**Interlude
Grimm’s Attempt to Sever the Tether
Keeper Bellamy was the first to notice Grimm was missing.
He’d been in the briefing room, red?faced, muttering about “taking matters into his own hands” when the emergency scroll arrived from the western grid. Everyone turned at once. Grimm had slipped out like smoke.
Bellamy cursed and sprinted down the corridor.
Grimm moved with single?minded purpose.
He didn’t run — running was messy, obvious. No. His footsteps were soft, deliberate, almost reverent as he climbed the smaller stairwell toward Trixie and Nolan’s temporary quarters.
He muttered as he went, fingers twitching around the braided copper wire he’d concealed in his sleeve.
“A tether can be severed,” he whispered. “It must be severed. Two keys… impossible. Catastrophic.”
He reached the narrow landing outside the quarters. The sconces flickered. The ward line above the door hummed in faint, lazy patterns.
Grimm pressed his palm to it.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “Still resonating. Perfect.”
He withdrew a slim, silver-hilted blade etched with a lattice design older than the Council itself. A severance knife — a forbidden tool. One the Council kept locked in the Stacks for good reason.
He held it like a man holding his last hope.
“Pierce first,” he murmured. “Weaken the line at the mundane end. Then break the witch’s anchor before the void can retaliate.”
He whispered the activation word.
The blade glowed pale blue.
A line of anti?cadence.
A lock breaker.
He lifted it to the seam of the door—
And walked straight into Dixie.
Dixie did not appear.
She exploded.
One second there was air.
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The next there was a tornado of silver fur, teeth, and ancient familiar magic detonating in Grimm’s face with the force of a thrown meteor.
Grimm screamed.
Dixie landed on his chest, claws sinking through his robes like she was excavating for treasure.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ARROGANT MIND?!” she screeched. “WHO LET YOU HAVE THAT KNIFE?! WHO LET YOU BE A PERSON?!”
Grimm staggered backward, flailing, the severance blade clattering across the floor.
“G-get off—!”
Dixie sank her claws deeper.
“No! You get off! Of EXISTENCE!”
She raked his sleeve open. Copper wire fell out. Grimm gasped and tried to grab it.
Dixie slapped his hand away with her paw. “NO TOUCH!”
Bellamy arrived then, panting.
He took one look at the scene and said, “Oh gods, Dixie—don’t kill him! We’ll have to file paperwork!”
Dixie froze, then hissed, “THEN YOU pick him up.”
“I’m not touching him!”
“You’re the Keeper!”
“You’re the guardian!”
“We BOTH need therapy!”
The scream brought Trixie and Nolan to the doorway.
Trixie looked terrified.
Nolan looked furious.
Dixie looked victorious.
Grimm looked like he wanted to retire from life.
“What,” Trixie said weakly, “is happening?”
Bellamy ran both hands over his face. “He—he tried to sever your tether. With a knife. Dixie… prevented casualties.”
Dixie hopped off Grimm, tail lashing. “He was about to cut you out of yourself, you bureaucratic plague sore!”
Nolan scooped up the severance blade and held it like something filthier than a corpse. “He was going to cut her pattern.”
Grimm wheezed. “It’s—it’s for the good of Salem—”
“No,” Trixie said.
She stepped closer.
Her voice shook, but it did not break.
“You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to touch this. You don’t get to open or close anything.”
Grimm glared up at her from the floor. “You are a danger. Both of you. The Hollow King wants your bond—”
Nolan cut him off. “And your solution is mutilation?”
“It’s better than annihilation—” Grimm spat.
Dixie arched her back and hissed so loudly a ward lantern cracked. “YOU TRIED TO ASSASSINATE MY WITCH'S SOUL!”
Bellamy dragged Grimm to his feet. “Magistrate Harrow will deal with this.”
Nolan planted himself between Grimm and Trixie. “If he touches her again, he loses a hand.”
Grimm’s eyes flicked to Nolan.
To the tether.
To the way Trixie’s hand found his without thinking.
His face twisted.
“A mundane,” Grimm said bitterly. “A mundane is what breaks Salem.”
Dixie lunged.
Bellamy barely pinned her against his chest in time.
“Let me rip out a toe!” Dixie howled, legs windmilling. “JUST A TOENAIL!”
Grimm stumbled away, clutching his bleeding arm.
Bellamy dragged him down the stairs.
Dixie licked her paws furiously. “I am going to commit a hate crime against his haircut.”
Trixie’s knees gave out.
Nolan caught her.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“No,” she whispered back. “He tried to sever us.”
Nolan kissed her forehead without thinking. “Not happening. Not ever.”
Dixie leapt onto Trixie’s lap, purring violently. “You’re not losing each other to a man who smells like burnt chalk.”
Trixie laughed, then cried, and Nolan held her through both.
In the doorway’s shadow, the tether glowed faintly.
Unbroken.
Undefeated.
For now.
