The garden had been quiet for hours when the shadow moved.
He'd been crouched behind the carved lattice of the outer pergola since before dawn, hidden beneath thorny vines and the lingering scent of damp roses. The position was perfect, well, not perfect. One particularly vicious thorn kept digging into his left thigh no matter how he shifted, and his right knee had started that warning ache an hour ago that meant he'd be limping later. His bladder had started complaining around the second hour. Now it was outright screaming. But close enough to monitor the duchess's chambers. Far enough from the guard patrols that had been doubled since last night's break-in.
The manor was still on edge. Servants whispered about "phantom flames" and impossible magic. Guards jumped at shadows, searching for an intruder who'd vanished like smoke after obliterating the archive's ancient wards.
They had no idea. Their own duchess. The most audacious theft in House Vessant's history and they were looking for ghosts.
The spy's muscles screamed in protest. Sweat had soaked through his shirt hours ago and now itched everywhere he couldn't scratch. His stomach chose that moment to growl, loud enough that he froze, listening for any sign someone heard. Nothing. His training held, barely, but gods, what he wouldn't give to stand, crack his spine, maybe take a piss behind one of those rose bushes. He'd infiltrated dozens of noble houses, learned to read the rhythm of their secrets. But House Vessant was different. Darker. The very stones seem to pulse with old magic and older sins, or maybe that was just his imagination running wild after too many hours without sleep.
Through the diamond-paned windows of the duchess's chambers, he'd watched Evelyne emerge from her morning visit. Predatory satisfaction radiating from every step. Whatever had transpired behind that door had left her practically glowing with triumph.
A sparrow landed on the lattice above him. He froze. The damn bird cocked its head, studying him with one beady eye like it knew exactly what he was doing there. His heart hammered. One chirp, one flutter, and a guard might glance this way. His nose itched. Of all the goddamn times. The bird hopped twice. Relieved itself on the vine. Flew off.
He exhaled slowly, barely resisted the urge to sneeze from the roses, tapped the rune crystal embedded in his glove once. The recording from dawn, every moment of Alaric and Evelyne's encounter, was secured. The crystal had captured it all through the servant's passage he'd infiltrated before sunrise. Their passionate coupling. Their post-coital planning. Their casual discussion of destroying Seraphina. Words like "leverage," "Cordelia," and "break her down" didn't need much context when paired with who was saying them.
The tea party wasn't social. It was an execution.
But it was what he'd witnessed the night before that would change everything.
He'd been positioned to observe the west wing when movement caught his eye. A cloaked figure slipping through the corridors with deadly purpose. At first he'd assumed it was another spy. Maybe from House Malenthra or one of the minor lords circling for advantage. The figure moved like someone who knew exactly where the guards would be. Exactly which shadows would hide her.
Then moonlight caught her face.
The duchess.
The woman everyone dismissed as powerless. Walking through her husband's manor like she owned every stone. She'd navigated the guard rotations with surgical precision. Avoiding patrols he'd spent weeks mapping. Either she'd been planning this for months or someone had been feeding her intelligence.
At the archive door, seven killing wards flared awake. Burning lines crawling over the wood like veins lit with fire. The first one lashed out, blue, sudden, ugly, and caught her hand. He jerked, almost cried out. Expected her to run. Any sane person would have bolted.
She didn't. She went at them like a butcher carving meat.
He'd seen combat mages work, robes, chants, flourishes. What she did was nothing like that. She broke them one by one, clumsy, almost. Too fast in some places, too slow in others. Twice she hesitated like she'd forgotten the next step, then forced it anyway. Somehow it worked. Somehow it always worked.
He tried to count again: fire, lightning, acid, blades, was that five already? Or four? He lost it halfway when his bladder stabbed so sharp his vision blurred. Gods, he had to piss. Maybe poison was next, or rot, or… hell, he couldn't even think straight. His stomach growled on top of it, loud and stupid. Wrong sound, wrong time. He clutched himself like that would shut it all up.
