Rinerva paused.

  The insult hung in the rain soaked air, unanswered. Her eyes swept over Talos—his pale skin, the tremors, the arm that was currently a mass of wet, knitting red muscle and exposed bone. Something flickered behind her cold demeanor. Not quite fear, but a recalibration of variables.

  “Take a breath,” Rinerva commanded, her voice dropping the shrill edge of the accountant and adopting the low tone of the commander. “You can hear him. You can smell him. He is alive.”

  Nomi shuddered, her ears swiveled towards Talos as she forced herself to obey. She inhaled the scent of him, likely heavily mixed with the smell of his blood. She listened to the stuttering, weak drum of his heart.

  Her breath stopped catching, still uneven and panicked, but at least she was getting air.

  Rinerva walked closer. She didn't skirt the puddle of wasted alchemy. She stepped purposefully onto the shards, grinding the glass and the fortune it represented into the mud with her boot heel.

  “Tell me what happened. Are you both alright?”

  Rinerva’s gaze locked onto Talos’s regenerating limb. She did the math instantly.

  “A High Witch?” She shook her head, answering her own question. “No. You two wouldn’t struggle with a High Witch enough to necessitate a Last Gasp. You would have just outlasted her. This was something else. An unknown variable.”

  Rinerva took a step closer, reaching out a gloved hand toward Nomi’s shoulder.

  Hiss.

  The sound was instinctual and sharp, like steam escaping a pipe. Nomi recoiled, baring her teeth, her pupils dilated to black saucers.

  Rinerva paused, hand hovering in the air. She didn't flinch, but she didn't push. She waited a beat for recognition to return to the Fox’s eyes before slowly lowering her hand to check Nomi for wounds. As well as possible given her refusal to detach from Talos.

  “Clean,” Rinerva muttered, finishing her scan. She looked at Talos, who was swaying, his eyes glassy and fixated on Nomi with a confused, docile affection.

  “And judging by the fact that he’s letting you this close, the concoction has scrambled his cognitive filters.” Rinerva caught the sharp glare Nomi shot her, but she just shrugged, her expression unreadable.

  “Take it as a blessing for now. Agon and Lillik will be back soon. Go inside. Find a corner. Catch your breath.”

  Rinerva watched them go.

  She watched Nomi nervously tug Talos toward the commandeered inn, her oldest friend stumbling after the Fox, flickering in and out of focus like a dying lamp.

  Rinerva stared at the yellow stain on the cobblestones. A gold piece, evaporating in the rain.

  Anger at the waste flared hot in her chest, but she tamped it down. A flicker of dull, grudging respect replaced it. As much as she hated the way the Fox clung to him—and as much as she hated the way Talos let her—Nomi had made the right call.

  Something had nearly killed them.

  A cold realization settled over her: The Company was lucky.

  If that thing had ambushed Agon, he would be dead. If it had ambushed her, she would be dead. The only reason anyone was walking away was that the ambush hit the Tank—the only member of the team capable of surviving a Last Gasp overdose, paired with one of the most dangerous murderers in Orinth.

  She watched the door of the inn close behind them.

  She hoped Talos recovered enough to give a coherent report. Or, barring that, she hoped Nomi could keep herself together without going hollow long enough to translate.

  Rinerva turned back to the dark streets of the Outer District. She had to figure out what this new threat was. And fast. She walked to the inn, into the chamber she was renting. Her map of the city laid out before her. They were hunting near the walls to the middle city today. Usually lower risk, as the coven preferred to stay away from the densely populated areas with anything except thralls and acolytes.

  She turned her attention to the eastern district, the upper city. Arguably even worse than the lower city. Crawling with high witches. Maybe it was time for a change of pace. If the low city was crawling with monsters, she would send her own. And use her antimages to clean out the upper city.

  Their original plan had been abandoned by the first night. When they realized being outside was a death sentence.

  “Miss Rinerva.”

  The voice broke her concentration.

  Rinerva stopped drumming. She didn't look up immediately. Her eyes traced the topographical lines for a second longer before sliding up to the doorway.

  A man stood there, wringing a hat in his hands. One of the townsfolk. She’d spoken to him twice before. He was one of the Council members who had signed the guild request that dragged them into this damn city in the first place. She assumed their business with each other was already concluded.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Kaelen,” Rinerva said, her voice flat, not bothering to look up from the parchment. “This is a war room, not a parlor.”

  “I know, Miss Rinerva. But we’ve a problem we wanted your help with.”

  Rinerva paused. Her eyes shifted up, locking onto him properly for the first time.

  The cold, pale gaze didn't just look at him; they dismantled him.

  Mana flow.

  It was faint, but to a trained Mage, it was as obvious as a signal flare. A Spindlegrad commoner should have a small mana trace, and definitely not active traces of artificial mana shimmering in his blood. That was biologically impossible.

  That’s wrong.

  He wasn't Kaelen. Or if he was, he was enthralled—a vessel being piloted by someone else.

  “I see. Elaborate.”

  She turned her eyes back down to the map, feigning disinterest, but her peripheral vision sharpened. When he started moving closer, her head snapped up.

  “You can stay there,” she commanded, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain. “I just took a bath, and as much as I love the smell of peasant, I don’t want to take another.”

