Chapter 23 - Murder at The Academy

  Edward

  The Sons of Mars transport ship tore across the te afternoon sky, its hull painted in firelight as it cut through the clouds like a hot bde through silk. Below, the city stretched vast and indifferent, concrete veins running between steel towers, shadows dancing like ghosts trying to flee the sunset.

  Inside the cockpit, Ed killed the engines with a deliberate flick. The silence afterward was thick, golden, like a dream pressed against gss. The glow of the descending sun drenched their canopy in molten orange.

  He let out a breath—short, weighted.

  Arthur sat beside him, his posture tight, clutching a steaming mug with both hands. Axel sat just behind, wrapped in a scratchy military-issue bnket, his eyes sunken, his features smeared with exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix.

  Arthur took a long pull from his cup. “Never thought I’d be gd to see this concrete jungle you call home,” he muttered.

  Axel grunted. “Say what you want. I’ll take any kind of hell over what we just went through.”

  Ed raked a hand through his damp hair, a nervous tic he didn’t bother to hide. “Let’s dock. Get some food in our systems. Last proper meal I had was... what? Three days back? Feels like the universe’s been sprinting ever since.”

  The others nodded, quiet agreement passing between them like a ripple through still water.

  Axel’s voice was almost inaudible. “From up here... it’s pretty.” He cinched the bnket tighter around his shoulders.

  Outside, the sky bled into shades of rose and vender, a watercolor battle between day and night. The ship sliced through the glow, its descent carving a clean line across the horizon.

  They swept past the city’s sprawl and into the greenbelt surrounding the academy. Below, the dormitories and lecture halls rose like squat memories. Their shadows clung to the edge of the compound—sprawling trees fencing them in, twin dirt paths veining away, one toward the airstrip, the other winding up to the old manor house.

  “Alright... initializing nding sequence,” Arthur said, his voice low as his fingers tapped out commands in a practiced rhythm.

  Ed sucked in a breath and held it.

  The ship lurched as the thrusters fred, their vents screaming as gravity yanked at the hull. Metal groaned. Chairs shuddered. The deck trembled like it might tear apart.

  Then—a click. Subtle. Final. A shift in bance, like the hand of God easing them down.

  They touched ground.

  The hatch hissed open. Henryk stepped through, slinging his duffel with a soldier’s grace, stained clothes and supplies thumping against his back. His hand rested briefly on the back of Ed’s seat as he gazed out the viewport.

  Beyond the gss, the Sons of Mars hangar stood tall and cold. Their warcaskets waited in silence, their jagged silhouettes looming in the twilight.

  “So... we’re good to go?” Henryk asked, eyes still fixed ahead.

  Ed turned, forcing a smirk as he cpped his hands once. “W-well... another mission to the Belt, huh?”

  The silence that followed was thick as tar. No one smiled.

  Ed’s voice dropped. “It was rough. I know. We lost Isaac.”

  Stillness. It wasn’t just quiet—it was mourning, raw and unspoken, sitting in their lungs like smoke.

  “But we made it back,” he said, softer now. “And I’ll break the news to everyone. Especially Joseph. So none of you need to carry that. Not you, Arthur.”

  Arthur’s jaw twitched. His eyes, wide for a heartbeat, fell to the floor like a man trying not to break.

  Henryk let out a breath that seemed to take the edge off the moment. “So... it cool if I dip early?”

  “Busy guy?” Axel asked with a crooked grin, one brow raised in mock judgment.

  Henryk rolled his eyes, exhaling through his nose like he’d been asked for the fifth time that day. “You know it. I'm either holed up in the academy’s music studio—pying, mixing, whatever keeps the silence out—or I’m trying to...” His voice trailed. Fingers dragged down his face like he could wipe away the indecision.

  “Trying to what, countryman?” Arthur leaned forward, his voice as casual as the glint in his eye.

  Henryk waved the thought off, jaw tightening.

  Arthur didn’t let it die. “You could always save those delicate, artistic little hands for ter, druid.” A smirk split his face wide. “Nothing clears the head like losing it in a storm of bdes.”

