The woman watched from farther down the dimly lit stone corridor as the young girl tentatively emerged from her now unlocked chamber.

  She watched the child peek her head out, looking one way, then the other. Her empty golden eyes passed over the woman and kept moving, the girl unable to perceive her presence. Her obvious caution as she hesitantly stepped fully out into the corridor was admirable. Still, it was the wind barrier the girl—Lecia, the woman remembered—had cast that truly impressed the woman.

  It was a simple sigaldric incantation, but one that most Novitiate Mages, many years her senior, might struggle to get right. Not to mention it was a flawless cast, using only the minimum amount of internal aether to maintain itself and allowing the ambient aether to do the rest.

  Just who had trained this girl?

  Surely she hadn't learned to cast such an incantation all on her own; there was no way given her upbringing in Darkreach. Felicio Threvin wasn't responsible. Of that, the woman was quite certain. Lecia hadn't been in that wretched estate even a full night before she was deemed a worthless investment and tossed aside to be another victim of that man's research like all the rest of these poor children.

  The vile man was as blind as he was arrogant.

  He hadn't even bothered to examine the girl's aethercore, or if he had, he hadn't done so properly. It was faint, but a thorough examination would have picked up traces of something that didn't belong anywhere near an aethercore. What that "something" was, the woman couldn't say for certain, but it was strange, alien, and ancient.

  It was almost a sentient presence—extremely easy to miss even for a Mage on the level of a Magister like Threvin, but it was there. Threvin could have caught it had he been more attentive, but Lecia was simply too far beneath his notice. All she'd been was a potential lead regarding whatever the man was trying to find in Darkreach. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Mirabel was not such a shallow, careless sort.

  The woman had seen Lecia for what she was—an anomaly. An enigma of a child dropped into her lap right on the night she was planning to finally make her move. Mirabel wouldn't have called it providence—she didn't believe in such a thing—but it was a damn odd coincidence to be sure.

  She could've ignored the girl, left her to the same fate as all the rest of the children Threvin had stolen from the Beggar's Quarter. Maybe she should've. This Lecia was a factor that would almost certainly complicate her prior plans. At least, that's what Mirabel thought at first.

  The plan had been simple.

  Dig up information on Threvin's financial backers. Follow the parchment trail of his expenses to discover, at the very least, his hidden assets and resources if not his motives. Determine the veracity of the rumor surrounding his underground research facility. Once verified, determine the location of said facility's entrance. Infiltrate the estate, sneak into the facility, and gather as much incriminating evidence of Threvin's illicit dealings as possible.

  ...Alright, so it wasn't that simple a plan, but it was fairly straightforward when you got right down to it. The important thing was that Mirabel, with some minor help from the Guild, had accomplished most of her tasks. Some of it was luck. Most of it was skill and experience. Either way, she was on track to complete all of her objectives... when she arrived.

  Mirabel, beyond possessing finely honed aetheric senses, also possessed a nigh supernatural intuition for sniffing out salience where there should, by any metric, be none. The former earned her much prestige back in her Academy days, but it was the latter that got her where she is today. It's what made her so damned good at her job. It's what made her an elite member within the Guild, even at her relatively young age.

  It was that intuition that had Mirabel fixating on Lecia the moment she laid eyes on the girl.

  In truth, both the girls had piqued Mirabel's interest. Threvin's daughter was nothing to write home about in terms of her magickal capability, but Mirabel could feel it. Fate swirled around that child like a raging tide, though the woman couldn't tell if it was ill or blessed. Lecia was the same, but she had the added benefit of housing something very, very interesting magickally speaking.

  And once again, Mirabel's instincts hadn't led her astray.

  From her quiet, cautious demeanor to her brilliant yet hollow golden eyes to her strange aethercore, Lecia was the most delicious kind of anomaly—a fascinating puzzle Mirabel refused to let go to waste in a horrendous place like this. It was to that end that the woman chose to intervene despite the risks.

  It helped that she'd been the one to take the girl to her bedchambers in the estate. From there, all she had to do was wait for one of Threvin's trusted cronies to steal her away and follow after them. Once she'd found the secret entrance and witnessed the process to unseal the door, she'd crept right in.

