Chapter Text
The storm never starts with thunder.
It begins with silence -
the kind that settles after a warning too carefully worded, or a disappearance too clean to leave blood behind.
Verene had felt this kind of silence before.
It was the pause before the Council moved, the breath before old laws were sharpened into weapons.
Across the outposts and the ruins, the night still held, but something in the air had shifted.
The Elders had convened.
And somewhere - between forgotten bloodlines and forbidden oaths - a single thread had been pulled.
And when threads unravel… they do not stop at kingdoms.
They take the world.
⸻
Jensen stood at the edge of the balcony, knuckles pale against the cold stone, watching the clouds roll in. Not weather - not really.
The sky was clear, but the storm had already begun.
It gathered in whispered votes and sealed letters. In dead messengers and missing names. In couriers who spoke in riddles. In the quiet way Verene had looked at him, last night, like she already knew what he was refusing to admit.
He’d seen it before.
The Council never came at you head-on. They circled like carrion birds, cloaked in law and memory, veiled behind ancient oaths and smiling threats. They waited until your allies doubted you, until your blood turned against itself, until the very ground beneath you began to question who you were.
And this time, they weren’t after territory.
This time, they were after him.
Or worse - after the fragile, unspoken thing he hadn’t dared to name.
The thing that still slept beside him some nights, all warmth and scars and too many questions. The thing that had cracked his armor with a single, honest gaze and kept splitting him open ever since.
Jared.
Jensen exhaled through his nose, jaw tight, pulse louder than the wind. The horizon was pale gold, but it felt like the hour before the first siege, when the world holds its breath and pretends peace still has a chance.
The Council moved in silence.
And silence was already here.
He could feel it in the shift of the guards below. In the absence of birdsong. In the scent of ink and sealing wax that still lingered in the study.
The storm was coming.
And Jensen knew - if they couldn’t destroy him, they’d find the seams in him. The one piece of him left unguarded. The part that made him hesitate. The part he couldn’t sacrifice.
And this time…
He might burn the whole damn empire before he let that happen.
⸻
Chris had learned to read storms long before he’d ever met Jensen. The kind that came in with steel-gray skies and restless winds, that made even wolves go silent. But this - this was different. The Elder’s silence wasn’t weather. It was warning.
From the lower terrace, Chris could see him. Jensen stood motionless on the balcony above, shoulders straight, jaw like stone, eyes on a horizon that wasn’t clouded but still promised thunder. To anyone else, he looked like marble brought to life. To Chris, he looked like danger barely leashed.
This wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.
Four hundred years at Jensen’s side had taught him what others never survived long enough to understand. The Elder didn’t need to raise his voice. Didn’t need to flare his power. When Jensen was quiet - truly quiet - that was when you knew something had shifted.
And Chris could feel it now, crawling under his skin.
The Council. Of course it was the Council. They had been circling since Alina’s ashes cooled, whispering from Geneva like carrion crows too proud to admit their fear. And Jensen knew it. He always knew it.
Chris ground his teeth, fists curling at his sides. His instincts screamed at him to do something - hunt, protect, strike first. But strategy was Jensen’s game, not his. Chris was the hound, the shadow, the blade that followed orders. And right now, his maker hadn’t given any.
Still, his gaze slid back to the upper floor, to the half-drawn curtains of the chambers beyond that balcony. To the figure he knew lay behind them - mortal, fragile, human. Jared.
Chris felt something in his chest twist. For centuries, Jensen had needed no one. He had been untouchable, unshakable, immortal in every sense that mattered. And then this boy had come along with his stubborn heart and honest eyes, and suddenly the Elder had seams.
And seams… seams could be pulled.
Chris swore under his breath, sharp and quiet, the kind of oath only a soldier makes when he sees a war coming before anyone else admits it.
If the Council thought they could touch Jared, they hadn’t reckoned on him.
He’d keep the boy safe. Maker or not, Elder or not, Chris had already decided - no Council edict, no ancient oath, no whispered scheme would reach Jared Padalecki while he still drew breath.
Above him, Jensen didn’t move. Didn’t need to. The storm was already here.
And Chris? He would be the lightning.
⸻
He woke without meaning to. Not from a sound, but from a shift.
