Chapter 39: Caught

"I can pack your ginger tea in a thermos!"

Lucien leaned his head back against the headboard, his chest heaving, his brain racing through eighty-five different analytical calculations through the fog of his 103-degree fever.

Why would Silas investigate my villa’s requisitions?

Did I leave a clue on the parchment?

No. The parchment was common kitchen scrap.

The cipher was forty years old.

The ink was standard iron gall, too.

Wait.

Lucien froze.

His eyes slowly lowered toward the desk beside the balcony window.

Upon the polished mahogany surface sat the empty silver plate where the almond tart had been.

And beside the plate... was a half-empty, beautifully embossed glass jar of Everhart Estate Wild Strawberry Glaze, stamped with the unmistakable, gold-leaf crest of the Western Ducal House.

Lucien stared at the jam jar.

He blinked once... twice.

’I left the jam jar on the desk,’ his brain whispered in horror. ’Right next to the tart. With my family’s crest on the lid.’

And Silas Nightingale... is an A-Rank scout from an ancient intelligence lineage.

A scout who, upon seeing an encrypted ledger written on kitchen paper hidden beneath an almond tart, next to a jar of Duke Everhart’s private-reserve strawberry glaze, in a room where the balcony latch was left open by three millimeters...

Lucien’s stomach dropped through the mattress, through the floorboards, through the floating titan-granite of the plateau, and directly into the abyss below.

"He didn’t think he stole it," Lucien whispered, the realization hitting him with the force of an oncoming freight train. "He realized it was a handoff? That guy is dense, so how?"

"Lucien? What did you say?" Rowan asked, blinking innocently. "Who handed what off?"

"Nothing," Lucien squeaked, his voice cracking into a register so high it could have shattered crystal. "Nothing at all. Rowan... pass me the flagon of ginger tea. And fetch three more blankets. If my fever does not kill me by noon, I am going to have to do it myself."

***

The lower botanical greenhouse beneath the Third Disciplinary Terrace was a humid labyrinth of overgrown tropical flora, ancient glass domes, and dense, clinging mist.

It was five minutes past midnight.

Professor Edmund Graves, a thin, stooped man in his late fifties with greasy grey hair, nervous, darting rat-like eyes, and the midnight-blue robes of a Senior Academic Chair, stood beside an ancient stone drainage culvert overgrown with bioluminescent moss.

He was clutching a heavy iron-bound ledger to his chest with sweating fingers, checking an antique gold pocket watch every fourteen seconds.

"Where are they?" Graves hissed into the darkness, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "The courier should have been here at the stroke of the bell. If the Night Watch patrols the lower terraces before the transfer is signed—"

"The courier will not be arriving tonight, Professor Graves," a voice said.

The voice did not come from the shadows of the ferns or echo through the humid mist.

It descended from directly above, carrying the pure, bell-like, terrifying resonance of starlight striking an iron anvil.

Graves gasped, stumbling backward, his leather boots slipping on the wet moss.

From the shattered glass ceiling of the greenhouse thirty feet above, a single figure dropped down.

He did not hit the flagstones with a crash.

He landed with the weightless, liquid grace of a falling star, the hem of his dark-indigo tunic barely fluttering as his boots touched the stone.

Cassian Valemont straightened to his full height.

In his right hand, he held no physical steel. Instead, a blinding, thin blade of pure condensed mana, radiating with the pale, cold brilliance of a dying supernova, hummed softly in his grip, illuminating the creeping ferns, the iron culvert, and Graves’ terrified, pale face with merciless, unyielding clarity.

Behind Cassian, stepping silently out from the humid shadows of the oversized tropical leaves, came The Misfits.

Garrick Stone stood at the western exit, his seven-foot frame easily blocking the archway like a living mountain of iron plate, a two-handed bludgeon resting casually over his shoulder.

Lyra Veyne stood upon the rim of a stone fountain to the east, her violet hair glowing with faint purple spores, seven thick, thorny vines already snaking out from the sleeves of her uniform, coiling around the marble pillars like hungry serpents.

