The same precision. The same hunter repositioned to reclaim the attention.
Katherine felt the cold understanding of it settle into her the way cold things settled — completely, with the specific clarity of something that could not be argued with. This was the plan. This was what Victor had designed. The battle was not the point. The battle was the mechanism by which Sebastian had unobstructed access to each of the seven.
Five down now. Two to go.
She looked for KaSandra.
KaSandra was at the center of the square with her power drawn fully around her, the gold in her eyes very bright, and she was looking at Sebastian with the full knowledge of what he was doing and the specific expression of someone who has understood the trap they are inside and has also understood the thing about traps which is that understanding them does not always mean you can exit them.
Sebastian looked at her.
The certainty on his face was not the certainty from Victor's briefing room. It was something older than that, something the three hundred years had not been able to calcify over because it lived underneath everything that had been built.
He came toward her.
Not for the blood. Not yet.
Katherine was moving. Courtney was moving. The group was converging on the space between KaSandra and Sebastian with everything it had.
It was not enough.
Not because they were too slow or too far — they were neither. But because Sebastian had three hundred years of watching KaSandra fight and the specific knowledge of how she moved and what her power did and where the fraction of a second of opening existed in her defense, the knowledge that came from loving someone and watching them completely and storing everything you saw.
The cut was different from the others.
Not the heel of the palm. Sebastian stood in front of KaSandra in the square and looked at her and said something, very quietly, and she looked at him and what was in her face was not the armor and was not the wound and was something that had no name yet but was real, and in the moment of it — the fraction of a second of the moment — he took her hand.
He held it.
He made the cut.
She let him.
Katherine stopped moving.
The square went very still in the way squares went still when something significant had happened at the center of them.
Sebastian held KaSandra's hand with the cut on it and the blood on his fingers and looked at her with the eyes that were three hundred years old in a face that was not, and what was in them was not triumph. Was not completion. Was the expression of someone who has done the last thing they were going to do and knows it.
KaSandra looked at him.
"It's done," he said. Old language. She translated it without meaning to, the way you translated the languages of people you had known completely.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
He let go of her hand.
He stepped back.
He looked at Katherine.
Katherine looked at him.
He put the collection — whatever it was he had gathered, the blood of seven — into a small vial that came from inside his coat, the specific container Victor had provided for exactly this purpose, and he held it for a moment and looked at it and then he looked at KaSandra.
He put the vial on the ground.
He set it on the stone of the square carefully.
He stepped away from it.
"Sebastian," Katherine said.
He looked at her.
"Victor doesn't get it," she said. It was not a question.
Sebastian looked at the vial on the ground.
He looked at KaSandra.
Something moved through his face that was not any expression Katherine had seen there before. Not the certainty. Not the love from the before. Not the weight of the field. Something that was specifically and only his, specific to this moment, specific to a man who was deciding who he is when the thing he was built for has released him from the building.
He looked at Katherine.
"No," he said. "He doesn't."
He turned and walked out of the square.