Where the hell had she learned this? The duchess was supposed to be barely able to spark a candle. That's what the court said. That's what he'd believed. And yet here she was, dismantling wards that had guarded House Vessant for three centuries.
Hours later she staggered out clutching papers. The thorn in his thigh chose that moment to dig deeper. He shifted, lost his view for three seconds. When he looked back the wards were already rebuilding themselves, stronger than before, blazing so bright his teeth hurt. It felt wrong. Like watching a body grow a new set of bones right in front of him. She should have been ash. Gone.
She wasn't.
What happened next, heat and light and something cracking, he couldn't separate which came first.
Fire spilled from her hands, no, not fire. Something uglier, hotter, crawling out of itself. He blinked, swore he saw silver. Blinked again, gold. Or piss-yellow. His eyes watered too much to tell. His nose ran; he wiped it with his sleeve, left a smear of snot he didn't bother checking. The smell hit him next, burnt sugar? No, meat. No, shit, worse than that. He gagged, almost puked, elbowed the lattice so hard his arm went numb. Useless noise, useless timing.
Flames moving like living things. Or worms. Ugly thought. He shoved it aside.
The wards cracked, or split, or shattered. He heard glass breaking but that didn't make sense. There was no glass. Unless the sound was in his skull.
He pressed himself flat against the lattice, heart pounding so loud it felt like a drum. This wasn't normal magic. This wasn't anything.
Soulfire. The word jumped into his head. Or maybe he made it up, desperate for a name. He'd heard whispers once, drunk mages muttering about fusing channels that killed nine out of ten who tried. A campfire story, he'd thought. Not real.
And yet here it was, crawling over her skin, lighting the halls, rewriting everything he thought he knew.
She'd made it back to her chambers somehow. Arms seared by phantom flames but alive. More than alive, transformed. Even from his distant vantage point he could see the change in how she moved. Not the careful steps of a trapped duchess but something else. Purposeful. Like someone who'd just made her own rules out of the ashes.
The guards found nothing but scorch marks and the lingering scent of impossible magic. They had no idea. Their own duchess had just survived what should have killed her twice over. Then used it to steal their deepest secrets.
Now, watching Evelyne emerge from those same chambers with that familiar predatory smile, he understood the pattern taking shape. Or thought he did.
Last night's break-in had shaken the manor to its foundations. This morning Evelyne had spent hours with Alaric, he'd recorded their intimate planning session through the servant passages that honeycombed these old walls. Then she'd visited the duchess. And whatever had transpired behind that door had left Evelyne radiating the particular satisfaction of someone who'd just tightened a noose.
The pieces fit together. Almost too neatly. Coordination, timing, and that smile of someone who believed she was moving all the pieces on the board. But Evelyne hadn't seen what he'd seen. She had no idea that her prey had fangs.
She passed beneath his vantage point. Headed toward the main courtyard where her carriage waited. Her step was light, confident. Two hours to prepare herself and coordinate the final details before the gathering. Whatever game was being played, Evelyne clearly believed she was winning.
He stayed frozen until she disappeared around the colonnade. Counting her footsteps until silence reclaimed the garden. His knee popped. Gods damn it. Popped again. He winced, certain the sound had echoed across the entire courtyard. No one came running. Thank the gods for small mercies.
Through Seraphina's window he caught a sliver of movement. He'd been about to risk it. Sneak behind the rose bushes for thirty seconds of relief. But then she moved and he froze. The duchess leaning against her door, exhaling hard. Even from this distance he could see the tension in her shoulders. The way she clutched her left arm to her ribs. The same arm that had channeled impossible fire hours before.
She didn't look broken. She didn't look defeated.
She looked dangerous. Or maybe desperate. Hard to tell from here. Harder to admit he almost…
The spy slipped away through the hedge maze. Finally able to stretch his protesting muscles. Using routes he'd mapped during weeks of surveillance. His bladder was still screaming at him but he'd have to wait until he was clear of the grounds. His assignment had been clear: infiltrate House Vessant, watch for vulnerabilities, gather intelligence on their internal dynamics. The duchess was supposed to be a footnote, the tragic young wife with no power, no allies, no threat to anyone who mattered.