  “I’d rather keep mine, thanks,” Henryk said, a lopsided grin twitching onto his face. The others chuckled, their shared fatigue taking a moment’s vacation.

  Arthur scowled at the ughter. “You know what I meant, damn you all!”

  That only made them ugh harder.

  Henryk spun on his heel, the coat at his waist trailing behind him. “See you lot at dinner.”

  His boots echoed down the steel hallway, the sound sharp and lonely. Moments ter, the shuttle’s passenger door hissed open. They heard the mechanical thunk of the ramp deploying—metal smming into dirt, bridging the ship to the tree-shrouded path beyond.

  “You guys don’t have to linger either,” Ed murmured. He stared out the corner of the viewport, watching Henryk’s silhouette vanish into the trees, swallowed whole by the brush.

  Axel stretched until his joints popped, casting off the bnket like it was a second skin. “I’ll grab my stuff from the locker and head out. You?”

  He turned to Arthur, who was stroking his chin like a philosopher on the verge of disaster. “M-Maybe I’ll go ask the Boss-Man if I can accrue additional monetary compensation for bor rendered.”

  Ed gave him a look. “What the hell did you just say?”

  Axel spped a hand over his own face. “He means he’s going to beg for overtime.”

  Arthur nodded solemnly, like it made perfect sense.

  “You two are unbelievable,” Ed muttered.

  “Honestly?” Axel snorted. “When he first joined up, I couldn’t understand a single thing coming out of his mouth. Joseph’s movie nights have been helping though—somewhat.”

  With that, Axel and Arthur departed, boots cnging down the ramp. Their chatter faded as they ducked into the armory locker hall, leaving Ed alone in the command chair. He sat in the half-light, eyes distant, fingers tracing patterns into the console without thinking.

  The silence didn’t st long.

  Kieren appeared in the doorway, arms wrapped tightly around himself, his shoulders hunched with that familiar scowl.

  Ed didn’t even turn at first. Just spoke, voice heavy with sleep and something else. “They cleared out twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago.”

  Kieren sneered. “And no one thought to wake me?”

  “I stuck around,” Ed said, raising a hand half-heartedly. “Figured I’d be the one to say it.”

  Kieren narrowed his eyes. “And why do I get the feeling this isn’t gonna be a good conversation?”

  Ed sighed—quiet, like air slipping out of a pressure valve. “What do you want me to say, Kieren?” He pointed through the viewport, towards the manor’s dark silhouette beneath the treeline. “You inherited the spikes. That wasn’t merit. That was circumstance. Back in the day? We’d have kicked out Henryk, Mateo, Wilbur—”

  “I know...” Kieren muttered, the words steeped in acid. The tone alone was enough to tighten something in Ed’s chest.

  Ed’s gaze didn’t budge. “The moment you inherited the Spikes, all we’ve seen is you throwing your weight around like a pyground bully.”

  Kieren’s jaw twitched. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  Ed didn’t give him the chance. “And your bullshit with Henryk? The veiled slurs, the cheap shots? That ends now.” He stepped forward, voice steel. “Henryk’s not just another squire anymore. He’s Leading Executor Candidate.”

  “What?!” Kieren’s voice cracked like a whip. His fists coiled like springs, and for a second, he looked ready to lunge. “That bastard? I beat him in a duel. Fair’s fair!”

  Ed’s eyes narrowed, his voice dropping to something cold and sharp. “And the old Knights of Mars would've killed you for how you won.”

  Kieren flinched like the words hit bone. His posture sagged—not from surrender, but from shame that came masked as rage.

  “In every moment you crumbled,” Ed continued, “Henryk stood tall. And when he wasn’t around, the absence of his courage said more than your presence ever did.”

  Ed stood from the chair slowly, like a weight was being shifted, not just his body. His hand lingered on the backrest for a beat before falling to his side. Kieren stood trembling—whether from fury or humiliation, it wasn’t clear. The Spikes had changed him physically. He was taller now, broader, his frame packed with power that looked sculpted from pressure and pain.

  But strength meant nothing without will behind it.

