The rumors finally broke sometime between Midcrest and Brightwake.

  I noticed it the same way you notice a change in weather—not all at once, but in small shifts. Conversations took on a different tone. Names were repeated too often to be coincidence. Excitement crept into places that had been tense only days before. Arclight had been holding its breath since the courtyard incident, pretending that discipline and silence could keep the outside world from noticing.

  It couldn’t.

  By the time I reached home that evening, the names were everywhere.

  Princess Elain of Lysara. Princess Maeryn of Threniel. and Kaereth Valmor, returning heir of one of the four Pillar Houses.

  Ellara didn’t need to tell me. I heard it through the walls of the city itself—vendors gossiping as they closed shop, students speculating too loudly in the street, notifications lighting up my interface faster than I bothered to answer.

  The Academy liked to believe it existed apart from politics.

  It didn’t.

  Ellara was in the kitchen when I stepped inside, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, a pot simmering on the stove. The smell of garlic and herbs cut through the noise in my head in a way nothing else could.

  “You’re late,” she said without turning.

  “Only by a little,” I replied, setting my satchel down.

  She glanced over her shoulder, one brow lifting. “That’s what you said last time.”

  “It was true last time too.” I smiled faintly and moved to the table, activating my data interface.

  The projection unfolded across the surface—maps, timestamps, still images pulled from Sarien’s network of information brokers. She was thorough. Impressively so.

  The projection shifted as I adjusted the scale, resolving into the northern reaches of the island. Dense forest pressed in from every direction, the canopy thick enough that sunlight barely reached the ground in places. Near the edge of the Kagourian Preserve, a loose scattering of large lodge structures appeared—too deliberately placed to be abandoned, too quietly positioned to be official.

  I zeroed in. These were structures that looked more like a playground for rich people than anything else. There was no way there wasn’t a record of these buildings somewhere. But what really drew my attention wasn’t the buildings themselves—it was the traffic around them.

  Movement patterns ghosted across the map in faint overlays, routes taken and retaken by groups of people who had no business being there. Someone was operating in that area who did not want to be acknowledged—and had gone to considerable effort to make sure they weren’t.

  I zoomed in on one cluster of data and frowned.

  Ellara set a cutting board down harder than necessary. “You’re doing that thing again.”

  “What thing?”

  “That quiet thing,” she said. “Where you stop being here.”

  I exhaled and dimmed the interface slightly. “Sorry.”

  She nodded, accepting the apology without pressing. “Everyone’s talking about the princesses,” she said instead. “Apparently they’re arriving on Evenshade. And Kaereth Valmor has already sent half the school into a panic.”

  “That tracks,” I said.

  She snorted. “You’ve met him?”

  I paused briefly. This was not the time for that discussion.

  “Do I look like the kind of person who runs into someone who’s practically a prince?” I replied.

  She laughed, then hesitated. “My dearest brother, that wasn’t an answer.”

  I met her eyes. “Really? Are you sure?”

  She narrowed her gaze. I grinned.

  She grumbled, “Fine. Don’t answer.”

  Dinner finished cooking in companionable silence. When she sat across from me, I caught the way she watched my hands—a mix of concern and restraint, like she was trying to reconcile the brother she remembered with the one who had walked back into her life carrying too many scars and not enough explanation.

  After we ate, she gathered the dishes and paused.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “Gran’s staying late with the neighbors,” she said. “Something about the market guild and proper positioning for sales?”

  “That sounds like Gran.”

  She hesitated again, then smiled. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but she let it go and headed down the hall.

  I returned my attention to the interface. Sarien’s last message pulsed faintly at the edge of the display.

  They’re not amateurs. They are clearly foreign-funded and their logistics are clean. Very little chatter around these guys, and that is not a good thing. If it’s the same group, they’re not here for money.

  I leaned back in my chair and considered the implications.

  The wards didn’t react the way they did when someone forced them.

  They adjusted. That was the difference—and a pretty clear sign of who was coming to see me. The alarm never sounded, even though I could feel the pull of an Expression in the air. There was a quiet recalibration, like a system recognizing a known variable and deciding not to argue with it.

  I felt the shift and knew who it was before I saw her.

  “Close the door behind you,” I said.

  Bonnie Calder did, the latch settling into place without a sound. She leaned against the counter as if kitchens were neutral ground everywhere, copper-red hair pulled back in a loose knot that never quite stayed where she put it. A few strands had already escaped, catching the light as she moved.

  Her olive skin held the low glow easily, with a sort of universal warmth, marked by years of sun you didn’t get in cities. It was the kind earned outdoors. Bonnie Calder had the look of someone who had lived more life than she talked about.

