Chapter 46: WHAT’S IN YOUR HEAD

The click of the suppression cuffs seemed too small for what followed. Rhea stopped with one foot lifted, nine orange tails frozen behind her, while the townspeople rushing the platform lost their rhythm so suddenly that the front row collided with those behind them.

For a moment nobody seemed to understand why they had been running. A woman lowered the stone in her hand while the silver rings around the grey-coated Wayfarer dropped from the air and struck the boards.

Baron’s knees buckled the instant the cuffs closed, and Sio barely managed to keep hold of his coat before the man folded beside the chair. Whatever had connected him to the town vanished so completely that the pressure Sio had grown used to disappeared with it.

Rhea’s transformation collapsed a breath later. Eight tails blurred into pale orange light and disappeared, her claws shortened, and confusion replaced the savage tension in her face.

"I..." Her voice came out rough, almost unused, and she swallowed while looking at the ruined execution ground. "Why am I up here?"

Sio opened his mouth, but the little creature on his shoulder made an angry wet click first. Several eyes narrowed at Rhea, and one tiny tentacle curled around Sio’s collar as if preparing to defend him again.

Rhea stared at it, then at Sio. "What is that?" She took a cautious half-step closer before the creature clicked louder.

"That is apparently my child." Sio heard the sentence leave his mouth and immediately hated how naturally impossible it sounded. "And before you ask, I have had an extremely confusing morning."

Angle rubbed a fresh bruise along his jaw and looked between them. "You can explain your parenting situation later. I’d like to know whether she’s still going to attack us."

Rhea looked at the scorched boards and claw marks around her as memory returned in pieces. "I remember the cell. I remember being brought upstairs." She pressed two fingers to her temple. "After that, it feels like someone kept opening and closing a door inside my head."

The crowd had begun talking, but none of it matched the perfect unity from before. An older man shouted that Baron had kept the town alive long before any of them had been forced to fight, while a younger woman snapped back, "I chose to stay here. I didn’t choose to have him inside my thoughts."

Others argued over contracts, missing hours and whether their loyalty had ever needed Baron’s Claim at all. Nobody sounded like they had simply awakened from a spell, and that somehow made the whole thing worse because some of their loyalty was clearly real.

Arch crouched beside Baron and unfolded the small brass instrument from inside his coat. He passed it over the suppression cuffs first; the needle barely moved, but when he raised it toward Baron’s head, it jerked hard enough to strike the edge of its housing.

Angle noticed the movement and frowned. "His Claim is suppressed." Arch moved the instrument slowly past Baron’s temple and stopped behind his right ear, where the needle began trembling in short, violent movements.

"It is," Arch said. "This isn’t his Claim."

The baby leaned from Sio’s shoulder to inspect Baron. "Please don’t tell me he has another secret ability in his skull. I’ve reached my limit for surprises involving people’s heads."

A pair of shaken mansion guards emerged from the stairwell with Baron’s mother between them, one still clutching the keys used to open the cells below. She pulled free the moment she saw her son, dropped beside him and cupped his face with both hands. "What did they do to you?"

Sio looked at Angle, and the same memory seemed to reach both of them. "There’s something you don’t know," Sio told Arch. "She talked to us in the prison. Baron had visitors years ago—people she didn’t recognize."

Angle nodded, glancing toward Baron’s mother. "She said they kept coming back. After that, the way he talked about the town started changing. It stopped being about earning people’s loyalty and became more about making sure he could keep it."

Arch looked toward the woman kneeling beside Baron. "When did those visits start?"

She hesitated before answering. "Years ago. They became more frequent after his father died."

Arch checked the needle again behind Baron’s ear. He took a narrow metal pin from the side of the instrument and held it against Baron’s skin, and the needle twitched hard enough that his expression tightened.

"There is something alive in his head," he said. Nearby residents fell quiet while Baron’s mother stared at him as though he had changed languages halfway through the sentence.

"Take it out." Her fingers tightened around her son’s hand, but Arch shook his head and marked a tiny point behind Baron’s ear.

"I can’t cut toward it safely. It’s too close to things I’d rather not damage unless your son has suddenly developed a spare brain." Sio crouched opposite him, already disliking where this was going.

"Please tell me you have a second option after saying that." Arch looked toward Angle instead of answering, and Angle’s expression changed immediately.

