The ruins of Lucien’s mansion loomed under a moonless sky, the air thick with the scent of scorched marble and something worse, something final. The chill of the night didn’t touch Lóng Yán. Not anymore. His skin burned too hot for that.

  But the cold inside him? That was new.

  He stepped forward, boots crunching over shattered glass, his soulfire tattoos pulsing like dying embers. His enhanced senses, sharpened by years of hunting, of hungering, flared to life, and for once, he wished they hadn’t.

  Because there she was. Winter.

  Cradled in Brad’s arms like broken porcelain, her dark braids streaked with ash, her golden eyes forever half-lidded. The boy’s grip was white-knuckled, his own eyes bloodshot, his breath ragged from running, from screaming, from failing.

  Lóng Yán’s vision blurred. Tears fell.

  They sizzled against his cheeks, evaporating before they could even finish their descent.

  Soulfire.

  The word echoed in his skull like a curse. He remembered the first time he’d tasted it, Paris’s gift, wrung from the corpse of the Eledekai, a monster that had nearly torn the man in half. "For you," Paris had said, grinning through bloodied teeth. "Burn bright, my friend."

  And Lóng had. Oh, how he’d burned.

  Every cell igniting, every nerve screaming. It had hurt so much he’d vomited living flame. But he’d gotten used to it. Just like he’d gotten used to the other hunger, the one that gnawed at his ribs, the one that whispered human flesh, human warmth, just one bite.

  He’d left to control it. Hidden in the mountains like the beast he was, hunting deer, bears, anything to keep the craving at bay.

  He’d never told Winter. Pride. Stupid, stupid pride.

  The memory surged, unbidden and drenched in rain.

  It had been a downpour, the kind that drowned cities. His hunger had taken the wheel, shoving his mind into a locked trunk in the back of his own skull. He was on all fours, a beast wreathed in orange flame that hissed and boiled the torrential water around him into clouds of steam. He couldn't think. Couldn't reason. He could only feel the gnawing, planetary emptiness in his gut, a black hole that demanded to be filled.

  He saw them. A woman and her daughter, huddled under a tattered awning. Prey.

  He pounced.

  The world was a smear of instinct and fire. He was inches from them, close enough to see the terror in the child’s wide eyes, to smell the sweet, intoxicating scent of their living warmth. His claws were poised to rend, to tear, to feed.

  Then, a sharp, sickening crack of pain in his chest. A rib, maybe two, giving way. The force launched him backward, a comet of his own making, flying toward a rusted chain-link fence that would have sheared him in half.

  But the impact never came.

  The world blinked.

  He was suddenly suspended on his back in mid-air, a thousand feet above the glittering, rain-drowned city. The world tilted, a dizzying mosaic of distant streetlights and blacked-out buildings. The wind howled, tearing at his clothes, the rain needling his face with stinging ice-cold precision.

  Below him, Paris materialized in the heart of the storm, a burst of swirling darkness against the bruised purple sky. His face was a mask of grim determination, illuminated by a flash of distant lightning. In the same fluid, gravity-defying motion, he separated. One, two, three identical clones materializing around Lóng Yán as they all fell together in a deadly plummet.

  They moved as one, their grips like industrial vices on his arms and shoulders, pinning him in a crucible of open sky and their own impossible strength.

  The real Paris, falling directly in above him, ignored the plummeting earth. He moved his hands in a slow, deliberate circle against the backdrop of the city below, the ancient, flowing pattern of Yin and Yang. His gray eyes, usually so full of mocking light, held an impossible burden, the weight of a thousand quiet judgments, as deep and cold as the abyss they were falling into.

  The strike landed. Not on his body, but on his being.

  It was less like being hit by a punch and more like getting hit by a fist carrying the weight of a freight train. There was no physical damage, only a cataclysmic, internal realignment. His soul snapped back into its proper shape, the feral hunger violently shoved back into its cage. The fire in his veins guttered and died, leaving him cold, hollow, and horrifically aware.

  He woke up hours later in a sterile room, the scent of antiseptic and rain still in his nose. The first thing he saw was Winter, asleep in a chair beside his bed, her head resting on her arms, her dark braids splayed out like a fan. She had stayed. She had been there for him.