  Sure, she could've taken out the man, saved Lecia, and whisked them both away to safety in a matter of minutes, but where would have been the fun in that? Besides, she had her primary mission to complete first and foremost, no matter how badly she wanted to just take the girl and escape this gilded nightmare.

  It had taken her some time—longer than she would've liked—but once she was in position, it was a simple matter to slip into the girl's prison unnoticed, disable the strength-sapping array, and free her from her restraints. Of course, it wouldn't do to just carry her off to safety without having her reveal her secrets first. It'd been clear from the Magister's farce of a dinner that Lecia was hiding something, and her imprisonment was the perfect opportunity to find out what.

  And Mirabel hadn't been disappointed.

  After escaping the room and re-locking the door behind her, Mirabel had watched the girl, studying her reaction to her situation closely. Lecia was meticulous, pragmatic, decisive, determined, and prudent. All fantastic qualities, and yet... she was also rather naive in some ways.

  Just from basic observation, Mirabel could tell the child was an intelligent sort, but Mirabel had seen intelligent children before. They were smart, but they all had the same flaw: a lack of wisdom and experience. Lecia, unfortunately, was no exception. For one, the girl never stopped to consider whether or not someone might've been watching her through magickal means.

  Mirabel herself had, in fact, used a scrying incantation to watch her through the stone walls from a fair distance—far enough that the girl wouldn't sense it, but close enough to act if need be. Even if one of the "research assistants" forwent magickal observation and just peeked in through the glass partition, they would've realized something was wrong when they saw the empty cot or the lack of restraints.

  They would've come charging right in, and things would've turned grim, that is, had Mirabel not taken pains to make sure that didn't happen. Nowhere was this childish oversight more obvious than when, much to Mirabel's silent shock, the girl manifested a grimoire. An elegant black and silver tome pulled right out of her core.

  From where Mirabel was positioned, she hadn't been able to get a look at its contents, but just the fact that she not only had a grimoire but had also bound it to her aethercore at such a young age, with presumably no training, funds, or patron, was absurd. Mirabel couldn't even begin to guess where or how the child had gotten her tiny hands on the thing, but one thing was for certain.

  Had Lecia been more cognizant of a potential observer, she doubtless would've kept the book hidden away. The woman shuddered to think of what Threvin might do if he'd known the girl possessed such a thing at her age and with her background. It also explained the strange fluctuation in her core, but only partially.

  There was still a wrongness about her core that couldn't entirely be dismissed by the fact that she had a grimoire.

  Whatever the case, the development had only cemented Mirabel's decision to aid the girl. This was why, when she saw that Lecia was resolving herself to cast some kind of incantation from the book, she interfered by unlocking the door. The woman desperately wanted to see what kind of spell the girl would try to cast, but the circumstances made the action inadvisable.

  That was the other consideration that remained unaccounted for by Lecia. Mirabel could tell by the increasingly violent oscillations in her internal aether that the girl was preparing an incantation that was far, far beyond her skill level. Never mind that the result would've caught the attention of every Mage in the vicinity and likely even Threvin himself. The moment the incantation activated, it would've drained the child dry of her vitality in an instant.

  As Mirabel had seen, the girl wasn't stupid. She'd seen Lecia hesitate. She'd seen her posture tense at the thought of casting such a dangerous incantation. And yet, the foolish girl had been prepared to cast it anyway, consequences be damned. It was madness. It was the juvenile arrogance of a child who thought she knew better and was ready to prove it.

  Mirabel loved it.

  It was then and there that Mirabel decided she had to have this child, no matter what.

  She would take this girl away from this place, kicking and screaming if she had to. She'd drag her back to the Guild and polish that little diamond of potential until it gleamed like the sun. Still, it wasn't enough. Not yet. Mirabel needed to see more. She needed to be sure it was worth the risk.

  So she stood back, hidden in shadow as she let the girl find her own way for the time being. All the while, the woman's mind ran rampant with all manner of plans and excuses she'd make to the Guild's higher-ups. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Mirabel had to push those thoughts to the back of her mind for now.

  Her precious little enigma was on the move.