  “I’m giving you two choices,” Ed said, leveling his voice into something final. He stepped forward, locking eyes with Kieren—and Kieren, for all his augmentation, looked down.

  “You wear the Spikes of House Mars,” Ed said. “That comes with a pact. You were meant to master the holy trinity—sword, shield, and mace. You were meant to know your Warcasket like your own pulse. You were meant to stand apart from the other squires—not just in strength, but in spirit.”

  He raised three fingers, the movement slow, deliberate. “But what’s the point of a soldier who won’t fight?”

  Kieren’s gre rose again. His lip curled. But he didn’t speak.

  “So get your shit together,” Ed said, voice razor-thin. “Or pack it and leave the academy.”

  “You’re going to kick me out?” Kieren’s voice was low, but it shook with restrained fury.

  Ed didn’t blink. “I’m the president of this House. I have every right. And House Mars has never been known for its kindness—or its mercy.”

  Kieren’s breath came out sharp through his teeth. His knuckles popped as his fists flexed. Ed kept going.

  “Don’t even think about crawling to the other Houses. You try and barter favors with your new gifts, you try and whisper our secrets for leverage?” Ed took a step closer, his voice a quiet snarl. “Then we’ll bury you so deep in red tape and consequence, you’ll wish you were back in surgery.”

  Kieren’s fists trembled. For a second, Ed thought he might swing.

  But he didn’t.

  Kieren spun on his heel, boots cnging against the metal floor. His footsteps pounded through the ship like war drums, echoing long after he vanished from sight.

  Ed watched the shadow disappear, then let out a long breath.

  He didn’t sit.

  He couldn’t.

  As Kieren’s footsteps faded, swallowed by steel and silence, Ed remained still.

  “…These are the ones I’ve got left,” he muttered, his voice dry with bitterness. Then he sank back into his seat like a man colpsing into the past. “Isaac, brother... I’m sorry,” he said softly, the words dragging out of him like blood from an old wound. “I led you to your death. I’m sorry, my friend. My dear friend.”

  Isaac’s face came to him then, clear as a ghost lit by memory—young, sharp-eyed, war-hardened. A soldier, always a soldier. Not a knight. He’d never earn the title, never receive the honor of saving the helpless or protecting the weak. He would never know the comfort of a lover’s arms. He’d never hold a child that shared his name and his blood.

  Just one more name among billions lost across time. A boy born into fire, drowned by war, left to die without even a goddamn song to mark his passing.

  Edward mourned the soldier.

  But worse than that, he mourned the knight Isaac could’ve become. The man who might’ve grown beyond the uniform, beyond the screaming, beyond the bottle clenched in his shaking hands.

  That was the cut that went deepest.

  And he knew—Christ, he knew—that when he finally closed his eyes tonight, it would be Isaac’s face waiting for him behind the veil of sleep.

  Then—buzz.

  A sharp tremor in his coat pocket. His phone.

  Signal was back.

  He blinked, the world dragging him back to the now like a hand grabbing him by the throat. He scrolled through the usual mess—professors whining about missed assignments, system alerts, unread announcements. He rolled his eyes.

  And then he saw them.

  Missed call. Missed call.

  Unknown number.

  Could’ve been spam. Could’ve been nothing. But something in his gut tightened—call it instinct, call it fate, call it the echo of God in a godless age—and he pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Hello? Who is this—?”

  He cut across the silence, over the sound of shallow breathing on the other end.

  Then he froze.

  “Crissa?” His voice dropped, sharp and startled. “How the hell did you get my—my school records? The fuck are you doing with mine?!”

  Silence.

  Then realization.

  His hand rose, fingers cwing at his temple as he bowed his head low. He sat there, folded in the captain’s chair like a man trying to keep his body from splitting open at the seams.

  The sun was dying outside the viewport. Its st light bled gold across the gss, like the end of something holy. And he just sat there, head tilted back, staring at it fade into ash.

  “Ah,” he said at st. Voice cracked. Hollow. “…So he’s dead too.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  It was just the world being itself.

  And they’d only just gotten back.