  Her eyes—amber-brown, sharp without being hard—flicked once toward the hallway Ellara had disappeared down, then returned to me. They held suspicion, but in a nonchalant sort of way. Bonnie noticed things. She always had.

  She folded her arms, one hip angled against the counter, posture relaxed but ready.

  “Well,” she said lightly, the corner of her mouth quirking. “You bastard. Do you have anything to say to me?”

  “You look like you’ve gained weight.”

  Bonnie glared at me. “You asshat. I look fantastic.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t say you didn’t.”

  Bonnie’s nose flared. I was getting into dangerous territory.

  I leaned back against the table and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I didn’t disappear,” I said. “Not really.”

  Bonnie’s eyebrow lifted a fraction. “You vanished off the grid for almost a full cycle, Cale. You’re supposed to check in. Then you were just gone, and now I have to hear from Captain Vanta about how you need equipment. That counts as disappearing where I come from.”

  “I got hurt,” I said flatly. “And I sent you a message.”

  Bonnie narrowed her eyes.

  I rolled mine. “I also sent her a message.”

  Her expression shifted—not softer, but more focused. “After the fact.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s not like she’s super concerned with my everyday.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “That is what she told me.”

  We glared at each other.

  “She was scared,” Bonnie went on. “She tried not to be, but she was. You don’t get to just vanish and expect people not to feel that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That is bull. That woman has never been scared of anything in her life.”

  Bonnie tilted her head, studying me. The silence stretched, not uncomfortable, just measured.

  “You always say that,” she said. “You simply don’t understand women.”

  I huffed a quiet breath. “No argument there.”

  She smiled then, a small, crooked thing.

  I looked away.

  “Alright,” I said. “Let’s do what I came here to do.”

  Bonnie set a narrow case on the table and slid it toward me. I manually prompted a scan. The surface was pure Technica—cleanly fabricated, inert to the touch, with none of the subtle give that came from Expression-reactive materials. Whatever powered it did so internally, hidden behind an intricate compensation lattice that was completely self-contained. There were no open Expression channels feeding into it, no ambient signatures to trace.

  It wasn’t magic pretending to be machinery.

  It was machinery designed so external Expression never had to touch it at all. A completely closed system.

  “You should be thanking me about now,” she said. “For being the genius that I am.”

  I opened the case.

  The pistol inside was compact, familiar in silhouette. The frame was reinforced with layered Technica filaments designed to absorb kinetic stress without bleeding mana into the environment. The chamber was purely mechanical—powder, casing, impact—but the firing assembly had been threaded through a suppression lattice Bonnie had clearly refined for this exact use.

  A weapon built not to leave a trace of its user.

  “You’re still going to use Aura,” she continued. “Internally. Reflex reinforcement. Muscle control. Micro-adjustments. You’re not getting in without it.”

  I turned the weapon once in my hand, feeling the balance shift as the internal systems synced to my grip.

  “And Arcanum?” I asked.

  Bonnie shrugged. “No way to use it without leaving a trace unless you’re operating at a scale so high that everything blurs together. I was under the impression this wasn’t that kind of job.”

  I nodded. “Captain Vanta sure is talkative today.”

  “Aiden asked nicely,” Bonnie added. “Which is how I knew this wasn’t a favor.”

  “He didn’t explain?” I asked.

  “Oh, he explained,” she said dryly. “Someone took a ten-year-old girl. Political nonsense. People who think they’re clever because they’ve never been hunted by someone who doesn’t leave footprints.”

  She paused, watching my face. “He thinks you’ll do it.”

  “I will.”

  Bonnie didn’t look surprised. “What do we know about the target?”

  “They’re not amateurs,” I said, tapping the node she’d synced to my interface. “They’re definitely foreign and well-funded. Not much of a trail to follow. They used local gangs for muscle and noise. The real operators are contractors who don’t seem particularly image-conscious.”

  The map expanded again—northern terrain, forest density, lodge structures near the Kagourian Preserve. Paths no one was supposed to use anymore. Areas where Technica signal degraded just enough to make tracking unreliable.

  I pulled up a picture of the girl.

  I watched Bonnie’s face visibly tighten. “They took a child. Get her out.”

  My jaw tightened.

  “What’s your time frame?” she asked.

  “Based on the arrival of their target, maybe three days,” I said, considering the intelligence. “After that, all bets are off.”

  I closed the case and secured it.

  Outside, Arclight buzzed with excitement—rumors of two princesses arriving, whispers about the return of a duke’s son, politics dressed up as ceremony.

  Inside my house, the situation was simple.

  A child had been taken. And if her grandfather didn’t do what they demanded, they were going to kill her.

  That wasn’t happening.

  Not on my watch.