  She could play the part of the snobby noble when she had to. It was a useful shield; it kept threats at a distance without letting them know she had identified them as threats. Right now, she needed him talking. She needed data.

  “Ah— I… Course, Miss Rinerva,” he stammered, halting mid-step. “Someone reported that our grain stores were being tapped. Again. We wanted to see if you could help us find out who. On account of your... observations and all.”

  Flattery. And a tactical hook. They knew she would respond to a threat to the food supplies. Even if the town was just a variable in her equation, her Company needed to eat. A starving army was a useless army. Or it would be if she didn’t bring their own supplies, a fact Kaelen was apparently unaware of.

  “Have you proceeded with the preliminary investigation?”

  “Yes, miss. There are scratch marks along the cellar walls. Deep ones. Like something was trying to get in.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Fascinating?” Kaelen blinked, the mask slipping slightly.

  “Is the host fighting you?” Rinerva asked, her voice conversational. “Is that why the signal keeps stuttering? Is that why you have to keep using those little, inefficient flares of mana to force his jaw to move?”

  “I— what?”

  Rinerva snapped her fingers.

  Crack.

  The floorboards didn't just get cold; they erupted. The frost Rinerva had been silently pooling beneath the wood shot upward, flashing into solid, jagged ice that encased Kaelen’s legs up to the knees in a heartbeat. He tried to run, but he was rooted to the spot, fused to the architecture of the room.

  Rinerva walked slowly around the desk.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t see you?” she sneered, stopping inches from his face. “A little Witch, playing with artificial mana she doesn’t understand.”

  “How did—”

  “Tsk. I’m asking the questions now.”

  Rinerva reached out, tapping a gloved finger against the ice encasing his shin. Kaelen winced, but even his posture was too composed for a peasant.

  “Lillik told me about this spell. It’s crude. Invasive. Usually, you don’t micromanage Thralls this heavily, but for this conversation... you wanted to be in the room, didn't you?”

  She smiled, and the temperature dropped another five degrees.

  “I suspect the sensory link is bidirectional. You feel what he feels. Don't you?”

  Moisture in the air condensed with a sharp crack. A jagged shard of ice, shaped like a railroad spike, materialized between Rinerva’s fingers.

  Her eyes remained flat—a calculator tallying a butcher's bill.

  “This man is innocent!” the puppet stammered, the Witch’s voice cracking with genuine alarm as she tried to use Rinerva’s conscience as a shield.

  “This man is a peasant,” Rinerva corrected coldly.

  She hovered the tip of the ice spike millimeters from Kaelen’s tear duct. The man’s breath hitched, hyperventilating, but his feet remained frozen to the floor.

  “I can buy another ally,” she whispered. “I do wonder, though... without the adrenaline of combat to dull the nerves, how much raw, unfiltered sensory data a schemer like you can process?”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  Thunk.

  Rinerva didn't hesitate. She didn't go for the eye. She drove the ice shard downward, sinking it deep into Kaelen’s thigh. She missed the femoral artery with surgical precision, burying the jagged frost directly into the dense muscle of the quadriceps.

  Kaelen screamed. It was a dual sound—the man’s vocal cords tearing, and the Witch’s psychic projection screeching through him.

  Rinerva twisted the shard.

  “So,” she asked, her voice bored. “A High Witch?”

  “Fuck! FUCK! YES!” The puppet thrashed against the ice, tears streaming down his face. “Crazy bitch! Gods below, STOP! Yes, I'm a High Witch!”

  “Seems like you can’t withdraw right away,” Rinerva noted, observing the delay in the puppet's pupils. “But I’ll bet we’re on a timer. Hm. No bets, I feel you trying to decouple your mana.”

  She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of the peasant’s ear.

  “Where is the Matriarch?”

  “Rot in hell, you icy whore—”

  The insult was cut short by a sudden, violent swell of pressure. Rinerva felt the air ripple. The mana inside Kaelen spiked, turning hot and volatile. The Witch was jumping ship, and she intended to scuttle the vessel on her way out. The mana would burn at his insides without any mutations or mana channels.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  Rinerva moved faster than the explosion.

  Her hand clamped onto Kaelen’s shoulder. She didn't cast a spell; she simply enforced her will upon reality. She dumped a flash-freeze of absolute zero directly into his nervous system.

  The artificial mana didn't burst; it crystallized. It froze in the blood stream, rendered inert by the sudden stasis. The connection snapped.

  “See you around.”

  The haze vanished from the peasant’s eyes, replaced instantly by the confused, colourless irises of the real man.

  Kaelen’s eyes snapped open.

  For a fraction of a second, there was silence as his brain tried to reboot. Then, the sensory input caught up. The cold. The war room. The jagged spike of ice buried in his quadriceps.

  He shrieked—a raw, terrifyingly human sound that echoed off the frozen walls.

  “Welcome back, Kaelen. How was your time as a thrall?”

  Kaelen screamed, clutching his frozen leg. Rinerva ignored him, signaling for the guards. "Get him to the medic." She turned back to the map, dipping her quill into fresh ink. The scream faded as the door closed, leaving her alone with the silence and the strategy.