  ***

  Lecia kept close to the hinge-side shadow and let her eyes adjust to the corridor’s dimness. Rune-lamps sat behind wire cages at measured intervals along the walls, casting a low amber light across stone, iron doors, and narrow strips of dark tile worn smooth by years of passage.

  The corridor curved gently in both directions, enough to break her line of sight after a short distance. Each door held either a frosted pane or a small iron grate, and a few had narrow plaques fixed beside them with neat lettering that Lecia couldn't read from where she stood.

  She stopped to listen for a moment, then chose the direction with fewer voices and moved in careful steps, placing each foot before shifting her weight. The wind barrier pressed faintly at the edge of her skin in a narrow bubble, and the strange ambient aether in the facility continued to brush against her senses with that same slightly rotten profile.

  The first room she dared look into stood partly open. Inside, a boy who looked a little older than her sat strapped upright to a wooden chair with his head shaved in uneven patches and a copper band fastened around his temples. Lecia had no words for the contraption and could only stare in silent, muted bewilderment.

  Thin wires ran from the band into a box of brass coils and humming crystal rods on a side table. A woman wearing a gray apron and a severe expression stood beside him with a ledger open in one hand, and every few seconds she would tap a sigil plate fixed to the arm of the chair.

  "Designation."

  Her voice was cold, curt, and clinical. There was a callousness that sent shivers down Lecia's spine. She wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement, but regardless, the boy answered in a flat, cracked voice each time.

  “Sss... s-sss... Sssubject... Oh-Five... Th-three... Blackbird... Unit... U-Unit... Unit Fffggghh...”

  The boy's voice trailed off into a gurgling croak, his body beginning to shake violently despite the restraints. The woman's grimace deepened into a frustrated scowl. She tapped another plate nearby and the boy's violent shaking settled down almost immediately, leaving him still as a corpse.

  The woman moved over to one side of the machine, shifting to a position that would give her a direct line of sight with Lecia. Realizing this almost too late, Lecia quickly pulled back from the doorway, her mind racing with questions. What had she just witnessed? She had no frame of reference for what she'd seen, nor could she even begin to understand the boy's response.

  What had they done to him?

  More distressingly, was that what would've happened to her if she'd remained in that room?

  A chill ran down Lecia's spine at the thought, but she pressed the unease and confusion down and kept moving. There was no time to hesitate, and ruminating on what could've been and what could still be if she were caught was useless. She continued down the corridor in silence for several more moments, thankful in some ways that the path was so straightforward.

  In others, it was a problem. Most of the doors she passed were like the one she'd escaped through: metal, with some kind of small viewing partition. The majority of them were also closed and likely locked if Lecia had to guess. She didn't dare test that assumption for fear of alerting whoever might be lurking inside the room.

  Sometimes it was an easy decision, as she heard the muffled sounds of voices from within. Men, women, children, sounds Lecia couldn't describe if she wanted to—none of the cacophony was pleasant or inviting.

  Eventually, she passed another room where the door stood ajar. From it, she heard sobbing, then a man’s impatient voice.

  “Again,” he said, followed by the sound of metal scraping against stone and a child gasping through clenched teeth.

  A faint surge of aether pressed through the door, focused low and inward. Lecia caught the odd fluctuation only in fragments, yet she understood enough to know the source was internal, coming from a distressed aethercore.

  Lecia hurried past that room and almost missed the next because its door stood open just wide enough to blend into the wall. She slowed after two more steps and glanced back, then edged toward the threshold with careful, silent footfalls. The room beyond looked less like a cell and more like some kind of preparation chamber.

  An iron-framed cot sat near the center beneath a hanging lamp fitted with a rune-glass hood. Along the walls stood narrow cabinets of dark wood, a washstand with a porcelain basin, and a pair of metal trays arranged with folded cloth, stoppered bottles, and instruments laid out in neat rows. A faint medicinal smell hung in the air beneath the sharper scent of oil and copper.

  Lecia lingered just inside the doorway and gave the room a quick, wary sweep. The space seemed clear of prying eyes, and as she wandered further into the chamber, Lecia considered whether the place would make a good hiding spot in a pinch. Her eyes eventually settled on a tall supply closet tucked into the far corner, its narrow door not quite latched.