  He hadn't been able to be there for her.

  Now she was gone, and the last words they’d exchanged had been barbs, sharp and careless. His knees hit the ground. The marble cracked beneath him.

  The fight with Pest had drained him to the dregs, leaving the hunger inside him a raw, screaming void. The potions he boiled from bitter mountain herbs, the ones that kept the craving for human warmth at bay, were gone, their last dregs swallowed during the battle. He’d felt the beast at the edge of his vision, scenting Brad’s fear, Butter’s magic, the sheer living heat of them. So he had fled. For their sake. Disappearing into the deep woods to gather the twisted, blue-leafed herbs he needed before the hunger took the wheel and shoved his mind into a locked trunk in the back of his own skull.

  Across the wreckage, Lucien stood rigid, his usual poise shattered. His gloved hands flexed, unclenched, flexed again. His eyes, those cold, calculating eyes, were raw.

  Lóng Yán knew that look. Love. Buried under layers of ego, of arrogance, but there. Always there. Lucien had loved her. And now she was gone.

  Yume stood beside him, her golden collar dim, her storm-quiet presence heavier than the ruins around them. She didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

  The wind howled through the shattered halls, carrying the scent of burnt sugar and blood.

  Lóng Yán reached out, his fingers hovering over Winter’s cheek. He didn’t touch her. Couldn’t.

  The soulfire in his veins roared, begging to be unleashed, to melt the world down to nothing.

  But what good was fire now?

  It couldn’t bring her back. It couldn’t undo the words he’d left unsaid. Somewhere in the distance, a lone wolf howled.

  His fingernails dug into his palms, drawing blood that boiled away before it could drip. The scent of burning flesh curled in the air, his own. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t roar. Just knelt there, letting the living fire eat him from the inside, because if he didn’t hold it in, he’d burn the whole world down.

  ///

  Brad’s arms shook as he lowered Winter to the cracked marble floor, his fingers lingering on her sleeve like he could will warmth back into her skin. His breath came in ragged bursts, his vision swimming. The world narrowed to the blood on his hands, the stillness in her chest, the wrongness of it all.

  His voice cracked before he even realized he was screaming.

  "Why don’t we fight?"

  The words tore out of him, raw and desperate. His hands fisted in his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt.

  "She didn’t, she didn’t have to die like this! We can plan, we can, we can do something!"

  His throat closed. A sob wrenched free, then another, until he was choking on them, his chest heaving like he’d been stabbed. The panic attack hit like a tidal wave, his lungs refused to work, his pulse roared in his ears, and all he could see was Winter’s face, slack and lifeless, and god, she’d been vibrant just hours ago.

  A hand landed on his shoulder.

  Brad flinched, wild-eyed, expecting Lóng Yán’s crushing grip or Yume’s quiet strength.

  But it was Lucien.

  A jolt, cold and sharp, cut through Brad’s panic. This was the man whose presence could silence a room, whose calm demeanor was a polished blade. The man Brad had learned to navigate with the cautious fear one reserves for a sleeping predator.

  Yet now, the predator was kneeling in the ashes.

  His usual poise was fractured, the impeccable mask chipped away to reveal the raw stone beneath. But it was more than that. The crushing, atmospheric weight of his presence: the sheer, silent pressure that always made the air feel thinner around him, was simply gone. It was like the gravity in the room had suddenly switched off, and the unnerving void it left was somehow more terrifying than the weight had ever been.

  His gloved fingers pressed into Brad’s shoulder, not with a command, but with a weight that was just hard enough to ground him. When he spoke, his voice was low, measured... too measured, like he was holding back a hurricane with sheer force of will. And in that moment, Brad’s fear of the man was drowned in the vast, shared ocean of their grief. His own anger and loss were suddenly larger, more powerful, than any terror Lucien had ever inspired.

  "Bradford." A pause. The silence was a calculation completing. "The Syndicate's greatest defense is its disunity. It is a hydra not because it grows new heads, but because its heads are unaware they are attached to the same body." His thumb brushed Winter’s braid, once, a variable he had failed to account for, before recoiling. "Today, we made one head aware of us. To attack now is to perform the surgery that connects the nervous system. We would be uniting our enemies against a common threat: us."

