"I don't know what you're talking about, sir Vexis."
Havier's face snapped back to the desk. Jaw set. Eyes down.
Arthur looked at him for a second.
This guy.
He'd just seen the reaction. Plain as anything. And now they were doing this.
'What do you mean he tipped them off.' Vexis drifted close, voice dropping out of its usual volume. 'You can't seriously suspect this pushover.'
Roz said nothing.
Arthur straightened up.
Okay. Think about this practically. No proof means nothing if Havier is actually the one who shows up in that alley today. And if he is, avoiding him does nothing. Waiting does nothing.
The only move that makes sense is the one where Arthur controls the location.
He reached over and gripped Havier's shoulder. Firm. Not Vexis-firm. Just enough to mean something.
"Meet me after class. Intersection outside the rear gate. The one past the stone merchant."
He let go.
Havier didn't move for a second.
Then he nodded. Once. Small.
Arthur turned and walked to his seat.
Let's see.
The class started. Ended. Normal in every way except for the fact that Arthur's shadow was already attached to Havier's before the professor finished speaking.
He felt it the whole time. A warm point in the dark. Sitting in Havier's shadow the way a coal sits in ash.
Havier stood. Gathered his things. Glanced at Arthur once on his way to the door and then kept walking.
Arthur gave it thirty seconds. Then picked up the relic stone.
He arrived outside Class A and instantly regretted it.
The corridor was busy. Class had just let out. Students moving in both directions.
Ivan was already deep in conversation with two girls near the window, laughing about something that was probably only funny to Ivan.
Xavier came through the door.
He saw Arthur and slowed. Just slightly. The eyes went sharp in that specific way they did, the way that said he was cataloguing something and hadn't finished yet.
Arthur didn't look away first this time.
Neither did Xavier.
Then Xavier moved on down the corridor and Arthur let him go because he had about eleven things more important than a staring contest with the main character.
Cael came through the door last.
He saw Arthur waiting and his pace didn't change. He just walked over and stopped.
Arthur kept his voice low.
"I have a suspect for the anonymous tip. I need you at the intersection outside the rear gate. Stay back. If anything happens, I need a witness."
Cael's eyes sharpened.
"When."
"Now."
Cael looked at him. The stillness he always carried settled into something different. Not confusion exactly. The face of someone running numbers very fast without moving anything on the surface.
He didn't answer.
But he turned and walked toward the rear of the building.
Arthur took that as a yes.
He arrived at the gate first. Set Roz down on the gate post and looked at him.
"If this goes wrong," Arthur said. "Help me."
Roz looked at the intersection ahead. His ears were forward.
"Let's see how it goes," Roz said.
Which from Roz was probably as close to yes as he was getting.
Arthur closed his eyes.
He found the anchor he'd planted on Havier's shadow during class. Still there. Warm and patient. He pressed his perception into it and the gate disappeared and Havier's view opened up instead.
A corridor. Moving toward the rear exit. Normal pace. No hood, no weapon visible, uniform exactly as it had been in class.
Arthur stayed in the anchor and walked toward the intersection at the same time, which felt like trying to read two books simultaneously and was about as pleasant as it sounded.
His forearm started aching before he even arrived.
The cost was running. He could feel the density behind his sternum thinning at the edges. Like a battery draining from both ends at once.
He reached the intersection and stopped.
It was narrow. The buildings on both sides were tall enough that the sun barely touched the ground. Old stone. The kind of street that existed because people had been cutting through it for decades without anyone planning it.
Cael would be somewhere behind the far wall. Out of sight.
Arthur waited.
Havier arrived a minute later.
Still in uniform. Still Havier. No weapon in his hands. Nothing obviously different about him except the way he was walking, which was the kind of careful that people do when they've already decided how a conversation is going to go and are walking toward their own version of it.
Arthur released the anchor.
His forearm went from aching to heavy. He flexed his fingers twice and they came back.
Okay. Focus.
He looked at Havier standing at the entrance of the intersection.
Here's the thing. Here's the actual logic.
A person who spent years being Vexis Lestilaut's specific project does not walk into a closed intersection with him without a plan. Not unprepared. Not just to talk. Their whole history together said Vexis didn't do quiet conversations. Havier knew that better than anyone.
So he came prepared for something.
Which means he's not just a scared kid playing dumb.
He came here ready.
Arthur felt his pulse in the side of his neck.
Calm down. You know what you're doing. Probably.
"What did you want to speak about, sir Vexis." Havier's gaze dropped slightly. Not all the way. Practiced.
Arthur almost laughed.
Sir Vexis.
He was still doing it.
"Are you serious right now," Arthur said. "You're still playing this."
Havier said nothing.
'His body language is off.' Vexis came lower, voice quiet. Actually focused. 'He's distributing his weight toward the back foot. He's ready to move.'
I noticed.
Havier took one step forward.
Just one. Slow.
Arthur watched it.
A prey doesn't walk into the lion's den empty-handed. Especially not this one. Especially not after years of what Vexis put him through. He knew exactly what kind of animal lived in this body. He came here knowing that and walked in anyway.
That means something is already in his hand figuratively. Or literally.
His eyes on the slight break in Havier's uniform line at the back.
Arthur opened his mouth.
He felt the mouth thing start and this time he let it off the leash completely.
"You're a joke." His voice came out flat and cold. "You know that? You spent years doing the timid little head-down routine and it's very convincing. Really. It almost worked on me."
Havier went still.
"But I remember what you used to be." Arthur stepped forward. One step. Matching the distance. "Before your family name got pulled out from under you. You had that way about you. Looking at people like they were furniture. Quiet about it. Polite about it. That was the thing that made it worse actually."
Something moved behind Havier's eyes.
"Your father's dead. The family cut you off. And here you are." Arthur's voice didn't rise. That was the whole point. "Sitting in the same classroom as the people who watched it happen. That must eat you alive every single morning."
Havier's face shook.
Not his expression. His actual face. A small movement that started at the jaw and moved through his whole head before he killed it.
His eyes came up.
All the way up.
And what was sitting in them wasn't fear and wasn't grief. It was old. Dense. The specific kind of rage that had been compressed so long it had stopped feeling like rage and started feeling like just another part of the body.
"This isn't how it was supposed to go," Havier said.
His voice was different. The sir was gone.
His hand moved toward his back.
'MOVE.' Vexis dropped low, voice cracking. 'NOW—'
The blade cleared the uniform in one practiced motion. Small. Short. The kind you could strap flat and walk through a gate with and nobody would check.
Havier moved fast. Faster than the classroom version of him had any right to.
Arthur's legs were already going, Vexis's muscle memory firing before his brain had finished registering the glint of metal. He went sideways and the blade passed through the space his shoulder had been.
He felt the air from it.
Close.
His grin came before he could stop it. Sweat running down the side of his face, heart somewhere in his throat, legs shaking slightly and he was grinning.
Got you.
Cael came around the wall.
Fast and quiet. His own blade already drawn. He put himself between Arthur and Havier and the sound of metal meeting metal cracked off the stone walls and disappeared into the narrow sky above.
Arthur's arm came up.
He found the density behind his sternum. Dropped it fast. His forearm went heavy immediately, fingertips burning at the edges.
A shadow lifted off the ground at his feet.
Dark in that specific wrong way. The color of something with no bottom.
It moved across the intersection stones toward them.