Ascendant: Mercy's End. Ascendant, #3

A rule only holds until the night it costs you everything. Four years on, the household is a city and the rule is nearly a constitution. Gabriel has built something that works. He has not yet been asked what it is worth. Lucas Vale is alive, and the Bloodline is growing, moving through Europe behind an intelligence built to slip past every watcher Gabriel has. Then Vale writes him a letter. When the doctrine takes what it should not, Gabriel stands at the line he drew and feels it crack.
To be stricter than the Regime, or to become it. He decides.