  Logan

  “So, the little kid got fragged?” Logan said, crunching into a chip with zero ceremony. The lights in his room were out, shadows stretched long across the walls, and the only thing illuminating his face was the pale glow of his ptop screen.

  On the other end of the call, his older brother didn’t even look at him. Kaelin stood in a stark, neon-lit gym, cd in his dark leather training carapace, both hands gripping a dull-metal trident. He moved like something sculpted in motion—grace with violence baked in.

  Behind him, twin moons of Neptune loomed just over the artificial horizon. The sky bled violet and cobalt, stars scattered like cold, indifferent eyes. The floor was a hybrid of real grass and combat turf, stained in pces, heavy with old sweat and old blood.

  Kaelin circled his opponent. The man—some nameless, trembling conscript—wore the same training garb, but there the simirity ended. He clutched a dented round shield and a falchion, breathing hard, his stance crumbling under pressure.

  Kaelin was toying with him.

  Each thrust of the trident drove the man backward, gouging steel from shield edges, fttening dents into bruises. He was fighting by reflex now—panic more than training—and Kaelin hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  Logan leaned forward, resting his chin on his palm, eyes half-lidded. The ptop bathed his face in dim blue light, casting him in the same shade as the dead.

  “Yeah,” Kaelin said over the csh of metal, voice as casual as morning weather. “The lil’ retard’s gone.” He sidestepped the first wild swing like he was brushing past a curtain. No helmet, no armor above the waist—just speed. Then a vicious snap-kick crunched into the conscript’s midsection, unching both man and shield to opposite ends of the gym.

  The shield hit the floor, spinning to the edge like a tossed coin.

  “We popped him. That means the mutant’s heir to the system now.”

  Logan’s smirk widened. His teeth fshed. “That mutant’s gonna be your wife soon, big brother.”

  Kaelin made a sound between a sneer and a ugh, adjusting his grip on the trident. “At least Father won’t care what I do with mistresses.”

  “You’ll need a few,” Logan said, curling his arms around his ribs for warmth. “You know how Mother is. She’ll want two of each. A matched set.”

  The conscript staggered to his feet, both hands now gripping the falchion in desperation. Kaelin didn’t pause—he pivoted, rebanced his stance like water rolling down a slope.

  “She’ll be lucky if I give her a grandson,” Kaelin muttered. “And she better be praying hard if she thinks I’ll put a second in that thing. A daughter?” He snorted. “No chance.”

  Logan tilted his head, voice quieter now. “There hasn’t been a Neptunian princess in a long time.”

  Kaelin’s eyes flicked up. For a second, the falchion came dangerously close—too close. The edge kissed the air near his ear.

  “Oi—watch it,” he barked, startled. Then he ughed. Genuinely. The haze of combat seemed to loosen something in him.

  “What’s the point, anyway?” he said, lowering the trident. “Like the Venusians, we parade our progress and nobility—but we still bow to Mars, still bend the knee to the old imperial rites like arranged marriage.”

  He rolled his shoulders, letting the weight of it all slide off like sweat. “I’m not blind to what those princesses go through. Not anymore.”

  Logan was ughing, the kind of dry, crooked ugh that came from a pce more jaded than amused. “Didn’t realize you had such a heart, brother.”

  Kaelin waved a gloved hand like he was batting away a fly. “A leader without empathy is just a tyrant waiting for the right excuse.”

  Logan let the ughter taper off. “How’re you feeling about the block?”

  Kaelin didn’t answer with words.

  Instead, he pivoted sharply and rammed the butt of his trident into the trainer’s gut. The blow hit clean—precise and brutal. Air evacuated the man’s lungs with a wet grunt as he colpsed onto his knees, arms wrapped around his ribs.

  Kaelin knelt with him, not in mercy but in motion—controlled, elegant. He rose slow, as if shaking off the weight of a dream, and extended a hand.

  The trainer hesitated a heartbeat, then csped it.

  “You’re improving by the day, Sire,” the man said, peeling off his training helmet. He was dark-skinned, eyes brown and steady, short bck curls pstered down with sweat. His voice carried respect, not fttery.