The room was still, dim with the last strands of sunlight, the sheets warm around him. But the bond pulsed differently - low, tight, like a wire drawn too taut. Jared blinked against the heavy quiet, heart already climbing his throat.
Jensen wasn’t in the bed. He hadn’t been for some time.
Jared closed his eyes and reached for the tether anyway, that invisible thread he could always feel. Normally, it was a steady hum, a grounding presence that soothed even when Jensen was elsewhere. Tonight, it pressed against him like the edge of a blade. Not broken. Not angry. Just… waiting.
And Jared knew that kind of waiting.
He pushed himself upright, shoving the hair out of his eyes, bare feet hitting the cold floor. He didn’t need to open the curtains to know where Jensen was. The bond pulled at him, sharp and certain. Out on the balcony. Watching. Guarding.
Brooding, Jared thought, with the kind of humor that never reached his mouth when Jensen got like this.
He didn’t go to him - not yet. Instead, Jared stood at the window’s edge, hidden by the curtain, watching the silhouette carved against the night. Broad shoulders, still as carved stone, the faintest rise and fall of breath that wasn’t truly breath at all.
And God, even in that silence, Jensen was beautiful. Ageless and terrible, his profile cut by the last light, his hair catching faint gold, his posture screaming power that didn’t need to be shown to be felt.
But Jared also saw the storm in him.
He felt it in his own chest - the same storm Verene had warned him about, the one the Council feared. And he knew, without Jensen needing to say a word, that something had shifted. Lines were being drawn. Threads were already pulling loose.
“Jensen,” Jared whispered, voice too quiet to carry, but heavy with need.
The figure on the balcony didn’t move, but through the bond, Jared felt it: a flicker, like the faintest tilt of the storm toward him. A reminder that whatever empire tried to unravel him, whatever silence the Council sent to break him, Jensen was still tethered.
Tethered to him.
And Jared swore, right then, that he wouldn’t let that thread snap. Not to the Council. Not to ancient politics. Not to fear.
Whatever storm was coming, he’d stand in it. With Jensen.
Always.
⸻
He’d known Jared was awake the moment the boy stirred. The bond shifted with it - warmth bleeding into the cold, stubborn determination pressing against the silence Jensen was holding. Jared thought he was quiet, thought he was hiding behind the curtain, but Jensen felt him as clearly as the stone under his hands.
For a moment, Jensen stayed where he was, knuckles white against the balustrade, staring out at a horizon that promised nothing but war. It was easier to hold the storm there, in the dark, away from Jared’s eyes. Easier to let the fury coil tight without the boy seeing it.
But Jared wasn’t letting him.
That whisper - his name, soft as a prayer and stubborn as a challenge - had carried through the bond like a spark. And Jensen had never been good at ignoring sparks.
He drew a slow breath, turned from the horizon, and stepped back inside.
Jared was standing by the window, bare feet on the cold stone, hair still mussed from sleep. The lamplight caught the freckles on his face, the stubborn line of his jaw. He looked young, fragile, human - and yet there was fire in him. Fire strong enough to keep Jensen from vanishing into silence altogether.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Jared asked, voice too casual to hide the edge in it.
Jensen didn’t answer right away. He crossed the room slowly, deliberately, until the storm of him filled the space between them. He stopped close enough that Jared had to tilt his head back to meet his eyes. Green met hazel, and for a heartbeat, Jensen almost lied. Almost told him it was nothing.
But Jared had always seen through lies.
“The Council is moving,” Jensen said at last, voice low, quiet as the blade that severs a throat. “Not with armies. With whispers. Letters. Decisions made in silence.”
Jared swallowed, but didn’t look away. “And you think it’s about me.”
Jensen’s jaw tightened. He reached out, cupping Jared’s cheek in his hand, his thumb brushing lightly over warm skin. The one part of him he hadn’t learned how to guard. “I don’t think,” he said. “I know.”
The bond pulsed hard between them, Jared’s fear brushing up against Jensen’s rage, both anchoring and unmaking him all at once.
And Jensen swore - if the Council so much as breathed wrong in Jared’s direction, the world would remember why the storm was feared.
⸻
The Council never argued in public. Not in the great chamber, not with the candles lit and records written. Their true debates always happened in corners, in the side-rooms where shadows fell thick and voices could be kept low.
Tonight, two lingered there - Lord Armand and Lady Isolde.
