No. But we learned something. I moved closer, my hand finding her shoulder. His network is adaptive. Disruption doesn’t scale. We need a different approach.
And if we can’t find one?
Then we try anyway. I let the weight of her lean tether me. Because waiting for solstice to prove we were right about the impossibility isn’t an option.
She was quiet for a moment, watching students cross the quad. Normal life continued while we tried to save the magical infrastructure that made it possible.
Keane thinks he can figure it out, she said. Map the whole network.
He will, I said. That’s what he does. He sees patterns and builds structure from chaos.
Behind us, Keane was already deep in calculations, his portal mathematics filling his tablet screen. Cyrus had his phone out, coordinating with guard contacts. Each of them worked the problem from different angles.
The familiars had settled into their usual spots—Scout on the table edge, Wisp by Keane’s chair, Ember on the windowsill, Echo on the couch back. Home positions. Comfortable.
We were good at this—the coordination, the trust, the willingness to adapt when methods proved insufficient.
Now we just needed understanding to match our execution. Echo’s scales had shifted from bruised violet to something steadier. Determination, not despair.
Ten days until solstice. Keane would spend three of them mapping the network.
If we couldn’t outmatch the master in strength, we’d out-think him. One pattern at a time.
23
Cyrus
TEN DAYS UNTIL SOLSTICE, AND I paced the Raynoff Tower room.
Parker had set up on the far side of the table, her field reports arranged with the particular precision of someone who’d spent years keeping evidence in order that could be destroyed at any moment. Across from her sat Aldric of the Vienna delegation—one of three clan representatives who’d arrived two weeks ago claiming neutrality and staying to prove it.
Ember sat on the windowsill, his flames steady. He’d stopped reacting to Aldric several days ago. I was still working on that myself.
The signature shift here. Aldric moved his finger along the corrupted wellspring map. His voice was precise, accented. This is the master’s mark.
How many sites show this pattern? Parker asked.
Seven confirmed. Possibly more. Aldric pulled up a secondary report.
These aren’t just sites, I said. They’re anchor points—feeding the wellsprings. That’s why Vienna didn’t hold.
Aldric nodded. We have access to areas your guard cannot reach without drawing attention. The master’s forces know your signatures.
And they don’t know yours, Parker said.
They know us. Something complicated moved through his expression. They know we refused to join the master’s expanded network. That creates its own risks.
When did you know? I asked. That it wasn’t just a war.
Aldric looked at me directly for the first time since we’d sat down, measuring.
Three years ago, he said. My sire uncovered financial transfers—council payments to clans conducting specific attacks, targets that served political purposes, not territorial ones. He paused. We believed we were fighting a real war until then. The attacks on witch settlements—we thought those were extremists, fringe elements we couldn’t control. We didn’t know they were contracted.
The weight of that sat in the room for a moment. Three years of knowing, carrying it, deciding what to do with it while the war continued around them.
Levon knew longer, Parker said, her voice neutral.
Yes. Aldric’s expression shifted—careful, acknowledging. Levon’s position gave him visibility we didn’t have. He was witness to things most of us never saw. He paused. He’s the reason my sire started looking. Some of what he documented found its way to us through channels I won’t name. Enough to make us ask questions we couldn’t unask.