"No," Angle said. "Whatever you’re thinking, no." Arch pointed to the marked spot and told him he only needed heat there, nothing wider.

Angle stared at him. "I can also cook whatever is beside it." Arch nodded once and told him that was exactly why he was asking the person with the best control instead of Sio.

Sio decided there were more urgent things to be offended by. Baron’s mother tightened her grip around her son’s hand and told Angle to do it.

Angle knelt and placed two fingers where Arch indicated, but no flame appeared. The air around his fingertips distorted instead, heat compressed so tightly that only a bead of sweat along Baron’s hairline betrayed it.

"Lower," Arch murmured while watching the brass needle. Angle adjusted by a fraction, and Baron’s body jerked hard enough that his mother nearly cried out.

Something moved beneath the skin. A tiny ridge crawled once behind Baron’s ear and stopped, and Angle’s jaw tightened as the air around his fingers warped more sharply.

Arch caught his wrist a moment later. "Enough. It stopped." Angle pulled back, breathing harder than the tiny movement should have required.

Arch waited until Baron’s breathing steadied before making a narrow incision behind the ear. Whatever had been holding the parasite in place seemed to loosen after it died, and he worked carefully until a black, segmented body smaller than Sio’s fingernail slid free, two translucent hooks folded against its sides.

He placed it into a small glass vial and sealed it without touching it directly. Baron’s mother watched the thing settle at the bottom before looking back at her unconscious son.

"Was that thing making him do all of this?" she asked. Arch did not give her the easy answer she was looking for.

"It was influencing something inside him. Whether it created every choice, strengthened choices already there, or did something in between is a question for when he wakes." The old woman lowered her gaze, and Sio was glad Arch left it there instead of turning the parasite into an excuse for everything Baron had done.

The residents gradually stopped arguing long enough to help the injured. Rhea turned toward the eastern road, her ears lifting as though she had heard something none of them could.

"What is it? You look like you heard someone." Rhea kept staring toward the road for another second before answering.

"I need to leave. I don’t know how I know that, but I know where I have to go." She sounded almost as confused by that certainty as Sio.

"You’ve been imprisoned, controlled, turned into a nine-tailed murder fox and nearly killed us." Sio gestured vaguely at the town around them. "Maybe take five minutes before making another major life decision."

Something like amusement crossed Rhea’s face. "You really do talk this much." Sio blinked. "You remember that?"

"I remember the cell." Her eyes shifted toward the baby glaring at her from Sio’s shoulder. "And apparently your child remembers me too."

The creature clicked at her with obvious hostility, so Rhea gave it a cautious little wave. One tentacle rose beside Sio’s cheek in response.

"I think I made a bad first impression," she said. Sio glanced at the claw marks across the platform before looking back at her and reminding her that she had tried to kill both of them.

"That usually does it," Rhea admitted, and the smile that followed lasted only a moment before her attention returned to the eastern road. Whatever was pulling at her had not disappeared; the way her ears kept turning toward it told Sio that asking her to ignore it would accomplish nothing.

She thanked him quietly for trying to reach her while Baron controlled her, though she remembered only pieces of it. Then she stepped away before Sio could think of anything better than warning her against suspiciously generous lodging contracts.

By the time he found a less stupid sentence, Rhea was already moving down the road. Sio watched until the orange of her hair disappeared between the buildings, while the baby settled more comfortably around his neck as if pleased with this development.

"I finally meet a girl who actually listens to me and she leaves the same morning you decide I’m your father." Sio scratched lightly beneath one of the creature’s tiny eyes, and it answered with a happy click as if hearing no tragedy whatsoever.

Arch came up behind him with the sealed parasite tucked safely inside his coat and told him he could mourn his romantic future while walking. Angle reminded Sio that their bounties still existed, which killed any argument he had about staying longer.

Angle collected what little equipment they still had while Arch glanced once toward Baron and his mother. "This town has enough to deal with, and whoever put that thing in his head may eventually realize it is dead. I would prefer not to be standing here when they come to check."

Sio adjusted the baby against his shoulder and followed them toward the road. Behind them, the town had finally stopped speaking with one voice; ahead, open country stretched beyond the last buildings, and for the first time that morning nobody was trying to execute him. Considering how their travels had gone so far, Sio decided not to celebrate that yet, while the baby clicked happily against his neck as if it had already reached the opposite conclusion.