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He didn't identify the Sorcery. I was pretty sure all his decades of training refused to let him make a definitive diagnosis without absolute proof, but his expression said the memory tasted like poison.

“Keevandrie was down there,” Knox continued, his voice dropping into a low, steady rumble. “I saw her standing near the lower bulkheads twelve hours before the rig blew. I didn't know her name then; I just knew she was powerful, ancient, and carrying a Magical signature that absolutely did not belong on a commercial rig in the middle of the ocean.” He stopped and looked at me, then added, “But she knew me.”

Guy leaned forward, his hands flat on the table. “I thought you were undercover. Nobody on that rig was supposed to know the Rangers or Dragon Guard were there.”

“No one else did,” Knox ground out. “But the second Keevandrie looked at me through the steam, she didn't call me a Ranger. She looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Good evening, Guardsman.’”

The revelation dropped like a stone. It meant Knox might not have been collateral damage. He hadn't been unlucky enough to be caught in a sudden supernatural industrial accident. Somebody had known exactly who they were dealing with. Whatever happened on that rig, Knox hadn't simply been unlucky enough to stand in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I leaned back in my chair, my eyes going from Knox to Guy to Bernie and back again, tracking the three Supernaturals around me. The intensity in their eyes said they were all thinking like elite soldiers, analyzing tactical errors, security breaches, and historical timelines. I, however, thought like a bartender who spent her nights reading people across a sticky counter.

“If she knew exactly who you were, why didn't she just kill you?” I asked, my voice crisp and clear.

An abrupt, heavy silence slammed down like a drawbridge with no operator. Knox froze, his fingers tightening around his mug until the ceramic groaned. Guy and Bernie exchanged a sharp, unsettled look.

“I don't know,” Knox said quietly.

I let out a short, incredulous breath. “Bullshit.”

Knox’s head snapped up, his gorgeous hazel eyes attempting to pin me to my chair. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I said, lifting my chin, completely unintimidated by the lethal energy radiating from him. “You have a theory, Dead Guy. You’ve had a hundred years to chew on it in the dark. You just don't like the answer.”

Knox stared at me. I knew he was trying to intimidate me, and I thought about laughing, but figured that would piss them all off. So, I sat and stared just like he was.

The silence stretched until it was thin, painful, and pretty much worthless. Slowly, the rigid, clinical mask slipped from Knox’s features, revealing the raw, bleeding edge of the truth he had kept buried. “I don't think she wanted me dead,” he admitted, the words raspy. “I think the goal was always to throw me into Hell.”

A cold chill skittered down my spine. The sheer malice of the implication turned the coffee sour in my mouth.

“Twelve hours later, the explosion happened,” Knox said.

His sentences turned clipped, short, and clinical. He sounded like a man reading a police report about a stranger’s murder. “I was moving toward the source of the hidden Magic near the core. Sully was screaming inside my head. The energy was overloading. The containment Wards suddenly flared a deep, violent crimson. Keevandrie stood on the upper catwalk. She raised her hands, spoke a dialect I couldn't track, and then… Flash! The floor disappeared. The structural steel shattered like glass. And the abyss opened directly beneath my boots. I fell. Sully tried everything but couldn’t stop me.

And I didn't stop falling until I hit the trenches of Greed.”

I watched him finish the story. His face was entirely empty. His breathing was perfectly controlled. However, propped on his right knee, his hand was clenched so tightly that his knuckles were stark white. I was sure the skin would burst under the strain.

He was treating the worst moment of his existence like a routine traffic stop. I’m pretty sure it was the only way to keep from shattering.

I didn't make a production out of it. I didn't offer a dramatic speech or launch into gooey, romantic declarations.

That was so not me.

Instead, I slowly slid my hand across the table and dropped it to his knee, stopping just an inch away from his white-knuckled fist. I didn't touch the Hellmarked skin of his forearm. I just left my fingers resting on his denim-covered thigh, offering an open door.

Knox looked down at my charcoal-stained hand. He stared at it for a long, quiet heartbeat. Then, slowly and deliberately, he turned his massive hand over. It took everything in me not to react when his calloused fingers slid beneath mine, letting our palms touch in a quiet, steady weight.

Inside my mind, Neysa, for once in her life, kept her mouth completely shut, letting the quiet warmth of the connection settle between us.

Bernie cleared her throat, pulling a clean pad of grid paper and a pencil from a nearby drawer. She slid them across the table toward Knox. “The containment Wards on the rig, Knox. What did they look like? What was the physical architecture of the Magic etched into the steel?”

Knox reluctantly released my hand and picked up the pencil. His movements were precise as he sketched from memory. He drew the thick support structures of the lower deck plating, mapping the intricate geometric patterns he had said he thought were industrial identification markings until his Dragon King recognized the hidden frequency.

As the lines took shape on the paper, Bernie leaned forward, her bright green eyes tracking every stroke. Suddenly, her entire posture went completely rigid. She went so still she looked like a corpse.

I leaned over the table, my eyes darting from the sketch to the Necromancer’s face. “Yeah, see…” I pointed. “That’s never a good face. That’s the face people make right before a building explodes.”

“No,” Bernie said, her voice dropping into a quiet, deeply unsettled register. “It really isn't.”