For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Ahce's breathing finally evened out, but the tremor in her hands lingered, visible even when she curled her fingers into her palms. Reichardt stood before her, chest rising and falling with a frighteningly restrained fury, his body still vibrating with the aftershock of the core's violent reaction to the threat.
He wanted to tear every stone apart until he found the agent again.
But Ahce's fear—her trembling—held him still.
She lifted her gaze slowly, her voice small in the vast silence.
"Reichardt… who were they?"
He hesitated.
He didn't want to tell her.
He didn't want to drag her deeper into the tangled, poisonous roots of the empire's politics.
He didn't want her to know just how hunted she had become.
But she deserved the truth.
"They were Purity Sect," he said quietly. "The monarch's favored weapon when subtlety is required. They handle… the empire's inconvenient problems."
Ahce's stomach dropped.