  Perhaps, if the closet had enough space, it just might work as a spot to lie low if need be. Lecia crossed the room, hesitated, then pulled the closet door open just enough to peer inside. Unfortunately, the moment she applied force to the door, gravity took over and pushed her efforts aside as the door pressed open, seemingly on its own.

  Lecia stumbled back with a sharp intake of breath as something large and heavy pitched forward out of the closet. It crashed against her shoulder, nearly knocking her over, before the object fell to the floor at her feet with a muted thump. Caught off guard, it took Lecia a second to figure out what she was looking at, but it became clear soon enough.

  A body.

  Lecia stared down at the corpse, a man in white coveralls stained dark red down the front. He'd fallen backwards out of the closet, exposing a throat split ear-to-ear beneath glassy amber eyes frozen wide with shock and horror. The smell of blood and ordure was nearly overwhelming, and Lecia was surprised she hadn't caught the stench when she walked in.

  In fact, Lecia realized, she hadn't seen any evidence of an attack at all until she'd opened the supply closet. Looking around, there were no bloodstains, no sign of a struggle, and yet both the man and the closet he'd been stuffed into were drenched in his vital fluids. It was an odd situation and certainly one to make note of, but Lecia had bigger problems to worry about.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The corpse itself didn't shake her focus, surprising and confusing as it was. If anything, it brought a sense of familiarity to her circumstances. She'd seen plenty of bodies on the streets of Darkreach. She'd also been witness to plenty of murders in the alleyways, so this was nothing new. Nothing to be feared—at least, not on its own.

  The implications were another matter.

  Lecia wasted no time in making herself scarce, careful to step around the rapidly expanding crimson puddle around the body as she exited the room. Leaving the chamber behind without another glance, she continued down the corridor with increased urgency. As she traveled through the facility, the path began to grow more convoluted, with branching pathways, dead ends, and smaller side rooms with more adults in gray aprons and black gloves.

  In another room whose door stood open enough to see most of the interior at a glance, a girl smaller than Lecia lay strapped to the cot with a metal harness fixed over her chest and abdomen. Glass tubes rose from the harness into a hanging reservoir of pale fluid, and thin runic plates had been adhered to the girl's sternum in a tight circular pattern.

  The girl was awake and struggling, but her movements were weak and the restraints made her efforts futile. Her eyes darted wildly about until they landed on Lecia. For a brief instant, they locked eyes, and the girl's mouth worked soundlessly around a gag that had slipped half loose.

  A rather bulky man in the same white coveralls she'd seen the corpse in loomed over the girl, some kind of sharp silvery three-pronged tool in hand. He paused in whatever he'd been about to do as he noticed the girl's wild gaze. Lecia caught the briefest glimpse of the man's face as he began to look towards the room's entrance before she hurried away.

  A few moments later, she heard a loud metallic bang as a door slammed shut somewhere behind her. She didn't look back. Whatever that girl was going through, it wasn't her problem, and she couldn't do anything about it even if it were. It was the same for all the children here. Lecia could connect the dots well enough by this point. She remembered the rumors of missing children in Darkreach.

  It was clear she'd found where they were being taken and given that she found herself here after having been invited to her supposed new mentor's home, it was clear that the Magister had something—or maybe everything—to do with the disappearances and her imprisonment.

  That realization, in turn, led her to more conclusions.

  Lecia had been as vigilant as she possibly could be when talking to the Magister, and yet she still found herself tricked and detained. It wasn't hard to deduce that it had been because of how tired she'd been. But that wasn't quite right, was it? Now that Lecia thought about it, it was more than simple exhaustion from the day's events.

  She'd felt sluggish, her mind hazy in a way it had never been before when she was tired. It was... decidedly unnatural. Which meant the man had done something to her without her noticing, and Lecia didn't think it was magick. She hadn't sensed any aether moving internally or externally or any obvious runecraft at play. Ruling that out, her only other guess was that it had something to do with the food.

  That was it then.

  He'd done something to the food, and it made her weak and easy enough to capture.

  "Stupid..."

