Linus descended into the dungeon, the shift in atmosphere immediate and oppressive. The cold, damp air clung to his skin, reeking of mildew and despair. Stone walls loomed around them, slick with moisture, and the iron bars of the cells cast long, distorted shadows under the flickering torchlight. Each footstep echoed ominously through the corridor, amplifying the sense of dread.

  He hadn’t been down here since… well, since he’d st savored the fruits of his cunning. He’d relished the Mayor’s downfall, the subtle maniputions, the carefully orchestrated events that had led to Vancourt’s capture. Even now, he could taste the satisfaction of that night—the memory of Vancourt's face crumpling as the guards seized him, the way his voice had cracked when he'd pleaded.

  And then there was his wife. Eliza. The memory of her made Linus's mouth go dry. Those wide, tear-filled eyes when she was arrested as well. The trembling of her hand when he'd imposed his "protection." The way her shoulders had slumped in surrender when she realized what kind of protection he offered. Sweet, innocent creature. The first night, she'd wept silently. By the third, she'd stopped weeping altogether. Broken things rarely made sound.

  But now, he was back in this grim pce not for pleasure, but because of a mystery that had nearly cost him his life. The familiar chill of the dungeon did nothing to cool the heat building inside Linus's chest.. Someone had taken Eliza—his prize, his trophy, his favorite reminder of his most elegant manipution.

  Someone else was enjoying the fruits of their cunning. Someone else was pying the game, and pying it well. A cold smile curled Linus’s lips. Amateur psychology. He wouldn't fall for such transparent maniputions. Instead, he would use this. Watch for who was watching him. Note who asked questions, who avoided his gaze, and who seemed too interested in his reaction.

  Princess Mara was already waiting for him, standing before Vancourt’s cell with an air of detached observation. The city guard captain, Aric, remained nearby, along with a handful of city guards, their faces grim and alert. Silence descended as they all surveyed the scene.

  Mara, as always, was an enigma. Her expression was unreadable, her eyes like polished stones. She hadn’t acknowledged Linus’s arrival, hadn’t offered a greeting. She simply waited there, a silent, regal presence in the heart of the darkness.

  The mayor’s body had already been pulled from the corner of the cell, id out on the cold, damp stone like discarded undry. His shirt was soaked through with blood, dark and spreading, the color deepening against the pale grey floor. The iron smell hung heavy in the air—sharp, metallic, suffocating.

  A jagged shard of pottery y just beside the body, slick with crimson. It had once been part of the water basin bolted to the cell wall. Now it was nothing but a crude, weaponized edge.

  “Suicide,” one of the guards murmured, his voice hesitant.

  “Confirmed,” Aric stated, his expression grim. “Wielded a piece of pottery he’d sharpened against the stone floor. Quick, if messy.”

  Linus knelt, but his examination was purely analytical. The death wound gaped like a second mouth across the neck, its edges clean rather than jagged. Blood had pooled beneath the body, thick and congealing, but there were no desperate handprints, no signs of st-minute regret.

  "Look at you," Linus muttered, lifting one of Vancourt's limp hands. "Even your fingernails are clean." A truly desperate man cws at his own wound. A man who changes his mind scrapes at the floor, at the walls, at anything. But Vancourt's hands told the story of someone who hadn't struggled at all.

  He didn’t perceive a broken man driven to despair. He recognized a discarded pawn, a piece removed from the board. The angle of the wound, the ck of struggle… it all pointed to a deliberate act, but not one born of desperation. Vancourt was a coward, yes, and self-entitled, but he cked the conviction to take his own life. He was a man who clung to power, to comfort, to any sembnce of control.

  To Linus, Vancourt had never been more than a means to an end. A stepping stone in his ascent. Now, even in death, he was proving useful to someone else, providing a distraction, a puzzle.

  Princess Mara, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, suddenly thrust her hand, holding a folded note, directly in front of Linus’s face. He raised an eyebrow, intrigued. She hadn’t spoken a word, hadn’t offered a single gesture of expnation. She merely extended her arm, presenting the note directly in front of his face.

  Linus accepted it, his eyes narrowing as he unfolded it, his eyes scanning the cramped, frantic handwriting.

  “Princess Mara has plunged my wealth, bled me dry with false investments. She framed me for treason, orchestrated my removal from power, and now seeks to cim Thornfield as her own. She needs no justification, no pretense. Power and wealth are her birthright, freely given by her lineage.”

  The note accused Mara of systematically dismantling Vancourt’s wealth, of framing him for crimes he hadn’t committed, all in a ruthless bid to seize control of Thornfield. It painted a picture of a cold, calcuting Princess, willing to destroy a man’s life for her own ambition.

  He read on. The note then turned its accusatory finger towards him.

  “But to add insult to injury, she… she arranged for Linus to defile my wife. I can no longer bear the shame, the ruin, the humiliation. I leave this world a broken man, stripped of everything I held dear.”