Armand’s fingers drummed nervously against the polished oak of the table, each tap betraying what his smooth mask did not. “They’re mad,” he whispered, voice brittle. “Mad, all of them. To even speak of turning the boy behind Ackles’s back -” He cut himself off, jaw tight, as though the very idea might summon the Elder from the dark.
Lady Isolde leaned back in her chair, pale hands folded neatly in her lap, though her eyes betrayed her tension. “Mad, yes,” she said softly, “but desperate. And desperation has a way of dressing itself in reason.” Her lips pressed thin. “They fear what will happen when Jared Padalecki dies. So they would play god with his life.”
Armand’s laugh was short, humorless, as sharp as breaking glass. “And when Jensen finds out? Do they think he’ll forgive it? Do they think he’ll believe it was mercy?” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “He’ll gut this Council. Tear us apart piece by piece until Geneva is ash. He’s done worse for less.”
Isolde’s gaze flicked toward the door, though no one lingered there. “You speak truth. He is not feared because he loses control. He is feared because he never does. Because when he kills, it is by design.” She paused, her voice falling even quieter. “And because he makes the rest of us watch.”
The silence that followed weighed heavy, broken only by Armand’s uneven breathing. He pressed a trembling hand to his mouth, eyes closing. “They do not remember what it was like. The last time he was crossed. They were not there to see the ruin he left behind.”
“I was,” Isolde whispered. For a moment, her gaze grew distant. “I saw him standing in the wreckage. Still. Silent. Beautiful. Terrible. A god dressed as a man.”
She shook herself from the memory and met Armand’s eyes again. “We cannot stop the others from plotting. But we can pray they lose their nerve before they act. Because if they don’t…”
Armand swallowed hard. His hand dropped to the table, knuckles white. “If they don’t, then eternity itself will drown in storm and blood.”
⸻
Jensen hadn’t heard the Council’s words, but he didn’t need to.
He was older than parchment, older than most of their bloodlines, and he had learned long ago that politics did not travel on letters and decrees alone. It traveled in the silence that followed them. The pauses between messages. The way a courier’s eyes shifted when they delivered a sealed note, or how the wax smelled faintly of hesitation instead of conviction.
Tonight, he felt it like a ripple in his bones. A faint fracture running through the Council’s silence. Doubt. Disagreement.
His quill hovered over parchment, unmoving, as his eyes fixed on the candle before him. The flame burned straight, undisturbed. And yet the bond in him thrummed sharper, like a vibration carried on old stone. He had learned to listen to that. It was instinct, sharpened by centuries until it felt like prophecy.
Some of them wanted Jared turned. Jensen knew it the moment the thought formed, though no voice had dared breathe it in his presence. Others resisted - that was the ripple. Two currents pulling against each other, waiting for one to snap.
He leaned back in his chair, jaw tightening.
It wasn’t relief. Their fear of him didn’t soothe him anymore, not where Jared was concerned. It only told him what he already knew: the Council was fracturing. Fractures widened into schemes. Schemes widened into betrayal.
And they would test him.
Jensen closed his eyes briefly, exhaling through his nose. He had spent centuries outmaneuvering wars, plagues, dynasties, but nothing had ever felt as precarious as this - protecting the one thread he could not afford to lose. Jared.
He opened his eyes again, the flame catching in their green depths, a faint pulse of crimson flickering underneath. The candle shivered though the air was still.
If the Council forced his hand, if they even touched Jared…
Jensen would not roar. He would not rage. He would simply act. And when the world looked up again, the Council would be nothing but memory and ash.
⸻
Chris had long since learned to keep his steps silent around Jensen, but even silence didn’t make him invisible. His maker always knew where he was, what he was doing. Still, tonight he lingered outside the study door, not out of duty but because he needed to.
Through the crack of the barely opened door, the scene was achingly familiar: Jensen alone at his desk, candlelight brushing over pale skin, shadows sharp against his jaw. He wasn’t moving, not really. Just sitting there, quill suspended, gaze locked on the flame as if it were telling him secrets only he could hear.
And Chris knew that look.
Cold. Deliberate. Calculating. It wasn’t rage - not even close. Rage was loud, messy, reckless. This was worse. This was Jensen Ackles, the Elder, deciding what line the world had crossed and what he would carve from it in return.