  It was such a stupid oversight, looking back, that Lecia couldn't help but berate herself. Then again, she'd had no reason to suspect foul play when it came to food. It had never betrayed her before now. Up until now, food meant survival. It gave her the strength to keep moving forward.

  She'd suffered for the sake of food before and had been taken advantage of because of it, but for food to be used against her in such an insidious way? The thought had never crossed her mind, and it was a lesson she wouldn't ever forget.

  Lecia briefly wondered if some of the kids here had been lured to this place the same way, but the thought was fleeting and quickly discarded. They weren't her problem, and she had concerns of her own to deal with—namely, escaping with her life.

  As she searched the facility for an exit, Lecia stumbled across more and more bodies. Adults who'd clearly been murdered and hidden away just like the first man she'd seen, but not just men and women. While it wasn't in the same manner, Lecia would also see the occasional corpse of children left to rot in their restraints.

  A few were left abandoned with terrible wounds that looked days old, but most Lecia could only tell were dead due to their unnaturally pale skin, corpse-like stillness, and, most prominently, the smell. Some tables and cots were empty with nothing but drying or dried bloodstains and other foul fluids to tell what might've happened.

  In one case, Lecia came across a very familiar individual—one she hadn't been expecting to find but was nonetheless unsurprised to see once she thought about it.

  The chamber held shelves from floor to ceiling. Glass jars of powders, folded bandages, crystal needles, brass calipers, and sealed boxes of rune plates. A heavy worktable occupied the center of the room, and laid out across it were several polished instruments Lecia couldn't name. Some had narrow claws or hooked ends, while others had round plates etched with sigils meant to sit flat against skin.

  Metal restraints lined the far wall in a neat row, visible from the room's entrance. As Lecia snuck by the room, fully prepared to ignore whatever was inside, she couldn't help but pause as something caught her eye. A thin man in an apron stood over the worktable with his back turned to the doorway, but behind him, Lecia could see that some of the metal restraints were occupied.

  Amidst the two boys and one girl, she saw that one of those boys hanging limp in his chains was the pudgy, greasy-haired, pig-like form of Derik. The large boy was pale, his beady, piggy eyes hazy and distant, but the occasional twitch told Lecia he was still alive, if barely.

  Lecia moved on.

  If Derik was here, that meant Orin and the rest of his ilk were here somewhere as well. The revelation wasn't comforting, but at the same time, Lecia couldn't bring herself to care overmuch about their plight either. The only thing that mattered to her was that if she ever managed to make it back to Darkreach, she'd have to do everything she could to avoid the black market and the slavers, specifically.

  And speaking of avoiding life-threatening trouble, Lecia had done well to stay out of sight of the adults in this place so far. There'd been close calls, of course. Slipping into empty rooms just as someone was about to turn a corner, hiding in closets, under tables, and in particularly shadowy corners when the coverall and apron-clad psychopaths were about to enter a room she'd wandered into.

  The low light, her tiny frame, and her soft footsteps despite her thick-soled ankle boots helped, but after a while, Lecia couldn't help but feel like things were going a little too well. She hadn't run into whoever had been killing the adults either, which was another sticking point in her increasingly paranoid mind.

  Staying hidden as she blindly tried to navigate a labyrinthine complex wasn't easy by any stretch. Lecia still hadn't found anything remotely resembling an exit from this place, even after what felt like an hour, but at the same time, she felt like the other shoe had yet to drop, and it was putting her on edge.

  And eventually, inevitably, Lecia's worries were validated.

  With the number of bodies she'd found, even stashed away in hidden spaces as they were, someone was bound to catch on. It was a wonder it had taken so long, but Lecia soon began to see the signs. The first and most glaring sign was the sudden shocked and horrified cry a few corridors down from where Lecia found herself.

  Rather than the wails of children Lecia had grown enured to, it sounded like one of the older women. The sound made Lecia freeze in her tracks, heart thumping. The hesitation only lasted for a moment before she was on the move, her steps echoing with increased momentum. Taking a risk, she decided to trade a bit of stealth for expediency. It wasn't difficult for Lecia to come to one of two conclusions:

  Either one of the adults had found a corpse, or was in the process of becoming one.