Except she'd just infiltrated the most heavily warded section of the manor. Survived magical forces that should have obliterated her. And emerged with something valuable enough to risk execution for. The timid girl who'd married into House Vessant eighteen months ago wouldn't have dared breathe wrong in their presence.
This woman had stolen their secrets and lived to plan her next move.
He'd underestimated her. Everyone had. Not prey anymore. More like a wolf gnawing inside their walls.
The spy reached the outer grounds as the sun climbed toward noon. Casting long shadows across manicured lawns that hid darker truths. He paused at the estate wall, looking back at the manor's imposing silhouette. In two hours the garden party would commence. From what he'd recorded of Alaric and Evelyne's conversation, Cordelia would be there. Along with a carefully selected journalist. Seraphina would attend, as expected of a duchess.
But something told him the duchess had her own plans.
He scaled the wall and disappeared into the forest beyond. Carrying news that would shatter assumptions and reshape alliances.
The report reached the quiet estate by Riverbar before the church bells chimed the hour. The spy passed the glyph wards without triggering them. Nodded to guards who knew better than to ask questions. And slipped past the hawk-eyed steward who'd served the family for three decades. The old bastard was coughing into his handkerchief again. That wet rattle that never quite went away.
The cough reminded him of, he cut the thought off. Irrelevant.
In the study, his master waited behind the heavy mahogany desk. Sitting straight but relaxed. Head bowed over correspondence. The room was shadowed, silent save for the tick of the mechanical clock on the mantel. And that cough echoing down the hall.
The spy's boot squeaked as he moved forward. He winced. His master didn't look up. He dropped to one knee, stumbled slightly as exhaustion caught up with him, and his sleeve caught the edge of the inkwell on the desk corner. Smeared black across his cuff. Damn. He placed the sealed crystal and parchment envelope on the desk with practiced reverence. Trying to ignore the fresh stain. The crystal pulsed once with captured magic. Hours of surveillance compressed into something his master could review at leisure.
"Report complete, my lord. High-value intelligence on House Vessant's... internal dynamics." He paused, choosing his words with the care of someone who'd learned that imprecision could be fatal. His tongue felt thick. Too many hours without water. "And the duchess..." Another pause, longer this time. "The duchess just became… "
Wrong word.
"Not prey anymore, my lord." He swallowed. "A threat."
There was a long silence. The master's fingers, which had been tracing idle patterns on the letter, stilled completely. A drop of ink had blotted the corner of whatever he'd been writing. The very air seemed to hold its breath.
For one heartbeat, he thought of her as prey. Then he realized the word no longer fit.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he lifted his head.
Duke Caelan Vorenthal met the spy's gaze, and smiled. It was the expression of a chess master who'd just realized his opponent had been hiding their true skill all along. Or maybe not a chess master. Maybe just someone who'd finally found the right piece to play.
"Not prey…" His fingers drummed, stopped. "Not queen either. Something else. No. Wrong. Wrong again." He reached for the quill, knocked it clean off the desk. It hit the floor with a wet blotch. Ink splattered his cuff, black line up his wrist. He didn't notice. Or maybe he did and didn't care. "She's… " The word caught, throat rasping dry. He coughed once, ugly like the steward down the hall, and the rest never came out. Only a thin, late smile.
He reached for the crystal with fingers that betrayed no urgency. Though his mind was already racing ahead to possibilities and probabilities. The tea party was in two hours. Plenty of time to study the footage and decide how best to exploit this new queen on the board.
Or maybe join her side of it.
For the first time in months, Caelan almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat. Came out more like the steward's cough than anything that resembled amusement. He cleared his throat. Tried again.
Nothing came out.
He reached for the crystal instead.