  Brad’s wiped his eyes. "WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING."

  "And grant the body consciousness?" Lucien’s gaze remained glacial, a fortress of logic, but his voice... God, his voice, was fraying at the edges, a single thread of anguish pulled taut.

  The thread snapped. A memory, long buried under layers of absolute control, erupted to the surface with the force of a geyser.

  He was thirteen. For weeks, he had planned their escape. L-1, the prodigy. That night was just a final reconnaissance run, a mapping of a forgotten service conduit. He’d taken a shortcut, a corridor sealed since the an experiment rampage, and found a door that shouldn't exist.

  It hissed open. The air inside was old, cold, and tasted of ozone and dread.

  Vaults. Endless rows of them, stretching into a darkness that swallowed light. They weren't made of metal, but of something darker, a material that seemed to drink the faint emergency lighting. And they were not empty. Things shifted within, forms of impossible geometry that hurt his mind to look at. He read the screens, the text glowing with clinical horror:

  [CONTAINMENT: PLANETARY THREAT - CLASS 9]

  [ENTITY DESIGNATION: WORLD-ENDER]

  [STATUS: DORMANT]

  ...

  [CONTAINMENT: MULTIVERSAL CASCADE - CLASS 12]

  [ENTITY DESIGNATION: THE UNKNOWING]

  [STATUS: DORMANT]

  How? How had they fashioned prisons for concepts? From what nightmares had they forged these vaults? And they were just... left here. Dusty. Forgotten.

  A hand. Small, cold, and desperately strong, grabbed his arm and yanked him into an alcove.

  Winter. Just a scrawny kid, her golden eyes wide, not with their usual feral challenge, but with a pure, undiluted fear he had never seen before. She pressed a finger to her lips. Her other hand clutched a crude version of his "Veiler," a device to scramble technological signatures.

  Footsteps. Heavy, rhythmic, tectonic. A Syndicate operative, a giant in a blue-black feathered suit, stood at the room's entrance. His green visor whirred, painting the room in layers of lethal data. Lucien’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape its cage. He held his breath, his own Veiler humming perfectly.

  The operative took a step forward. Then another.

  A sound: a faint, desperate sizzle. Winter’s Veiler, a prototype she’d begged to test, glitched. A tell-tale flicker of her energy signature blipped on the edge of detection. The Stepper’s head tilted. The visor zeroed in on their alcove.

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  There was no time to think. Only to act.

  In one fluid motion, Lucien ripped his own, stable Veiler from his belt and slapped it into Winter’s hand. At the same time, he snatched her glitching one and stepped out of the shadows into the ghastly light.

  “There you are.”

  The voice was a subsonic hum, devoid of anger, dripping with a predator’s calm. It didn’t echo; the room seemed to swallow the sound, making it feel more intimate, more inescapable.

  “The prodigy. L-1. Straying from his designated path.”

  The operative’s green visor didn’t just look at him; it unspooled him, layer by layer.

  “You will come with me. Your programming requires... recalibration.”

  A grip like industrial hydraulics closed around his arm, yanking him off his feet. Pain lanced through his shoulder. As he was dragged away, he looked back. Winter was still hidden, safe in the perfect cloak of his invention, her terrified eyes meeting his.

  He didn’t struggle. He didn’t cry. He would take the torture. She had been through enough. Too much already.

  Present:

  "The Syndicate engineered me. Forged Winter. They have creations far more... foundational, sleeping in vaults whose coordinates are myths. If we attack first, we do not win. We ring a dinner bell."

  A bitter laugh cut through the tension.

  Yume leaned against a half-crushed pillar, the light of her golden collar seeming to drink the gloom rather than fight it. "Blur could turn their headquarters to glass and be back before the dust settled on our shoulders, mushi shirenai (虫知れない - who knows)." She let out a soft sigh, her gaze fixed on some middle distance. "But you do not beat a thing like the Syndicate, child. You endure it. You weather their storms when they come... Shikata ga nai (仕方がない - It can't be helped)."

