“She has something to hide. When desperation forces her secrets to surface, you’ll report back. Use whatever methods necessary.”
He returned to his ledger, dismissal clear in every line of his body.
I moved toward the door, hand already reaching for the handle.
“Your mother asked about you.”
I froze.
“Wanted to know if you’d grown strong.” His voice remained conversational, never looking up from his papers. “I told her you had. Don’t make a liar of me by showing weakness for witches.”
My hand tightened on the door handle until my knuckles went white. Thirty-four years of training kept my voice level. “Yes, sir.”
I exited into the corridor where the other Venatori waited. Straightening my spine, I walked past without acknowledgment, but my mind kept circling back to red hair in firelight, and to the kind of strength that chose principle over safety.
I imagined my mother had that kind of strength once.
Before my father broke it.
We walked back to Chancellery House as a group, and Lucette finally broke the silence halfway across the compound yard. “We’re bound to kill Vitoria Nindle.” She used the full name deliberately, I noticed. Not ’the Phoenix.’ Humanizing the target. Smart. It’d be foolish to make that connection seconds before the kill. “Or we die. That’s the only thing that matters now.”
“The book was planted, wasn’t it?” Pip asked suddenly. “We would have seen it last night. Why didn’t you say something?”
Lucette’s smile was thin. “To what purpose? The Magistrate already knew he was lying. So did his hunters. Who would I have been trying to convince?” She paused. “Tiberius Veyne is trying to control the outcome of this mission—frame Vitoria as comprehensively as possible.”
“He’s not framing her,” I hissed. “He’s reinforcing a case that has already closed. There’s a difference.”
Lucette turned to study me. “By manufacturing evidence?”
I didn’t answer.
She moved to Syneca’s side then, her voice dropping but still audible to the rest of us. “I no longer trust your Magistrate’s motives. My life depends on finding Vitoria Nindle. That’s all that matters here. It’s not about guilt. It’s about survival.”
“Agreed,” Pip said immediately, swooping toward Syneca’s shoulder.
They both looked at me. Waiting.
I said nothing. I never moved against my greater cause. That was my constant.
As we reached the third floor in Chancellery House and began breaking off toward our assigned rooms, Syneca paused at her door, looking back at me with those sharp blue eyes. “Enjoy watching my door, hunter. I’m sure that’s why daddy put you there.”
The barb landed precisely where she aimed. But what unsettled me more was the realization that Iwouldbe watching, and not entirely for the reasons my father assumed.
Her door closed with a soft click.
I stood in the empty hallway for a long moment. Everything about this hunt felt wrong. The convenient evidence. The theatrical condemnation. My father’s eager cruelty. And the planted journal no intelligent criminal would keep? He was getting carried away trying to prove a point.
I entered my room, methodically checking for surveillance. Found three new listening runes, as expected. One behind the headboard, one beneath the desk, one embedded in the window frame. I left them in place. Removing them would only imply I had something to hide.
I settled by the window where I could maintain watch of the grounds below. The courtyard. The Arch. The path that led into the heart of Grimora.
It didn’t matter which direction my father steered us. It didn’t even matter which direction we chose to go. The onlything that mattered at the end of this was the Phoenix’s blood. Twenty-nine days from now, there could be only one grave.
Chapter 22
Syneca
Don’t touch a book that falls open on its own, the words inside will try to keep you.