Chris’s gut clenched. He’d seen it before, centuries ago. Cities turned silent. Names erased from bloodlines. The Council terrified into obedience for generations after. And now… now the Council had forgotten.
The worst part wasn’t Jensen’s power. It wasn’t his age or his reach. It was the way he could make destruction feel inevitable. He wouldn’t lift a finger in anger - he would dismantle them piece by piece, without raising his voice.
Chris’s hand curled into a fist against the doorframe. He respected it. Feared it. Admired it, even, in some twisted way. But Jared - God, Jared didn’t see this side of him. Or maybe he did, and loved him anyway, which was even harder to understand.
And Chris… he wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t want Jared to see the colder edges of his maker. He wanted the boy to keep seeing the freckled man who smiled for him, not the Elder who turned entire courts to dust.
But as Chris stood there, listening to the scratch of Jensen’s quill finally move across parchment, he knew the Council had already forced this path.
And if they pushed one step further - if they reached for Jared - then Chris would be standing shoulder to shoulder with a storm no one had seen in centuries.
He swallowed hard, closing his eyes.
“God help us all,” he whispered, before stepping into the shadows where he belonged.
⸻
Geneva, The Hidden Archive
Verene’s hands brushed the dust from the spines of books older than the Council itself. The chamber was cold, the air thick with parchment, ink, and the faint musk of time. Here, where the records of forgotten centuries slept, the Council rarely came. Too many truths in one place made even the boldest of them uneasy.
But Verene had no such hesitation.
She had listened in the shadows, watched the cracks widen among her peers. Mireille’s sharp tongue, Dorian’s icy logic, Salvatore’s thunderous defiance. All of them pulling in opposite directions, yet inching closer to the same, dangerous conclusion: Jared Padalecki.
She could feel it like a pulse running under every word in Geneva. Turn him. Bind him. Protect the world from Jensen Ackles by taking from him the only choice he had ever dared to make for himself.
Verene closed her eyes. The arrogance of it. The blindness. Did they not remember? Had they not seen what she had seen? The ruins he left when provoked, the silence after entire bloodlines vanished, the stillness of him standing in fire as if it could not touch him?
They thought they feared him now. They had no idea.
Her violet gaze slid to the sealed letter on the table, already written in her own hand. The Council did not know she was writing it, nor to whom it was addressed. It would be delivered before dawn, straight into the hands of the one person who needed to read it: Jensen himself.
She owed him her life. But this went beyond debts. This was survival. For her, for Jared, for all of them.
Because if they forced the Elder’s hand - if they stole his mate from him in the name of law - then the storm that followed would not stop at the Council.
It would burn the world.
Her quill scratched across parchment one last time as she wrote the warning plain:
They mean to turn him, Jensen. Not with your hand, but against it. I do not stand with them. They set the plan in motion like I already told you. But they are not all on the same page. I’ll send word, when I can. Know this, and prepare.
She sealed the letter with wax, pressing her insignia deep. Her hand lingered on it for a moment, the weight of centuries pressing into her bones.
Then she whispered, too softly for anyone but the stones to hear:
“May the rest of them remember mercy before it’s too late.”
⸻
The bond had been humming all evening, sharp and restless, like Jensen was made of coiled steel and silence. Jared had tried to sit with him in the study, tried to catch his eye, but Jensen had been lost in parchment and candlelight, colder than usual, his focus locked somewhere Jared couldn’t follow.
So when Jensen finally retreated deeper into his work, Jared slipped out. He didn’t go to bed. He went looking for Chris.
He found him outside on the terrace, leaning against the railing with his arms folded, watching the night settle over the grounds. Jared hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward.
“Chris?” His voice was low, careful. “What’s going on with him?”
Chris didn’t turn right away. His jaw worked for a moment before he let out a long sigh. “Council’s stirring. You don’t need me to tell you that - you can feel it.”
“I can feel something,” Jared admitted. “But he won’t talk to me. He just… walls it off. I’m tired of being left in the dark, Chris. Please. Tell me what’s happening.”
Chris finally turned, leaning his hip against the railing, his sharp features softened by the lamplight from inside. He looked at Jared for a long moment, as though weighing whether to say anything at all. Then he said, quietly:
“They’re whispering about you. About turning you. Not by his hand. By theirs. You know that. Verene told us. But they are already on the move.”
