"It would be in your best interest to hand them the case before they seek one out," Mr. Lucius said, his fork clicking daintily against porcelain.
I stood.
Beside me, Heiwa's hand hovered over her hilt—no hesitation, no drama. What I had made manifest did not stand still. The Erinyes shivered, vibrating in place like hounds held back by wire. They weren't looking at the room.
They were looking through it.
Searching for the scent of a lie.
"The thirty pieces of silver are the evidence of an unresolved trial," I began. My voice felt small against the hiss of serpents. "They are required for a just conclusion."
Their weeping eyes turned toward me. The air thickened, heavy with the smell of old copper and wet earth.
"Find the thirty pieces," I said, forcing my feet to stay planted. "Tisiphone—find the silver linked to blood. Alecto. Megaera. I request your aid in bringing this case to its proper end."
I wasn't sure I was naming them correctly.
I wasn't sure naming them mattered.
The snakes screamed.
Without warning, three vast, soot-black wings snapped open. The floor-to-ceiling window didn't crack—it detonated, glass exploding outward as the Erinyes lunged into the sky. The study was left freezing, reeking of ash and judgment.
"Goodness," I gasped, turning instinctively to apologize.
"You are aware," Mr. Lucius said calmly, lifting his tea as Ezra began sweeping glass from the floor, "that they will execute anyone found with the coins?"
I froze.
"To the Furies," he continued, "possession is confession."
My blood turned to ice.
I had overlooked the most basic law of the myth.
Vengeance does not negotiate.
Before I could speak, Heiwa scooped me up in one motion. "No time," she grunted, already moving. She leapt through the shattered frame, landing soundlessly on the grass below.
"How are we going to find them?" I shouted as she broke into a run. The Furies were already black slashes against the sun, moving with terrifying, frictionless speed.
"I am tracking the scent of the snakes," Heiwa replied. Her pace never faltered.
As the landscape surged beneath us—trees blurring, streets unfolding like torn paper—a stray thought surfaced, unbidden.
Am I heavy?
I felt like a leaf carried by a storm I had started.
We reached the city square. The ground was bruised—clay-veined, weeping. The Erinyes were gathered around an old stone well. Alecto emerged from its depths, stagnant water dripping from her wings, a silver coin clenched in her grey, clawed hand.
"They found one," I breathed. Hope sparked, fragile and foolish. "Maybe… maybe it will be fine."
"We follow," Heiwa said flatly.
They moved like a plague.
At a clay-choked shrine, Megaera reached into an offering box, her wings knocking over sacred statuary without so much as a glance. I wondered—briefly—if this counted as sacrilege.
Then I remembered.
The Old Law outranks the local gods.
"Next time, warn me before you release dogs like these," Heiwa whispered as she ran.
They drifted through the walls of a communal housing block, emerging from a private residence with another coin taken from a family's savings box. The home was left in ruins—furniture overturned, doors torn from hinges, as though a localized storm had passed through.
"They did not hunt alike," I thought as we carried on.
Then the horror sharpened.
In a district drowned in mud, the Erinyes didn't merely find a coin.
They pulled a woman from the sludge.
She was alive—gasping, shaking—her fingers clenched around a silver piece she had likely found in the debris.
Tisiphone didn't hesitate.
She didn't ask how the woman came by it.
She simply tore the silver from her grasp with enough force to snap bone.
The woman fell back into the mud, hollow-eyed, silent.
I couldn't move.
The "audit" was no longer theoretical.
I hadn't asked them to investigate. I had asked them to prosecute.
The sun hung low now, light barely touching the ground. The mud's activity slowed, as if even it were recoiling from what it had unleashed.
The hunt continued—a manor bedroom, a restaurant, a tailor's shop. Each retrieval left behind shattered glass, overturned lives.
We were nearing the edge of the district when the sound came.
Not a hiss.
Not the thunder of wings.
A human scream—raw, jagged, and filled with the sudden understanding that mercy was no longer part of the equation.