  They looked like contemporaries, Kaelin and Leo. Different stations, same fight.

  “Too kind, Leo,” Kaelin said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got one more session before Oceana, but take the rest of the day. You’ve earned it.”

  Leo nodded, smiling faintly, and tossed a wave to the camera. Logan returned it with two fingers and a half-smirk.

  As soon as Leo disappeared, the mask slipped from Kaelin’s face. The smile fell away like dust from a statue, revealing the strain underneath.

  “It’ll be fine,” he muttered.

  Logan raised an eyebrow. “You could try sounding less like a man who’s already made peace with dying.”

  Kaelin exhaled. “You know how it is, little brother. We’re fighting a private war down here. The less the Empire knows, the better.”

  He paused, then looked straight into the screen.

  “If they ever found out about Maelia’s brother—about what happened to him—”

  Logan swallowed. “Yeah. I get it.” His voice lost the bravado, dipped into something colder.

  Kaelin paced a step, dragging the trident behind him like a priest with a censer. “The block’s run by foreign diplomats hiding behind their own little council. Thousands live there. The fact their mech expo’s happening in the Oceana Sector?” He shook his head. “Bad luck doesn't cover it.”

  Logan cursed under his breath, then narrowed his eyes. “So… where are you pnning to be when it hits the fan?”

  Kaelin looked up like he’d already walked the road and buried the bodies along it. “I’ve gotta show face for a bit—smile for the cameras, pretend the blood’s not mine. Then it’s back to the capital.”

  Logan sighed, long and bitter. “…as long as everything looks clean on paper.”

  “It will,” Kaelin said, final as a guillotine. “And if it does, Father won’t ask questions.”

  Then, more softly: “Oceana’s not all bad. Maybe I’ll bring you with me next time. The academy’s great for drills, but you’ll only ever learn real combat in the mud and blood.”

  Logan’s eyes lit up with that familiar spark—young, hungry. “If you can sell that to Father, hell, I’ve been nagging Stel to push for more active ops.”

  He leaned forward, shadows cutting sharp across his face. “Say what you will, but the Martians? They’ve cornered the market on deployment. Somehow—don’t ask me how—they get first pick. They were there when Oceana started burning.”

  Kaelin brought his fingers to his chin, the glow of the monitor painting him in shades of suspicion and thought. “…That’s interesting, Logan. There was a robbery. Bank hit hard in one of the cities in our sector.”

  Logan blinked, scoffing like he hadn’t heard right. “Why the hell would we care about some bank? Out of the four pnets in the Sor System, one hole in the wall gets cleaned out and we’re suddenly interested?”

  Kaelin exhaled slow, like the air tasted bitter. “Because the ones who did it… there’s a good chance one of them was from the Academy. A Martian.”

  Logan straightened, eyes narrowing. “Who?”

  Kaelin’s fingers tapped the console, keys ticking like clockwork. “If I send you something—cssified—don’t share it. Just… tell me if you or your friends saw him around.”

  A ping. Logan’s eyes flicked to the upper right of his screen—a file sent. His hand moved before he realized it. “Couldn’t you just run it through Dad’s clearance? Let the old man’s access peel it back?”

  “You think I didn’t try?” Kaelin snapped, sharp as wire. “Database bounces back with nothing. Not absence. Not ‘deleted.’ Just… walled off.”

  Logan’s voice dipped to a whisper. “That’s security level Omega…”

  “Higher,” Kaelin said. “The kind of clearance that wraps names in firewalls blessed by emperors and ghosts. No origin. No blood records. No living family. The file exists, but only behind iron doors no one opens.”

  Logan leaned forward, squinting. “That kind of security… that’s imperial. What the hell’s the connection?”

  Kaelin didn’t answer for a beat. His voice dropped lower, tighter. “What do you know of emperors, Logan?”

  The room suddenly felt colder. Logan’s lips parted, but nothing came out. Kaelin kept going.

  “I’ve only ever seen this once. When our ‘great family archive’ pulled something up and immediately buried it. And now this kid—this Martian ghost—shows up in a city bank with a weapon-grade mech and precision like he’s been killing since birth.”