  Her fingers, pale and precise, tightened on her knitting needles. The word echoed in the hollow of her mind.

  Endure.

  A memory, long buried under layers of willful forgetting, tore its way to the surface. The third night of the Sin War. The sky was a bleeding wound, the Warden of Hell himself a blot of screaming darkness against the moon. Demons poured forth not in thousands, but in billions, a ceaseless, chittering tide that made the very planet groan. Humans were mere morsels, snatched and devoured. Storm Assassins, herself among them, had fought for days straight, their movements slowing from god-like blurs to the weary swings of mortals.

  She had just killed a cobalt-skinned beast, its four arms still twitching, its acid saliva eating through the stone at her feet. It had nearly taken her head off. Then, more screams. Closer. A different kind of fear, cold and cowardly, seized her. Not the hot rush of battle, but the icy dread of being overrun. She ran. Blur was a frantic light at her side.

  They found a hiding place, a collapsed sub-basement, shielded by fallen masonry. And they were not alone. A handful of humans were there. A man with a tired, wrinkled face, his arm around a heavily pregnant woman. And between them, a little girl, no more than five, her eyes wide with a terror so profound it was silent.

  Outside, the ground shook with the footsteps of something colossal.

  Yume, you have to focus! Blur’s voice was a desperate chime in her mind. I can’t draw power unless you’re full of it as well! Please, Yume!

  But she couldn't. Her emotions were a shattered mirror. Fear, exhaustion, and the crushing weight of futility had severed her connection to the storm. Blur was a mere sonic speed now, a gnat against the titans outside. To go out was to die.

  A sob wrenched from her. "Konna no, hoshikunakatta... (こんなの、欲しくなかった...)" she whispered, the confession a blasphemy for a Storm Assassin. I never wanted this. "Kami nante, zettai hoshikunakatta." I never wanted to be a god. I never wanted any of this.

  The little girl flinched at her voice. But the man, the father, did not. He met Yume’s wild, bloodshot gaze. His own eyes were calm, deep pools of an exhaustion that had passed beyond panic. He reached out, his work-roughened hand covering her shaking one.

  "Young miss," he said, his voice quiet but firm, cutting through the hellish din. "We do not choose the burdens the world places upon us. We do not get to want or not want. Our only choice, our only victory, is in how long we can bear the weight without breaking. That is all that is asked of us. To endure."

  Yume stared into his weathered face, a monument of human resilience. More demons rushed past their hiding spot, their roars shaking dust from the ceiling.

  The fear in her eyes crystallized into something harder. Something resolved.

  "I can't draw power right now, Blur." She looked at the terrified family, then back at the fairy, her eyes hollow. "Dakara... nagutte. Ikutsu demo. Donna ni tsuyoku demo." So... hit me. As many times as you can. As hard as you can. She took a shaky breath, the plan forming as a death sentence. "Watashi ga kono kizu o, minna de wakachiau." I'm going to share this damage amongst them.

  The next hour was an eternity of meticulously orchestrated agony.

  Blur, her tiny form a blur of anguish, became an instrument of torture. She delivered precise, shattering blows: a punch that splintered Yume’s ribs, a kick that shattered her femur, an impact that cracked her spine. Each time, before the pain could fully register, Yume’s power flared. The damage vanished from her body, transferred out into the horde. A hundred demons would simultaneously explode into gore, their forms rupturing from within, confused and leaderless.

  Yume did not scream. She sat rigid, her jaw locked, tears streaming down her face in a continuous, silent river. The five-year-old girl, sensing a different kind of pain, crawled from her father's side and laid her head gently in Yume's lap, a small, warm weight in the cold hell. Yume’s hand, trembling violently, came to rest on the child's hair as Blur’s next hit broke her shoulder blade.

  She endured. Not as a goddess, but as a conduit. A living sacrifice, channeling her own broken body into a weapon of survival for a handful of strangers. She bore the torture, and the world outside paid the price.

  "...and you spend the calm between them," Yume finished, her voice a ghost in the present, her knuckles white on her needles, "praying the next one doesn't finally wash you away."