Seraphina Vale stood beside the southern gate, her hands clasped serenely over her satchel, a web of glowing mana threads already woven through the air, sealing the greenhouse’s acoustic boundary to prevent a single scream from escaping into the night.

And crouching lazily atop an overturned terracotta planter near the entrance, cleaning his fingernails with a small silver stiletto, was Silas Nightingale.

"Lord... Lord Valemont!" Graves stammered, his knees knocking together beneath his academic robes, clutching the ledger behind his back. "What... what is the meaning of this?! This is an unauthorized intrusion into a restricted academic research facility! I am a Senior Department Head! I will have you stripped of your vanguard credentials!"

Cassian did not raise his voice.

He took three strides forward, the blade in his hand leaving a faint, sizzling trail of ozone across the humid air.

"Under Imperial Martial Regulation Section 88, Paragraph A," Cassian recited, his dark blue eyes burning with cold starlight, "any academic personnel engaged in the unauthorized extraction, trafficking, or distribution of suppressed soul-relics from the Catacomb Vaults is classified as an enemy of the Crown, subject to immediate, extrajudicial apprehension by the Guardian Houses."

Graves’ face drained of every drop of blood. "You... you have no proof! The High Council requires documented registry numbers—"

"Registry Number 448-Omega," Cassian stated smoothly. "The Soul-Siphon Core of the Seventh Sunken Chamber. Extracted three weeks ago during the auxiliary expedition. Moved through the lower drainage conduits under supply permit Number 902, bearing the forged personal seal of Marquis Crowe."

Graves choked, his jaw hanging slack, his eyes bulging. "How... how could you possibly know that?! That ledger was encrypted! It was stored in a private—"

"A private desk," Silas chimed in from his planter, offering a cheerful, predatory wave with his stiletto. "Under an almond tart. Very sophisticated operational security, Professor. Really top-notch work."

"Enough," Cassian commanded, raising his blade until the diamond-white tip rested half an inch from Graves’ trembling throat. The heat radiating from the manifested mana caused the collar of the professor’s robes to faintly scorch. "Surrender the ledger. Name your conspirators within the Crowe faction. And submit to the disciplinary vanguard."

Graves stared into Cassian’s eyes.

He saw no hesitation, or no room for political negotiation. He saw only the terrifying, unyielding moral absolute of the Valemont bloodline, a force that had executed kings for lesser crimes.

With a pathetic, wet sob, Professor Edmund Graves fell to his knees on the damp moss, the iron-bound ledger slipping from his limp fingers and clattering onto the flagstones.

"It was Crowe..." Graves wept, burying his face in his hands. "They promised to pay my gambling debts... they said the Everhart boy would take the blame for the catacomb collapse... they said no one would ever look at the logistics..."

Cassian did not look down at the groveling man.

He deactivated his weapon, the blinding starlight dissolving into faint, drifting specks of white luminescence that vanished into the greenhouse mist.

"Garrick," Cassian said quietly. "Take him to the Disciplinary Spire. Deliver the ledger directly to the Grand Inquisitor. Inform them that House Valemont has secured the western evidence."

"Aye, Commander," Garrick grunted, stepping forward, seizing the weeping professor by the scruff of his neck with one fist, and hoisting him off the ground as easily as a man lifting an empty sack of oats.

As Garrick marched the traitor away, Lyra recalled her thorny vines with a disappointed pout, while Seraphina neatly severed her threads with a flick of her wrist.

Silas hopped down from the planter, strolling over to Cassian’s side, hands tucked into his scuffed pockets.

"Well," Silas chuckled, glancing sideways at his leader. "That was remarkably tidy. Took us less than ten minutes. The entire Crowe smuggling syndicate in the capital just lost its spine. Duke Everhart’s western mines are completely safe from legal seizure."

Cassian did not reply immediately.

He looked down at the empty stone culvert, his dark blue eyes unreadable.

"Cassian?" Silas prodded, raising an eyebrow. "You’re doing the brooding statue thing again. We just won a big political victory without taking a single scratch."