  Logan sat back, the silence heavy between them. “…I've heard rumors. Of records so deep even the council won’t touch them. But to scrub a person that clean…”

  “You can't trace his name. Not his blood. Not even a goddamn biometric shadow,” Kaelin said, his voice dull with fatigue. “And even if we could find a way around the encryption—”

  “The Emperor’s been silent these past few days,” Logan cut in. “Could be distracted.”

  Kaelin snorted. “People always forget—the Emperor likes silence. The quieter it looks, the more peaceful he pretends it is. As long as there’s no noise, he won’t lift a finger. That’s the danger.”

  Logan leaned back, sighing. “There’s supposed to be safeguards for Academy students.”

  “There are,” Kaelin said. “And they’re why this matters. Your files? Locked tight. Because you’re second in line for Neptune. Because you’re a walking international incident if someone sneezes wrong near you.”

  “So, even if I was just another cadet…” Logan muttered.

  “…and something went south, the system’s built to protect you,” Kaelin finished. “But if a ghost slips in—unregistered, untraceable—the st thing anyone wants is to provoke the wrong shadow. One wrong move, and an entire bloodline gets erased. Old-world style. Eight generations deep.”

  Logan swallowed. “So that’s why the order’s in pce…”

  Kaelin nodded slowly, brushing hair from his eyes. “It is what it is. If you spot him, great. If not—stay sharp. There’s a reason ghosts wear skin.”

  He lifted a hand in farewell.

  Logan mirrored the wave. “You too, Kaelin. Watch your back.”

  Kaelin paused. Then, barely louder than a whisper: “I love you, Logan.”

  Logan smiled. “I love you too, Kaelin.”

  The screen blinked to bck.

  Silence fell over Logan’s quarters. Cold. Still. The buzz of electronics faint in the background. He leaned back, drawing in a long breath, letting his muscles soften against the tension. The peace barely sted.

  Three knocks. Sharp. Hollow.

  He sat up.

  “…Hello?” he called, voice half-curious, half-coiled.

  Another knock.

  He crossed the room, hand sliding instinctively to the hilt of his trident leaning by the wall. The door opened with a whisper of hydraulics.

  “Stel?” he breathed.

  The President of House Neptune stood tall in the doorway, pale skin luminous under the hall lights. Her long, dark hair hung like a curtain of oil, and her blue eyes—icy and still—looked straight through him.

  “I need you for something,” she said. No warmth. No hesitation. “I need at least one warrior.”

  Logan’s pulse surged—but he smiled, lips curling like a bde’s edge.

  “Let me grab my trident.”

  Bri

  “What are you saying about her?”Belle-Anne’s voice threaded through the crack in the door, rough and trembling like a frayed wire.

  Bri y curled up on the floor beside it, knees drawn to her chest. The only light in the room spilled from the hallway—a pale, sickly sliver that stretched across the dark like a knife’s edge. A bnket wrapped around her tight, too tight, like a shroud instead of comfort.

  “She’s not fine,” Belle-Anne hissed. She tried to whisper, but the emotion bled through anyway, angry and brittle.

  Bri didn’t need to see her. She could picture it: Belle’s hair a mess, whole chunks gone—ripped out in frantic handfuls during one of the nights when the screaming wouldn’t stop. They all thought Bri had been asleep.

  They were wrong.

  A sigh. Himari’s, deep and bone-tired. Bri could almost see them, robes shed after another endless day, colpsed around the table like puppets cut from strings.

  “I don’t care what she’s been telling you,” Belle-Anne went on. Her voice cracked around the words. “I don’t believe it.”

  Bri’s breath caught. She closed her eyes and exhaled slow, too slow, like her soul was leaking out with it. Something in her slipped.

  Her skin dropped away like the bnket, and suddenly she was weightless—unmoored from herself, staring down at her own body from the ceiling like a ghost watching her own funeral.

  Then she was through the wall, slicing through it like smoke.

  The living room reeked of sweat and regret. Beer cans lined the table like tiny silver corpses. Cigarette butts overflowed the ashtray, the smoke coiling up like tired spirits.