Jared’s stomach dropped, the words hitting like ice water. But before he could answer, Chris held up a hand.
“Don’t - don’t panic. Not yet. Whispers aren’t action. But you need to understand something, Jared. You think you’ve seen Jensen angry? You haven’t. Not really. If they try to take this choice from him, from you…” Chris shook his head slowly. “He’ll burn everything.”
Jared’s throat worked, but no words came. Instead, he whispered: “What was he like? Back then. When you first knew him. When you were still human.”
That pulled a different kind of silence from Chris. His eyes grew distant, his voice low when it came. “I was thirteen. Smaller than most of the boys in my school. Easy target. They used to corner me, shove me down, beat the hell out of me just because they could. Teachers pretended not to see. Fathers didn’t give a damn - one of them even laughed when the school sent word home.”
Jared felt his fists tighten at his sides.
Chris’s mouth curved bitterly. “Then one night… Jensen showed up. Don’t ask me how he knew. He just… knew. He didn’t touch the boys. Didn’t need to. He went to their fathers instead.”
Chris’s eyes met Jared’s, hard and bright. “And he broke them. Not with fists. With fear. He made them feel every ounce of what they’d let happen. He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t draw blood. Just… made sure they understood what it meant to be powerless. I’ll never forget their faces when he walked out of that room.”
Jared swallowed, his chest tight. “And with you?”
The hardness in Chris’s eyes softened. His shoulders eased. “With me? He was different. Gentle, even. He told me I wasn’t weak. That what they’d done didn’t define me. That I had more strength than they’d ever understand.” He exhaled, voice roughening. “When my mother died, I asked him to make me like him. And he did. Because he believed in me. Because he cared, in his own way. And four hundred years later…” Chris’s mouth curved in something like a smile. “…I’d still follow him into fire. I love him, Jared. Fiercely. Not the way you do. But enough that I’d burn for him without hesitation.”
Jared’s eyes stung. He looked down, blinking hard, then back at Chris. “I think I’m starting to understand why. Thank you. For telling me.”
Chris clapped him gently on the shoulder, his grip steady. “Don’t thank me. Just hold him. That’s what he needs. More than my loyalty, more than my blade. He needs you.”
⸻
The terrace air was cool against Jared’s skin as he left Chris behind, but his chest felt warmer than it had all night. Warmer - and heavier. The weight of what Chris had said pressed down, but not in a way that crushed. More like an anchor. A reminder that Jensen wasn’t the unshakable fortress he pretended to be.
Jensen had been a storm long before Jared ever stepped into his world. He’d carried centuries of silence, carried Chris, carried entire legacies of fear and law. But Chris’s words echoed: With me, he was different. Gentle.
Jared swallowed hard, his hand brushing the banister as he climbed the wide staircase back toward the chambers. He hadn’t been able to shake the look in Chris’s eyes when he said it. The way his voice had softened when he remembered Jensen telling him he wasn’t weak.
That was what Jensen had done for Chris four centuries ago. And somehow, impossibly, Jared realized Jensen was still doing the same for him now.
At the top of the stairs, the hall stretched wide and silent. Only one door was open: the chamber Jensen always retreated to when the storm pressed too close - their bedroom, though sometimes it felt like a battlefield with nothing but silence for company.
Jared paused in the doorway.
Jensen was seated at the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched forward, still in his shirt from earlier. Candlelight carved his profile into something almost unreal - cheekbones sharp, jaw tight, lips pressed in a line that looked too hard for someone so beautiful. His hands dangled between his knees, as if the weight of them was more than they should be.
The bond between them pulsed low, slow, restrained. Jensen was holding everything in again.
And Chris’s words came back: Don’t thank me. Just hold him. That’s what he needs. More than my loyalty, more than my blade. He needs you.
Jared took a breath, stepped forward, and crossed the room without a word. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t wait for Jensen to look up. He just slid his hands over those tense shoulders and leaned in, pressing his forehead against the side of Jensen’s temple.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered.
For a long moment, Jensen didn’t move. Then - slowly, carefully - Jensen’s hand came up, covering Jared’s where it rested against his chest. His fingers tightened, not with command but with need.