  Linus’s smile twisted, sharper this time. A pathetic, drawn-out ment. Linus barely registered the words. His mind was already racing.

  Someone was definitely framing them. The Mayor had been a coward, a self-entitled fool. He wouldn’t have possessed the courage–or the dignity–to take his own life. And Mara… Mara didn’t need to resort to such tactics. Power and money gravitated to her like water, simply by virtue of her name.

  They were targeting him as well. Directly. And the inclusion of the… indulgence with the Mayor’s wife wasn’t a coincidence. It was a deliberate attempt to poison Mara’s opinion of him, to paint him as a monster.

  He’d been monitored. Someone had known about his… indiscretion.

  But who? Half the staff at the manor had been his own men, loyal soldiers handpicked for their discretion. Could one of them have betrayed him? Or might the spy be someone else entirely? Someone closer?

  A knot of unease tightened in his stomach. This wasn’t just about eliminating a rival. This was about dismantling his network, exposing his methods, and ultimately… destroying him.

  Just then, torchlight flickered, and Linus’s gaze snagged on the Mayor’s face. A subtle unease, cold and unwelcome, coiled in his gut. Something felt… off. The features appeared subtly altered, leaner, more gaunt than he remembered from when Vancourt had been dragged into this cell. There were dark hollows under the eyes, a tightness to the skin. He hadn’t instructed Marcus to inflict any hardship on the man. Marcus, bound by the shadow bond, wouldn’t have dared deviate from his orders. So, not his men.

  Mara’s men? It was possible, but… unnecessary. Mara wanted information, not a broken corpse. Would she risk destroying a potential source?

  “Strip him,” Linus commanded, his voice clipped and sharp.

  Captain Aric hesitated, his jaw tightening. He looked to Mara, seeking silent approval. She gave none, her expression remaining an impassive mask.

  “Do it,” Linus demanded, his voice ced with a dangerous edge. “Now.”

  The guards exchanged uncomfortable gnces. One of them—a stocky man with a beard—finally stepped forward, muttering something under his breath. His fingers fumbled with the buttons of Vancourt's bloodied shirt.

  "Hurry," Linus snapped. Another guard joined in, knife drawn to cut away the fabric where it had stuck to dried blood. The bde scraped against skin, making a sound like sandpaper on wood.

  They peeled the shirt away, revealing pale flesh mottled with purple-blue bruises.

  "The trousers, too," Linus insisted when they balked. The bearded guard's face clenched in disgust, but he complied, rolling the body slightly to tug the fabric down. One of the younger guards turned away, putting his hand over his mouth. As the st of the clothing came free, a collective murmur rippled through the room. Vancourt's body—once robust from rich food and little exertion—had wasted to skin stretched over bone.

  Then he spotted them. Faint, almost delicate cuts marked the Mayor’s chest, arms, and neck. Simir to Alfred’s. Skin-thin lines running just beneath the surface, as if drawn with the tip of a bde rather than carved in anger. They weren’t the jagged sshes of a struggle, or the brutal damage left by torture. These were cleaner. Tighter. Intentional.

  They didn’t connect. No full symbols, no obvious pattern. Just lines—some straight, some curved—scattered across his body. But the more Linus studied, the more wrong they seemed.

  Very much simir to Alfred’s!!

  The timing… it wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  Could it be that the Mayor was also imprisoned, experimented on, and someone was taking his pce? Linus’s thoughts spun, spiraling into a terrifying possibility.

  A chilling thought snaked through his mind: what if they hadn’t arrested the real Mayor at all? What if a shapeshifter had taken his pce? If this were the case, what could have been the shapeshifter's goal? To infiltrate his operation? To feed false information? To sow discord?

  And if the person they’d locked up was a fake, where was the real Vancourt until now? Had he been captured by the shapeshifters? Had they switched him back just now, perhaps after extracting whatever information they needed? Meaning, did they have the shapeshifter in their hands until now?

  A wave of nausea washed over him. This wasn’t just about a single infiltration. This posed a terrifying question: how many shapeshifters were operating within Boomi? Was this an isoted incident, a rogue operative acting on their own? Or was there a widespread infiltration he hadn't yet grasped? A network of imposters, silently undermining his authority, waiting for the opportune moment to strike?

  The silence in the dungeon deepened, thick and suffocating. Princess Mara finally ended it, her voice cool and measured. “Anything you wish to share, Linus?” It wasn’t a request for information, but a challenge. A test.

  Linus held her gaze, allowing a sliver of his unease to surface. He knew Mara likely wasn’t susceptible to fear, but the city guards surrounding them… they were another matter. A carefully cultivated atmosphere of dread could be a powerful tool.

  “I believe we’re dealing with something far more insidious than a simple power grab,” he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial tone. “The cuts on this man… they echo those found on Commander Alfred. Precise, deliberate. Not the work of torture, but of…preparation. And the timing, the orchestrated chaos… it all screams a level of pnning that exceeds the capabilities of any single individual, or even a small faction.”