  Silence. Brad’s fists trembled in his lap. The tears wouldn’t stop. The anger, the helplessness, it was too much. But now, he understood the cost of the advice. He had seen the price of endurance in the ancient, haunted look in Yume's eyes.

  Then, a sound. A crack.

  Lóng Yán’s fist was embedded in the marble, soulfire licking up his arm, his face streaked with soot and evaporating tears. But he didn’t speak. Didn’t roar.

  Just breathed, heavy and ragged, like a wounded animal.

  The wind howled through the ruins, carrying ash and the metallic tang of blood. Somewhere, a drone sputtered, its dying light flickering over Winter’s still form.

  Brad squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t have words anymore. Just grief. And the terrible, gnawing fear that Lucien was right.

  ///

  The shovels bit into the earth with a quiet, rhythmic thud.

  Lucien could have used drones, should have, by all logic, but some things demanded the weight of human hands. The scent of upturned soil mixed with the metallic tang of distant rain as he and Lóng Yán carved Winter’s final resting place beside two older graves, their headstones worn smooth by time.

  Lóng worked in furious silence, his soulfire simmering just beneath his skin, turning the sweat on his brow to steam. Every thrust of his shovel was too hard, too sharp, as if he could bury his grief along with her.

  His focus was broken by a familiar sound.

  POOF.

  A burst of lavender petals scattered across the fresh dirt.

  Mango materialized in a crouch, her sundress torn, one combat boot missing, Butter’s limp form draped over her back like a broken doll. Her curls were matted with dust and dried blood, her eyes wide and glassy.

  Brad moved before anyone could react.

  "Butter!" He lunged forward, grabbing her face, his thumbs brushing the dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was too pale, her breathing shallow.

  She blinked up at him, dazed. "'M fine... just tired..." Her voice was a threadbare whisper.

  Mango adjusted her grip with a grunt, her sundress torn and singed at the hem. "She did the... the math thing with chain-stick. The boomy one." She poked Butter's cheek. "You owe me candy."

  Yume materialized at Brad's shoulder, her golden collar pulsing faintly as she assessed the damage. "Neural shock. Magic depletion." Her fingers hovered over Butter's chest. "She funneled her own life force to heal you."

  Mango tilted her head and squinted at Yume. "Yarn lady! You live here?"

  Lóng Yán’s shovel clattered to the ground.

  "The toddler," he snarled, soulfire erupting along his arms as he lunged.

  Lucien’s arm snapped out, catching him across the chest.

  "Enough." Lucien’s voice was steel wrapped in velvet. His gaze flicked to Mango, assessing, then to Butter’s exhausted form. A muscle jumped in his jaw. "She brought her back."

  Lóng Yán bared his teeth, but the flames dimmed. Barely.

  Mango turned, and froze.

  There, laid out on the cracked floor like broken dolls, were Sphinx and Vithon. Their Syndicate masks had been removed, their faces pale and slack in death. The drones had arranged them too neatly, too perfectly, like exhibits in a museum no one wanted to visit.

  A gasp caught in her throat.

  "...Oh."

  She took a step forward, then another, until she stood between the two corpses. Her finger reached out, hovering over Sphinx's lifeless hand, the same hand that had wielded shock sticks and backhanded her for smiling too much.

  "She was mean to me," she whispered. The words hung in the air like a confession. "Always hit me with shocky sticks when I cried."

  Her voice was light. Casual. Like she was talking about the weather. But her hands, her hands were shaking.

  Just a little.

  Lucien didn’t look up from his digging. "Shock sticks, hm?" "Explains the scarring on your neural patterns."

  Mango blinked. "Huh?"

  She then rocked back on her heels, grinning, too wide, too bright. "And now they’re dead."

  Then, softer:

  "...Can I have their shoes?"

  The silence that followed was priceless. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, she grabbed Vithon's discarded plasma gun.

  "Mine now."

  Before Mango could even fully heft the weapon, Yume was there. Not with a lunge, but with a slow, deliberate step. Her movement was so fluid it seemed to borrow time from the air itself. She didn't snatch. She simply placed her pale, steady hands over Mango's trembling ones.