And for the first time all night, Jared felt the storm ease. Just a fraction.
⸻
The storm inside him had no shape, no voice, no mercy. It was centuries of silence pressed into bone, old vows scraped raw by the Council’s whispers, the memory of every ruin he had ever stood in. He’d been bracing for it all night, holding it back the way only he knew how: with stillness.
And then Jared touched him.
It wasn’t a strike, not even a demand. Just the warmth of hands settling on his shoulders, the quiet press of a forehead against his temple, the sound of a voice low enough it almost didn’t exist: I’ve got you.
Jensen’s body went rigid at first. Reflex. He didn’t need anyone. He had never needed anyone. For centuries, he had been enough for himself - storm, predator, judge, executioner. But Jared didn’t move. Didn’t let go. The boy’s heartbeat thrummed steady against the silence, and the bond pulsed like a thread pulling him back from a cliff he hadn’t even realized he was at the edge of.
Slowly, Jensen let out a breath. His hand came up, fingers closing over Jared’s. Not in command. Not in restraint. In surrender.
And in that small, devastating moment, the storm inside him shifted.
It didn’t disappear - storms never did.
But it eased, pulled back from the jagged brink where it had been coiled. Because Jared wasn’t afraid. Because Jared was here. Because for the first time in fifteen hundred years, Jensen wasn’t standing alone in the silence.
The Council could whisper. They could conspire in their marble halls, speak of turning Jared, speak of stripping away the one choice that mattered. They could draw their lines in secrecy, circle like carrion birds.
But as Jensen sat there, his mate’s warmth pressed against him, the storm inside him bent. Not broken, not diminished - anchored.
Jared had no idea how much power he wielded in that simple act of holding him. Or maybe he did. Maybe that was the most dangerous part.
Jensen turned his head slightly, his lips brushing Jared’s hair, his voice a low growl against his skin.
“They’ll learn,” he whispered. “If they think they can touch you - if they even dream of it - I’ll show them why they’ve always feared me.”
Jared’s hands tightened, but he didn’t pull away. And Jensen - Jensen let the storm rest, just for a little while, in the warmth of the only tether he’d ever chosen.
⸻
The chamber was lit in gold and shadow, candleflames guttering as if uneasy at the words being spoken. No couriers this time. No veiled pleasantries. Just whispers that had sharpened into voices, voices that cut into arguments.
“He is mortal,” Lord Dorian said, his tone crisp, almost clinical. “This cannot be ignored. A mortal lifespan is a flicker to us, and when it ends, so does our safety. You know what will happen. Ackles will burn through the world.”
Mireille’s crimson-ringed eyes gleamed above her folded hands. “Then we prevent it before it begins. The boy must be turned. Quietly. Without Jensen’s consent, if necessary.”
The silence that followed was taut. Even those who agreed with her shifted in their seats, as if speaking it aloud carried danger.
Lord Armand, pale with nerves, dared to murmur: “You are suggesting treachery against the Oldest himself.”
“No.” Mireille’s lips curved into a blade’s edge of a smile. “I am suggesting survival. Our survival. The world’s.”
Salvatore slammed a ringed fist against the table, the boom rattling parchment and flame alike. “Survival?” His voice thundered. “Do you fools not remember what survival looked like the last time he was crossed? I saw him standing in the ruins. Not raging. Not screaming. Just standing. Beautiful. Silent. With ash at his feet.”
The room hushed. Even the boldest councilors averted their eyes.
Still, Dorian pressed on. “And yet here we are, centuries later. Alive. Because he did not finish the work. Perhaps it is his bond with this mortal that has softened him.” He leaned forward, voice dropping. “And perhaps that is why we must act. While he hesitates. While he is vulnerable.”
The word - vulnerable - hung in the air like poison.
Isolde’s lips parted, but she closed them again, too wise to speak against the tide. The others whispered, whispered, and the whispers grew louder.
Mireille’s voice cut through them like silk through flesh. “Then it is settled. Jared Padalecki must be turned. By our hand, not his. Very soon. As long as he's still cleaning up Alina's mess.”
The candles sputtered, wax running like blood down their sides. And though none of them said it aloud, though none dared breathe the truth into words, each of them felt the same cold truth press down:
If Jensen Ackles ever learned of this, Geneva would not stand long enough to regret it.