Intercut: Eliza

The walls of the Praetor’s office still trembled when the Chancellor and her escort left. Even stone seemed to hold its breath in the silence that followed.

Eliza waited near the door, hands clasped behind her back, pretending she hadn’t heard the raised voices from within.

Vic emerged like a storm barely contained by skin. His coat hung open, his collar half turned, the silver clasp of his blade harness gleaming beneath. For once, his usually impassive face carried something raw; fury twisted with restraint.

“She told me to stand down,” he said, pacing past her without looking. “A neutral haven burns to nothing, our kin reduced to ash, and the Chancellor tells me…” He turned, fists clenched. “…to stay out of it. To let the humans comb through our bones.”

“Perhaps she fears attention,” Eliza offered carefully. “The OUSR…”

“The OUSR will dig regardless,” he snapped. “They always do. They’re always on our case. But if we want to stay ahead we have to know what happened! They could be involved! That’s what she doesn’t understand. Ignorance doesn’t protect us; it paints the target brighter.”

He stopped pacing and finally looked at her. His eyes, cold grey, as if cut from the fog of the city itself, pinned her in place.

“Speaking of the OUSR. What have you heard?”

“Whispers only,” she said. Her tongue felt too heavy, her words too thin. “Something about movement in Holbeck before the fire. The humans are already investigating.”

“And your contact? The one on the inside?”

There it was. The pivot she’d feared. She tried to keep her voice even. “He’s been useful. He found traces of… signal interference. A network that doesn’t belong to them.”

“Name?” Vic’s voice was ice over stone.

“AJ,” she said before she could stop herself.

The sound of it felt too soft in this room, too human.

Vic’s expression darkened, subtle but unmistakable. “I know his name,” he said quietly. “What I don’t know is why it still sits on your tongue like a prayer.”

Eliza’s throat tightened. She wanted to retort, to scoff, to dismiss, but something in his tone; that calm, lethal curiosity, froze her.

She shifted her weight, letting her hair fall forward to shadow her face.

“He’s a source,” she said finally. “Nothing more.”

“You’re lying.” The words cut sharper than any blade he carried. “You forget what you sound like when you lie, Eliza. I taught you to listen out for it.”

“I’m not…”

He moved faster than her eyes could track, crossing the distance in a breath. His hand caught her chin, not cruelly, but with precision; the kind of control that was worse than violence. His thumb pressed against her jaw until her pulse stuttered beneath the skin.

“He’s human,” Vic said. “And you’re playing with fire you can’t smother.”

“You think I don’t know that?” The words tore out of her before she could temper them. “You think I don’t see what I’m doing every time I speak to him?”

His grip faltered just slightly; not in mercy, but in understanding. Then he released her. The air between them thickened with silence.

“The Chancellor forbade me to investigate,” he said, turning toward the window. “But she said nothing about you.”

Eliza blinked. “What are you asking?”

“Find out what really happened in Holbeck. Quietly. I want proof before it’s buried or taken. And Eliza…”

She met his gaze again.

“You have no heart to give away. Remember that.”

He left her standing there.

Alone, she drew in a slow breath and pressed her hand to her chest where her heart would’ve beaten man years ago. It felt fragile.

“Too late…” she whispered, the guilt curling warm and sour beneath her ribs as she walked away. 

Vic lingered in the corridor outside his office, watching the lift door close. He replayed the conversation with Eliza in his head. 

He wanted to believe her, to trust the sharpness he’d once honed into her, but the look in her eyes; that flicker of warmth where there should have been hunger; unsettled him more than any fire.

On the other hand, the Chancellor’s order gnawed like rust on a ship's hull. She’d told him to stay blind.

Could she know what’s waiting to be seen? - He shuddered at the treasonous thought.

He straightened his coat, jaw tight.

“If the Vesperate has forgotten how to protect its own,” he muttered, “then I’ll remind them what obedience costs. Hierarchy be damned.”