  "Not a toy for today, Mango," Yume murmured, her voice a low, calming hum.

  For a moment, Mango's grip tightened, a flicker of possessive instinct in her eyes. But Yume's hands were immovable, a gentle, unyielding weight. With a soft sigh that seemed to deflate the girl's sudden aggression, Yume pried the plasma gun free, her touch never harsh, but final.

  She passed the weapon to a waiting drone without a second glance, then turned back to the scene.

  "Blur," she said quietly, her focus restored. "Scan them."

  The fairy zipped into existence, a hyperkinetic blur of light, circling Butter and Mango with clinical precision. "Butter: magic depletion, minor fractures, exhaustion. Mango: Temporary magic high, moderate injuries, residual decay energy, one missing boot. oh! Found it!" She teleported away and back, dropping the boot at Mango’s feet.

  Mango wiggled her toes in the dirt, grinning. "Thanks, shiny fairy!"

  Brad cradled Butter closer, his voice cracking. "What happened?"

  Butter’s fingers twitched against his sleeve. "She... didn’t want to fight anymore."

  Silence. Lóng Yán stared at Mango, his fury giving way to something unreadable.

  Mango, oblivious, nodded her head, strawberry-shaped earrings bouncing. "Pinky promise," she announced, as if that explained everything.

  Lucien exhaled through his nose. "We’ll need another grave," he muttered, then paused. "...Or perhaps not."

  Above them, the first drops of rain began to fall.

  ///

  The mansion stood pristine again, its shattered walls and scorched marble restored by Lucien’s drones, smooth, unbroken, as if the battle had never happened. The dining hall, bathed in the warm glow of crystal chandeliers, felt too quiet, too still. The scent of polished wood and fresh linen hung in the air, undercut by something heavier, grief, lingering like a ghost.

  Winter’s absence was a presence all its own.

  Lóng Yán sat at the table, his massive frame rigid, fingers curled around a glass of whiskey he hadn’t touched. His tattoos pulsed faintly beneath his rolled-up sleeves, the only sign of the storm still raging inside him. Across from him, Yume traced the rim of her teacup with one finger, her golden collar reflecting the light like a muted sun.

  Mango sat between them, swinging her legs under the chair, her mouth smeared with chocolate and gummy worms. The promised candy, piles of it, lay scattered in front of her, wrappers crinkling as she dug through them with the focus of a treasure hunter. She’d been cleaned up, her curls fluffed back into their usual wild halo. One of Butter’s expensive oversized hoodies drowned her frame, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

  Lucien stood at the head of the table, his charcoal suit immaculate, his gloved hands resting on the back of an empty chair, Winter’s chair.

  Yume’s needles clicked where Winter’s claws would’ve tapped. Lóng Yán’s whiskey sat untouched where she’d have stolen it. The silence stretched, waiting for a snarky comment that never came.

  Lucien's expression was unreadable, but his voice, when he finally spoke, was softer than usual.

  "She wouldn’t want us to grieve."

  Yume smirked, though her eyes were distant. "Kitto waratteru wa, an'na fuu ni shinkoku na kao shiteru watashitachi o mite." (きっと笑ってるわ、あんな風に深刻な顔してる私たちを見て。) "She's probably laughing, seeing us all making such serious faces."

  Lucien watched her, his gaze analytic even here, even now. He noted the subtle tension in her shoulders, the slight tremor in her hands that she hid by holding her teacup. Clock's poisoning had shaken her. Butter, the one who might had helped, was too depleted to even try. And Winter's death... He understood the sequence. It was a cascade of failures to protect, and for Yume, a Storm Assassin, failure was a poison in itself. He realized then that she had spoken entirely in Japanese. It was her tell. When her emotions were raw, when she was too weary to maintain the facade of the unflappable warrior, she defaulted to the language of her childhood, the syntax of her soul.

  "You guys are way nicer than the people back home," Mango said around a sticky mouthful, swinging her feet. "Even when you yell. At least you don’t put me in the Bad room."

  Lucien’s gloved fingers stilled against the rim of his wineglass. "They sent you and Clock to die. As distractions," he said flatly. "Anything is nicer than that."