  Whatever the case, she needed to find that exit—that, or find somewhere to lie low for a bit until an opportunity presented itself. The plan was a simple one, but the execution was gradually becoming more and more untenable as time went on. Lecia could hear them now, urgent voices whispering, murmuring, calling out.

  "—three in Waste Disposal and another in the Security Wing!"

  "Who could've—"

  "Nonsense! Utter nonsense! What in the wretched Voids were the patrol—"

  "...want to die... I don't want to die! I can't! I refuse! There's too much I still haven't—"

  And so on and so on.

  Voices, panicked, furious, terrified, reached Lecia's ears from every angle. With them came loud, urgent footfalls from ahead and behind. The noose was tightening, and the pressure was beginning to make Lecia sweat. She turned one corner, only to scramble back the way she came as she caught sight of a thin, bespectacled man rushing down the corridor in her direction.

  Lecia hoped the lack of an audible reaction from the man meant he hadn't spotted her, but there was no time to worry about that. Just moments later, a metal door just a few feet ahead of her flew open. She stopped dead, heart leaping into her throat as two apron-clad men barreled out of the room and lumbered down the corridor, opposite the direction Lecia was standing.

  The door had opened in such a way as to hide her from their view as they hurried to whatever destination lay the other way. Hearing the footsteps from the thin man behind her getting closer, Lecia forced herself forward, slipping into the room the two men had just left and pressing herself against the interior wall by the entrance.

  She'd had no time to close the door, so she listened and waited, praying the man didn't decide to stop in to check the room. Her prayers were answered a few seconds later as she heard the man's clacking footfalls speed past the open doorway and disappear further down the corridor. Lecia was about to breathe a sigh of relief when—

  "Well now, what's this then, eh?"

  Lecia, whose whole attention had been focused on the entrance, twitched, her head jerking around to find the source of that deep, curious rasp. What she found filled her blood with ice, though it never showed on her face. Standing before her, just a few steps away, was a heavyset man in those same white coveralls she'd seen countless times by now.

  On this man, however, the uniform barely seemed to fit his rather short, but extremely wide frame. Even through the outfit, Lecia could see that it wasn't all fat—far from it. The man had arms and legs like the trunk of a thick oak. Short as he was, he still towered over Lieca, his bushy black beard doing nothing to hide the curious scowl on his pudgy, wrinkled face.

  Beady flint-gray eyes stared down into hollow gold, and while Lecia could only muster mild surprise outwardly, inwardly her world had shrunk to just herself and this brute. She stood, a rabbit frozen beneath the gaze of an amused predator. The man's brow rose slightly, a chuckle escaping his lips as he took a step forward.

  It was only then that Lecia noticed the raised table behind him. The small thing atop the surface was in too gruesome a shape to be called a body. There was barely enough of a cohesive form to be held by restraints. The sight made even Lecia's stomach turn. She couldn't help a visceral shudder of horror as her gaze once more found the monster looming over her.

  The man's shovel-like hands were slick and shiny, stained dark crimson with the results of his "work". Lecia's own hands flexed, her fingers twitching reflexively and her mind whirring to life as she eyed them.

  Was this the killer?

  No, somehow that didn't feel right, at least not where those other bodies had been concerned. This man was a butcher—reminding her somewhat of the large man she'd encountered in that Tradehaven alleyway, what felt like ages ago now—but he wasn't the killer. It didn't make sense, but Lecia's mind was too preoccupied with her current crisis to figure out why.

  "Looks like one of the rats slipped free while we were busy," the man continued with a hearty laugh. He took a few more steps forward and squatted down before the frozen Lecia, a sharp glint in his eye. "Takin' advantage of all the chaos! Can't say as I blame ye much, girl. Me? I'd scarper the moment me jailer's back was turned if I was in your position."

  Lecia said nothing.

  That didn't seem to bother the man in the slightest. He just grinned wider, showing off yellow-stained teeth. "Aw, c'mon now, don't be like that. You went through all the trouble of escapin' your cage, little rat. Why not get to know each other a little better?"

  Lecia moved—or, she tried to.