  She saw them now—Himari in loose pajamas, face red, drink in hand. Alcohol glistened on her chin.

  “You don’t believe in a lot of things,” Himari muttered, gulping from the bottle. Her words slurred, but the bitterness was sharp. “You don’t know the shit I’ve been under, dealing with Esava all week.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of things,” Belle-Anne snapped back with a twisted smirk. “And a lot of men.”

  Himari’s eyes fred, sharp and stinging. “What the hell did you just say?”

  “I said you like going with the flow,” Belle-Anne replied, voice like broken gss.

  Himari’s knuckles whitened around the bottle. “You think this is easy? Bri’s in there screaming like someone’s fying her alive every damn night. We were this close to calling a priest.”

  “Christ, that was just a suggestion!” Belle-Anne barked.

  “A stupid fucking suggestion!” Himari shouted, pushing up from the table, arms filing like she was trying to shake the rage off her bones. “Number one, demons aren’t fucking real. Number two, you wouldn’t know the first damn thing about an exorcism if it bit you in the ass!”

  Her anger cracked. Beneath it was something else—grief, maybe. Helplessness. A softness she hated showing.

  Belle-Anne folded into herself, took a slow breath. “Maybe we should be gd she’s getting better. Acting like her old self again.”

  “She’s not,” Belle-Anne whispered after a pause, voice barely there. “She’s not.”

  Himari smmed her palm against the table. “What is it that you don’t believe, Belle? That she’s healing? That it’s even possible?” Her fingers curled like cws, trembling with frustration. “God, why are you fighting this so hard? Do you even know what they were talking about doing to her? They were going to clip her—clip her!”

  “Don’t you think I get that?” Belle-Anne snapped. Her hands tore through her light brown hair, wild strands sticking up like static.

  “Then why can’t you just be happy she’s recovering?” Himari’s voice had dropped again, quieter but no less sharp.

  “Because it’s not fucking real!” Belle-Anne exploded, voice ragged and raw. “It’s not her. It’s something wearing her face.”

  Himari stared at her.Not blinked. Not flinched. Just stared—head cocked at an unnatural angle like an owl sizing up prey. The silence stretched, long and tense, until it became a noose hanging over Belle’s head.

  Finally, Himari asked, “Now, what do we do?”

  Belle didn’t answer. She stared into her beer like it might offer salvation.

  Himari didn’t wait. “Come on, Belle. That exorcism pn—we had people lined up. People we could’ve trusted. And now they’re dead. You think something infected Bri? Then the ones who could’ve handled it are already ash.”

  She smmed both palms ft on the table, rising with slow, boiling intensity.

  “If she keeps going like this,” Himari said, her voice lowered to a simmering growl, “Esava will escate it. They’ll send it up the chain—to the High Witches. They’ll assess her genetics. They’ll ask what went wrong. And they won’t fix her, Belle. They’ll cull her. Either dump her in a new batch or burn her out of existence.”

  Belle-Anne’s face went pale. Her hand came up, trembling, pressing against her lips.

  “H-How long…?” she whispered. “How long has Bri’s genetics been in service?”

  “She was just shy of a century,” Himari said ftly. Her eyes flicked toward the door. It was cracked open. A shadow lingered just beyond it—still, silent.

  She didn’t know Bri was watching.

  Didn’t know she’d pulled herself back into her body, every word nding like a shard of gss in her chest.

  “A century?” Belle-Anne repeated, stunned. “Then she… she can’t just be—”

  “She’s never aged,” Himari cut in. “Not once. I think this might be the oldest version of her I’ve seen. The farthest one. The others—they didn’t make it this far.”

  Her arms wrapped around herself like she was holding in a scream.

  “She’s not just a thing, Himari,” Belle-Anne said, her voice cracking. “There has to be something—something we can do. What more can—?”

  “More?” Himari snapped, her voice venomous now. She rounded on Belle, eyes wild. “Are you out of your damned mind? I did more. I bent every rule I knew for her. I begged Esava to hold off. Now all we can do is hold the fuck on and support her, before something worse crawls through her skin.”

