Chapter 50: Spy [2]

Yelena stared at her, entirely captivated now. The lingering shame of being caught half-naked was rapidly evaporating, swallowed by the predatory instincts of a noble heir who desperately wanted to win.

"That’s convenient," Yelena pressed, her voice tighter now, probing for a lie. "A little too convenient. How could you possibly know his guard count?"

"Because I watched his shift change twice," Raven replied, her tone dripping with professional exhaustion. "Once at dusk yesterday, and once forty minutes before dawn this morning. Dorrian runs his squad like an imperial parade ground. They swap watches at the exact same hour every rotation. If you position two runners in the reeds along the tributary stream and wait for the morning handover, there is a gap of approximately four minutes where the rock shelf is held by a single sentry. And that sentry is half-asleep, because Dorrian assigns the worst watch to the commoners who can’t complain."

Yelena was silent for three long seconds. Her hands had completely stopped clutching her torn top. The white fabric hung open, revealing the smooth, pale curves of her small breasts and the hardened tips of her nipples, but she seemed to have completely forgotten she was exposed. Her aristocratic brain was entirely consumed by the logistics.

"And the third team?" Yelena asked, leaning forward off the tree trunk. "The southern bracket?"

A faint, razor-thin smirk ghosted across Raven’s lips.

"The third team isn’t a threat in any way that matters," Raven said dismissively. "They’re a disaster. Four petty aristocratic cliques who couldn’t agree on a commander if their lives depended on it—much like Dragon Group was two days ago. They’ve fractured their forces entirely. Instead of defending a central base, they’ve split their flag duty across three separate hiding spots, none of which are properly manned because each faction assumes the others are doing the heavy lifting."

She pointed a gloved finger toward the dense southern foliage.

"Their primary banner is buried in a hollow beneath a rotting fallen oak near the creek bend. You don’t need an army to take it, Yelena. A single person with functioning legs, twenty minutes of patience, and enough nerve to crawl through the brush could simply walk up and lift it out of the mud."

Yelena’s breath hitched, her eyes gleaming with sudden, hungry ambition. But the skepticism returned, sharp and pointed. ℯℯ𝘭.

"If taking it is that simple," Yelena challenged, stepping away from the oak tree, her hips swaying with aggressive energy, "why haven’t you taken it yourself? Why hand a free victory to us?"

Raven rolled her eyes, letting out a heavy, irritated sigh that suggested she was speaking to an exceptionally slow child.

"Because I’m not assigned to this bracket," Raven said flatly. "The rules of the engagement are absolute. If I cross sector lines and capture a banner outside my designated zone, the surveillance runes flag the interference and I get disqualified on the spot. It does me zero good. But handing it to you?"

Raven’s dark eyes flicked toward Cane, her gaze lingering on his broad, bare shoulders before returning to Yelena.

"Handing it to you gets me paid."

Yelena paused, searching Raven’s stone-cold face for any trace of deception. "Is that truly all? Coin?"

Raven was quiet for a beat. The cynical, hardened edge of her voice cracked, just a sliver, letting out a rare, brutal scrap of unvarnished truth.

"Scholarship stipends don’t stretch as far as people born with your surname assume," Raven murmured, the words flat and heavy as lead. "There are only so many weeks a person can live on one bowl of watery grain a day before she starts measuring her academic loyalty against the cost of next month’s rent. He offered the money. I took it."

The confession hit the clearing with the force of an anvil.

Yelena blinked, visibly taken aback. The haughty, aristocratic disdain in her posture softened by an inch, replaced by an uncomfortable, reluctant sympathy. For all her bratty arrogance, Yelena Ayula was not entirely blind to the realities of the lower classes; she had simply never heard a peer state it with such cold, dignified honesty.

She cleared her throat, her voice dropping into a much quieter, almost respectful tone.

"What should we do about our camp?" Yelena asked, the question slipping out before she could check herself. "We can’t stay by the pond much longer."

"That pond is the worst defensive position in the entire forest," Raven said bluntly, crossing her arms beneath her athletic chest. "It’s a flat bowl of mud with zero natural cover and a wide perimeter. Any competent strike force could surround the tree line and hit you from three sides simultaneously before your mages could finish chanting a basic barrier."

She jerked her chin toward the craggy ridgeline rising behind the oak trees.

"If I were running this disaster, I would move the entire camp three hundred paces north, up to the rocky spine your scouts have been too lazy to climb. The high ground provides a full panoramic view of the eastern valley, turning your base into a watchtower. The only northern approach is a narrow, fractured rock chute that forces any attacking squad to climb in single file, perfectly funneled into your archers’ kill zone."

Yelena listened intently, nodding slowly as the tactical wisdom settled into her mind.

"And the watch rotations?"

"Scrap the two-shift system," Raven ordered without hesitation. "Split the camp into three rolling shifts, with a dedicated runner stationed on the low shelf between each post. That way, if a perimeter ward is tripped, nobody has to scream and give away their position to sound the alarm."

Silence descended upon the small woodland pocket once more.

Yelena stood with her weight shifted on one slender leg, her bare thighs gleaming in the soft sunlight, chewing on her lower lip as she processed the sheer volume of high-level intelligence she had just been handed for free.

She looked up, meeting Raven’s dark gaze. There was something new in Yelena’s golden eyes now—a cautious, ungrudging respect that had previously been reserved only for upper-tier instructors.