  The moment her body shifted sideways toward the open doorway, the man's hand snaked out faster than should've been possible for someone of his size and girth. Lecia barely had a second to mentally chide herself for letting the man get too close before she found herself caught by the throat. She let out a choked gasp as she was effortlessly hoisted up into the air, struggling helplessly against the brute's strength.

  "Skittish little thing, aren't ye?" the man chortled as he straightened up and brought Lecia close. "I know I got a mug ugly as the wrong side of an 'orse, but I ain't a bad bloke once ye get to know me."

  The man's grip was firm around Lecia's neck despite his slick and bloody hands, but he left just enough space in her windpipe to respond. She didn't, instead continuing to thrash about as she desperately tried to think of a way out of this nightmare. A tight squeeze cut her thoughts short as air became a sudden priority.

  "Nothin' to say?" the man frowned. "You wound me, girl. I'm just tryin' to have a friendly chat, is all, but it looks like you ain't in the mood to gab." He shook his head sadly. "Bloody shame, that. Who knows? Might've been able to convince the man at the top to let ye go if... eh?"

  The man's gaze shifted sideways, following Lecia's tiny hand as it shakily rose. The girl had gone limp in his grip, and though her expression was strained and her face grew more violet by the second, she'd fallen completely silent. Focused.

  The large man's face scrunched up in confusion at the strange turn of events. He watched, bewildered, as the trembling in Lecia's hand suddenly stilled. He watched in surprise as her hand closed into a fist, save for her index finger, which began to glow with aetheric light. The realization came too late as Lecia's finger blurred, the runic script writ in white ethereal light, and the incantation activating before the man could react.

  Lecia had long ago lost count of the number of times she'd cast this runic incantation. She was fairly confident she could cast it in her sleep if need be; she'd become so familiar with it. Even through the brain fog and her darkening vision, the spell posed no problem. The only hurdle had been pumping enough of her aether into the cantrip to be useful without her strangler noticing.

  But in the end, she'd pulled it off.

  In the span of a half second, the runic script vanished, and Lecia's light orb incantation went off. Overcharged with her internal aether, the unstable spell flared to life with the brilliance of a star before winking out an instant later. It was short-lived, but for Lecia, who'd clenched her eyes shut in preparation, it was enough.

  The stocky, pot-bellied man hadn't had time to make such preparations. He stumbled back, dropping Lecia to the ground with a loud curse. As he reached for his eyes, Lecia hit the floor, gasping for air as she rolled onto her hands and knees and scrambled away. Fighting against the disorientation and the pain of her sore throat, she found the entrance and pushed herself up before staggering through it.

  She exited into the corridor on unsteady feet and kept moving, one hand clutched to her throat as harsh coughs tore out of her chest. Each breath scraped. Each swallow burned. She forced herself onward anyway, boots striking the tile in a broken rhythm as she pushed through the lingering white blotches in her vision and drove herself toward the nearest bend in the hall.

  Behind her, the man bellowed a stream of curses that shook the room she had fled. She heard furniture slam over, metal clatter across stone, and then a heavy impact against the doorframe as he blundered out after her. For one hopeful second, Lecia thought the flash might have bought her more time.

  Then she heard the change in his breathing.

  The brute went quiet.

  Lecia rounded the curve and bit down on another cough, trying to swallow the sound before it escaped. Her lungs rebelled. A ragged gasp slipped free. Behind her came the quick scrape of boots pivoting on tile, followed at once by pounding footfalls. The man had found her trail. Blind or not, he had ears enough to hunt by.

  Desperation tightened every muscle in Lecia’s body. She ran harder.

  The corridor stretched ahead through alternating pools of amber lampglow and shadow. Iron doors blurred past on either side. Somewhere behind one of them, a child screamed. Somewhere else, adults shouted over each other in mounting panic. Lecia’s own breathing fed the sound chasing her, each sharp inhale a signal she could not stop giving.

  The distance between them shrank with frightening speed.

  A heavy hand struck the wall just behind her with enough force to rattle the iron plating of a nearby door. The man roared, close enough now that Lecia felt the sound in her spine. She veered around another corner, almost lost her footing, caught herself, and kept going. The footsteps behind her surged again. He was gaining. Another few seconds and he would have her.

  Then Lecia felt it.