  She pushed her damp bck hair off her forehead. The booze had turned her face red and raw. Her hands shook—from rage, or fatigue, or both.

  “And we’re lucky,” she added, voice dropping. “Lucky that even after the deaths, Esava’s not feeding Bri anything about the Martians. If she remembers what she brought back…”

  Belle-Anne gripped her beer so tightly the can began to crumple.

  “…this all started because of them,” she whispered. “Because of him.”

  Himari turned toward her, slow and confused. “Huh? What did you say? I didn’t—”

  “HENRYK!” Belle roared. She shot to her feet, smming her hands down so hard the table rattled. “That rapist, murdering sack of shit!”

  She jabbed a trembling finger to her own temple. “The second the Witches ordered Bri into his mind, she dragged something out. Something foul. It followed her. And it never left.”

  Bri stiffened in the shadows, breath catching.

  “I know one thing,” she murmured—barely a whisper, barely human. “You cut off the head of the snake… the problem solves itself.”

  Himari’s eyes flew open. “Belle. What are you trying to say?”

  “If Henryk dies…” Belle-Anne said, voice low but loaded, “Bri will go back to normal.”

  She pointed a shaking finger toward the wall, like she could stab through it and hit his chest.

  “He and his Martian dogs have been gone these st few days. And look at her—she’s better. She’s eating. She’s sleeping. She’s not screaming at the fucking walls.” Her voice cracked. “When Henryk’s around… he’s like mold in the walls. A sickness. And this academy is rotting from it.”

  “…And what would you do?” Himari spat. Her eyes sharpened to gss-cutting slits as she turned on Belle. “Challenge him to a duel? Really?”

  She leaned in, voice dripping with contempt. “Number one, Esava would never sign off. And two—what if he asks for something you don’t want to give?”

  Belle-Anne stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Himari rolled her eyes like it was a weight she was tired of carrying.

  “There’s a reason people don’t duel anymore, Belle. And there’s a reason no one ys a finger on Henryk. You don’t understand what you’re poking at. You’re calling him a sickness, but you’d rather throw your life, your body, maybe even your will, into the fire just to scratch him?”

  Belle-Anne’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard—and then came the knock.

  A single, sharp rap at the door that made both women jolt like puppets on a snapped string.

  “D-did someone hear us?” Belle-Anne whispered. Her voice trembled, her words brittle like frostbitten gss.

  Himari hesitated. Then, slowly, she reached for the door and pulled it open.

  And both of them froze.

  Standing in the doorway was Esava.

  Her expression was unreadable, eyes half-lidded with the weight of ancient, terrible knowledge. Then her gaze drifted zily toward the table—toward the half-empty cans, the stale ashtray, the tension clinging to the air like blood before a sughter.

  “Five p.m. drinking on a Tuesday,” she murmured, lips quirking. “Reminds me of my freshman days. Wild times. No wars. Just heartbreak and liquor.”

  Her eyes tracked to Belle-Anne, who quickly ducked her head like a child caught sneaking wine. Then Esava turned to Himari.

  “I was wondering,” she said, the words smooth but with an edge you could feel in your spine, “if you could accompany me for something.”

  Himari arched a brow, suspicious but curious.

  Esava folded her hands behind her back, voice low. “All the house presidents have been called. I expect rumors will spread within the hour. And by the next, everyone will know.”

  Belle-Anne blinked, eyes darting between them. “Is there… an emergency?”

  She regretted asking the moment it left her mouth. Esava’s gaze slid toward her like a scalpel.

  “Not for us,” she said softly.

  A sigh escaped her lips, almost weary.

  “There’s no sense hiding it now.” Her eyes settled back on Himari. “House Pluto. The president—Damien. Or… no. Bracken. That was the st one. A few years back.”

  She tilted her head, almost nostalgic.

  “Funny thing about House Pluto,” she mused. “Their presidents tend to die quickly.”

  Himari’s breath caught. Belle-Anne’s eyes went wide, her stomach lurching.

  “He’s dead?” Himari asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Esava nodded once, slow and deliberate.

  “Murder,” she said. “That’s what they’re saying.”