  He lingered, letting his words hang in the air. “I suspect we have a shapeshifter, or potentially shapeshifters, infiltrating our organizations. Repcing key personnel. Feeding us misinformation. Maniputing events from within.”

  He raked his gaze across the faces of the city guards, detecting apprehension flicker in their eyes, a tightening of their jaws. Good. “Imagine,” he continued, his voice sharpening with a darker edge. “Someone you trust, someone you’ve known for years, repced by an impostor. Someone who knows your secrets, your weaknesses. Someone who could strike at any moment, without warning.”

  A grim smile pyed on his lips. “We’ve been pyed. And the stakes are far higher than we initially believed.” He pivoted back to Mara, his expression unreadable. “This isn’t just about Thornfield anymore. This is about the security of the Aldric kingdom itself. If these creatures can infiltrate the highest levels of power, no one is safe.”

  He pointed towards the body on the table. “This wasn’t a suicide. It was a message. A demonstration of their capabilities.” He waited for the implication to sink in. Shapeshifters weren’t just dangerous; they were terrifying. They eroded trust, sowed paranoia, and struck when you least expected it.

  “We need to assume,” Linus decred, his voice hardening, “that anyone could be an enemy. Anyone.”

  The silence that followed was thick with tension. He’d sought to unsettle Mara, to provoke a reaction. She hadn’t revealed much, but he’d pnted a seed of doubt. And he’d definitely unnerved the guards.

  Linus studied each face in turn. The bearded guard had bnched beneath his whiskers, fingers twitching toward the hilt of his sword. Beside him, a freckled youth with a fresh uniform blinked rapidly, his Adam's apple jumped with each nervous swallow. "Shapeshifters," the youth whispered, the word dropped like a stone in still water.

  Another guard—older, with a scar splitting his left eyebrow—spit on the ground. "Nonsense," he growled, but his eyes flickered to the corners of the cell as if expecting shadows to move.

  The captain himself stood rigidly, jaw muscles working beneath his skin. Linus noticed how his hand now gripped his weapon and how his gaze shifted between his men, suddenly assessing each familiar face with new suspicion.

  Good, Linus thought, observing fear infect the room like a well-crafted poison.

  Captain Aric broke the silence. "Renfield, who was on watch in this corridor st night?"

  A thin guard with a patchy beard gulped hard. "Bram and Harkins till midnight, sir. Then Oates and I."

  "Did anyone enter this cell? Anyone at all?"

  "No, sir." Renfield's eyes flickered toward the body. "Not while I was here."

  "Liar!" Aric snatched the guard by his colr, throwing him against the bars. Metal cnged against metal. "Someone reached him. Someone always gets to them."

  "I swear it, Captain!" Renfield's voice trembled. "No one passed us!"

  Aric shoved him away with a disgusted shove. "I want a list. Every person who has set foot below ground in the past week. Every guard, every servant, every visitor—even the rats if they looked suspicious." His finger poked into Renfield's chest with each category. "Names. Backgrounds. Who do they drink with? Who they sleep with. Where their loyalties lie."

  "Sir—" Renfield started.

  "Now!" Aric roared, spittle flying from his lips. The guards fled like startled birds, boots cttering against stone as they hurried to fulfill his commands.

  Mara regarded Aric, a flicker of approval briefly touched her features. “And I want a full accounting of all men stationed at the border and at my estate. I want to know who reports to whom, and what their duties were.” Her voice sounded cool and precise, but the underlying urgency felt unmistakable.

  Linus observed them, a cold satisfaction bloomed within him. He’d ignited the fuse. Now, let the investigation begin. And let the paranoia spread.

  Mara began to walk away, her stride determined, her back ramrod straight. She didn’t gnce back, didn’t spare a parting gnce. But as she reached Linus, she halted, standing so close he could feel the subtle shift in the air around her.

  “It seems like you might not be the only one who enjoyed the Mayor’s… property,” she whispered, her voice a low, venomous whisper. “Someone probably ravished it too.”

  The implication stood clear. She referred to Eliza. About his… arrangement with the Mayor’s wife. A deliberate jab, a calcuted attempt to wound him.

  Then, without another gnce, she pivoted and resumed her departure, leaving Linus isoted in the oppressive silence of the dungeon.

  Linus didn’t flinch. He didn’t voice a denial.

  As he observed her go, a different kind of unease descended upon him. It wasn’t fear of exposure or concern over her judgment.

  It was something far more dangerous.

  Mara was maturing.

  She was shedding the naiveté, the blind trust, the deference he’d so carefully cultivated. She was becoming sharper, more calcuting, more… independent.

  He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  The smile on his face hardened, becoming less a gesture of amusement and more a mask of intent.

  He needed to remind her of her pce. He needed to reassert his control. He needed to… redirect her attention.