A cage dressed up as a sanctuary.
I spread the newspaper across the low table, studying the printed faces of my fellow Venatori. Calder Grimm stared back with empty eyes that held neither hope nor fear, just the flat acceptance of someone who’s already lost most everything that mattered. He was now the last of his kind, bound to impotently witness whatever came next. Lucette Varrow’s official portrait showed her in Nexus uniform, looking nothing like the grief-sharpened blade she’d become. Pip Willowbend had refused to sit still for her photograph after the Mortalis, resulting in a blur of jewelry and wings that somehow captured her restless energy perfectly.
And then there was the striking face of Syneca Black.
My eyes kept returning to her despite every intention of studying everyone equally. The photographer had caught her mid-expression, something between defiance and bone-deep exhaustion. Her copper hair fell in loose curls around pale skin dusted with freckles that didn’t quite show by candlelight. Blue eyes looked directly at the camera without flinching, without performing the fear most witches wore. The paper didn’t show the colors, but I knew them perfectly.
She was not beautiful in the conventional sense. But arresting in the way she demanded attention, making one wonder what thoughts moved behind those stunning eyes.
The Rune Weaver Who Volunteered,read the caption beneath her image, before changing toBrave or Foolish?
Neither, I thought. Desperate. Reckless. Protecting something.
The truth stone had confirmed Syneca didn’t know where Vitoria Nindle was hiding, that she’d genuinely cared about who she’d thought the Phoenix was. But it had also revealed something else in the way her pulse jumped when our fingers touched, the way her breath caught when I leaned close in that bookshop aisle.
She wasn’t as immune to me as she pretended.
AndIwasn’t as detached as I needed to be.
I folded the newspaper and stood. Conditioning called, the routine my father had drilled into me since I was old enough to hold a blade. Train the body, quiet the mind, eliminate weakness in all its forms.
The kennels sat in the lowest level of Chancellery House, where the stone walls grew slick and damp, and the air carried the musk of predators kept on short leashes. My beast waited in its reinforced cell, a cinderhowl my father had gifted me on my fifteenth birthday. Timber was one of the beasts pulled from the Ash, broken and bound to my control through hunter magic and intense training.
I fed him raw meat through the bars, watching yellow eyes track my every movement with a hunger that never quite disappeared.
“Easy, Timber,” I murmured, not because the beast understood comfort, but because our routine required it.
The colossal wolf-like beast, known for taking down a lycan if they weren’t careful, killed three handlers before he came to me, and so my father had presented him as a kind of test: master the horned black beast or become its meal. I’d learned quickly that dominance wasn’t about strength. It was about consistency. Inevitability. Being exactly what was expected, every single time.
Just like everything else in my life.
I left Timber behind, though I could feel his dangerous eyes locked on my every step. I was the only exception to his ferocity.
The training yard stood empty at this early hour, which suited me perfectly. I moved through combat forms with ease, with blade work that had been drilled into muscle memory until thought became unnecessary. Strike, parry, advance, retreat. The dance of violence was made elegant through repetition, not through the activation of the runes tied around my neck on a leather cord.
My father’s voice echoed in my head with each movement.Faster. Harder. Again. You’re not good enough yet.
I’d never been good enough. Not when I’d brought home my first kill at eight. Not when I’d earned the title Ripper at nineteen. Not once, not even when I’d exceeded every metric used to test me.
Because being good enough would mean the training could stop. And my father had no use for a weapon that wasn’t constantly sharpening itself. Sweat soaked me by the time I finished; my muscles burned with familiar exhaustion, exactly the kind that should have quieted the restlessness crawling under my skin.
It didn’t.
I kept seeing copper hair and freckled skin. Kept hearing that sharp wit wrapped around grief. Kept wondering what it meant that a witch who infuriated me also made me wonder about what came next.
A sprite found me as I climbed the stairs back toward the residential floors, still damp from washing off training sweat in the yard’s cold water basin.
“Message for the Ripper,” he squeaked, hovering at eye level with wings beating frantically. Silver and black uniform marked him as one of my father’s personal couriers. “The Magistraterequests the immediate presence of all the Venatori in his office.”
Requests. As if any summons from Tiberius Veyne came with the option to decline.
“Acknowledged.”
The sprite zipped away before I could ask what had prompted the summons. I took the stairs two at a time, already shuffling through possibilities. Had the hunters I sent reported to him instead of me? Had another body appeared? Had someone made a move against the Magistrate?
Unsurprisingly, I found the Heartless One lingering in Syneca Black’s room, though her familiar, who was undoubtedly bound to her, was nowhere to be found. Unsure if they’d just spent the night together, I allowed myself seconds to scan the room for signs. The bed was a mess of twisted blankets, but only one pillow had the imprint of a head there.
“The Magistrate summoned the Venatori. We’re to report to his office immediately.”