  A sudden fluctuation rippled through the ambient aether, sharp and concentrated, somewhere off to her left. The pulse carried weight and precision. It gathered, aligned, and discharged in less than a heartbeat. Lecia didn't see any sigil. She didn't hear an incantation. She only sensed the working an instant before it struck.

  The brute cried out.

  The sound came out strangled and shocked, cut through with raw pain. Lecia twisted around as she stumbled to a stop. The man had collapsed hard onto one knee and then onto his side, his limbs locked in a violent spasm. Tiny arcs of blue-white electricity snapped across his coveralls and crawled over his thick arms and neck. His jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth grind. Foam gathered at the corner of his mouth as his body twitched against the floor.

  A figure stepped into the corridor from an alcove Lecia would have sworn had been empty a moment earlier.

  The woman moved with easy confidence, one hand holding a long knife dark with blood, the other gripping the back of an unconscious boy’s shirt. Her clothes were dark and fitted for quiet movement: a close-buttoned jacket, narrow trousers, soft leather boots, gloves to the elbow, and a short half-cloak worked with faint rune-etched stitching that caught the lampglow in thin lines. A black mask covered the upper half of her face, leaving only her mouth and bright hazel eyes exposed.

  In one hand the woman held a bloody knife, its blade twisted in a cruel yet slender curve. In the other, she held... a boy. It took Lecia a second, but as her eyes roamed over the woman's frizzy auburn hair and hazel eyes, realization suddenly hit. She knew this woman. The vague recognition of the woman was driven from her mind, however, as Lecia turned her attention to the boy.

  She knew that frame. Long limbs. Narrow shoulders. Dirty blond hair falling over a face she had not seen in what felt like another life. For a split second, Lecia was back at that cellar entrance, listening to this boy, his green eyes alight with smug confidence as he coaxed her into the trap that ultimately brought her to where she was now.

  Orin.

  He hung limp in the woman’s grasp, head lolling, arms slack at his sides. He looked pale beneath the grime. There was no blood on him that Lecia could see, which did little to ease the alarm tightening in her chest.

  "Simply brilliant," the woman said, voice delighted despite the scene at her feet. “Rough around the edges, but you've a fine head on your shoulders, make no mistake.”

  Lecia said nothing. Her chest still heaved from the run. Her eyes flicked from Orin to the paralyzed brute and then back to the woman’s knife. It all clicked into place for her then. This woman, she was the killer. She had to be. Given the circumstances and her appearance, it made too much sense.

  The revelation wasn't comforting.

  What's more, this woman...

  The woman followed the look and, as if reading Lecia's thoughts, gave a pleased hum. “Ah, no, no, love, this isn't for you—well, not the pointy bit, at least.” She glanced over to the boy hanging from her grip by his grimy shirt. She jostled him about with a small chuckle. "As for this one... found him skulking about and thought I'd... take him along for the ride, let's say."

  Before Lecia could parse what that meant, the sound of movement behind her made her whirl around. The man on the floor was trying to force himself up. His muscles seized again, throwing him flat with another choked cry. More sparks jumped across his shoulders. The woman glanced down at him with open disdain.

  “He’ll have feeling back soon enough,” she said. “A minute, perhaps two, and then we’re all in for a dreadful amount of noise. I've had my fun, but I believe it's high time we made ourselves scarce. Before that, though...”

  With no warning and a casual flick of her wrist, the woman tossed the knife toward Lecia.

  It zipped toward almost faster than Lecia could see. She flinched back a half step as the weapon struck the air directly in front of her face and stuck. An instant later, Lecia's wind barrier flared into existence, becoming fully tangible. To her silent horror, she saw that the knife's bloody edge had embedded itself halfway through her shield to reach the tip of her nose.

  A split second after that, the barrier shattered, leaving the wicked blade to clatter to the tiled floor in front of her. Lecia stared down at the weapon for a long moment, her expression unreadable but her mind spinning with alarm and confusion. Slowly, she returned her gaze to the woman.

  The woman, in turn, shifted her hold on Orin without effort and tipped her chin toward the paralyzed man writhing on the floor. She gave Lecia a suggestive smile that sent shivers down her spine.

  "Go on then, love. Finish the job."