  Yume’s knitting needles paused mid-stitch. "Dakedo, naze sonna koto?" (だけど、なぜそんなこと？) "But why all that?" she asked, voice deceptively light. "Winter-san o korosu tame dake ni? Don'na tame no?" (ウィンターさんを殺すために？どんなための？) "Just to kill Winter? For what purpose?"

  The air grew heavier.

  Lóng Yán leaned forward, the tattoos beneath his skin pulsing like banked embers. "Kestrel had a score to settle," he growled. "Winter was his creation, his runaway daughter, in a way. Forged from his own genes, just like Mango." His gaze flicked toward the girl, then away, as if the comparison pained him. "Her disobedience was a betrayal. She chose Crook's enemies over him, and he could never forgive the shame of it."

  Mango blinked. "Oh. Yeah. He hates that." She nodded sagely, as if discussing a bad habit. "Once he made a guy eat his own fingers for talking back."

  Lucien’s smile was razor-thin. "Charming."

  Lóng Yán’s fist clenched. "And the attacks. They were testing us. Our limits. Our reactions. I wouldn't be surprised if had Pest come from them as well." His voice dropped, gravel grinding beneath the words. "Something worse is coming. They won’t stop until we’re all dead. They’re still loyal to Crook, even now. Even after her death." He bared his teeth. "They’ll reduce the world to ash just to purge her enemies."

  Yume’s needles clicked again, sharp and precise. "Shinda kamigami e no chūsei ga ichiban kiken desu." (死んだ神々への忠誠が一番危険です。) "Loyalty to dead gods is the most dangerous kind." "Yurushite kureru hito ga daremo inakunaru kara." (許してくれる人が誰もいなくなるから。) "It leaves no one left to forgive you."

  Lucien turned to Mango. "We need your help."

  Mango paused mid-chew, a half-eaten sour belt dangling from her lips. She blinked up at him, then swallowed hard. "Huh?"

  Lucien leaned forward slightly, the chandelier light catching the sharp angles of his face. "The Syndicate thinks you’re dead. That gives us an advantage."

  Lóng Yán’s glass creaked under his grip. "You want to use the toddler as bait?"

  "No." Lucien’s gaze didn’t waver. "I want to use her as a knife."

  Mango’s eyes widened. She pointed at herself. "Me? A knife?" Then, after a beat, she grinned. "Ooooh! A stabby knife?"

  "Fufu." (ふふ。) Yume let out a soft, amused snort into her tea, a starkly feminine and gentle sound amidst the tension.

  Lucien exhaled, almost a laugh. "Something like that." He tapped the table once, and a holographic map flickered to life above the wood, displaying Syndicate strongholds in glowing red. "You know their bases. Their protocols. You can navigate."

  Mango tilted her head, studying the map with sudden, unsettling focus. The playful glint in her eyes sharpened. "I know lots of things," she murmured, popping another gummy worm into her mouth. "Lots of secret things."

  Lóng Yán’s jaw tightened. "And we’re supposed to trust her?"

  "No." Lucien’s smile was thin. "We’re supposed to survive."

  The Syndicate, as a whole, was a hydra. Unbeatable in a straight fight. But if he could be a surgeon instead of a soldier… if he could cleanly remove just one faction, Kestrel's faction, and make it look like an accident, an internal power struggle, something utterly untraceable back to this table… then they might buy themselves years. They could recede into the shadows, let the Magpies' infinite suspicion turn inward.

  He looked at Winter's empty chair.

  She would have done it in a heartbeat. The thought was a shard of glass in his soul. If our positions were reversed, and I were the one in the ground, she wouldn't be planning a shadow war. She would have already reduced Kestrel's faction to dust, consequences be damned.

  He couldn't let that sacrifice be in vain. He would be the strategist she never could be. He would be patient. He would be cruel in the ways that mattered.

  Above them, the chandelier dimmed slightly, casting long shadows across the table, across the empty chair, the half-finished candy, the faces of those left behind.

  Somewhere upstairs, Butter slept, Brad slumped in a chair beside her bed, his fingers laced with hers.

  And downstairs, a plan began to take shape.