"Fire erases evidence. Poison chooses who survives."
Who was trying to wipe them out so thoroughly—and why?
It doesn't suit my uncle, who cares so much for his reputation, to slaughter everyone connected to Etienne.
No. This reeks of Samon.
Coward.
Unwilling to face the Hydra without Etienne's command seal, he had chosen the simpler method: burning the mansion itself, along with the transfer circle etched into its floors.
Insight flickered through Medea's mind.
If not for tonight, I might never have found the acceptance at all.
She realized, too, that she needed to vanish without leaving a trace. If they discovered the decree was in her hands, they would come for her—Regent and son alike—even if it meant her death.
"The fire's spreading. This way."
Cesare clearly had the same thought. His hand closed around her wrist before she could move on her own.
The moment he pulled open the office door, a tide of men in black surged in.
Steel crashed against steel, a brutal chorus filling the room.
Cesare moved like a beast loosed from its chain. His footwork was feral, his blade anything but.
Each swing cut precisely where it needed to—throats, solar plexuses, arteries—never wasting motion, never hesitating.
Samon's assassins were nothing in comparison. One by one, they crumpled into the rising puddles of water and blood.
Then another sound reached Medea's ears—a different pitch of steel, the rhythm foreign to the chaos inside.
She moved to the window.
In the distance, beyond the inner garden, a new group of assailants had breached the outer wall. Unlike Samon's men, they wore white cords tied around their arms.
They're not his.
With clean, efficient movements, they tore through Samon's shadows as though slicing through paper.
"We should hurry, Princess."
His words were urgent. His tone was not.
They moved quickly down the corridors and stairways.
When they heard sounds of fighting, they veered away. When flames licked at the edge of a hall, they turned back and found another route.
Medea was no stranger to moving unseen. Her steps were as quiet as his.
Cesare's brows lifted slightly.
She knows this place too well.
The way she navigated around bottlenecks and dead ends spoke of familiarity, not deduction.
"Help! Please—someone help!"
A distant scream cut through the air. Medea's eyes shut for a heartbeat.
You know I can't save you.
She had long since discarded the luxury of soft-heartedness. She had neither the power nor the right to save everyone—not when her own survival and vengeance still hung in the balance.
Yet the sound clung to her, refusing to let go.
"I'd heard the Princess of Valdina wasn't fond of going out."
The mercenary remarked idly.
Medea glanced at him, thrown for a moment by the abrupt change of subject. The guilt weighing on her eased, displaced by exasperation.
"Rumors don't seem to say much about you either. Yet here you are, still under the façade leader's protection despite poking your nose into everything."
"He's not my master."
"Perhaps not."
"Or perhaps you own the head."
Cesare stopped.
He turned, looking at her fully now. His gaze asked for an explanation; her face remained serene.
"Why should I be the only one hiding beneath the surface?"
The façade's "leader" plays the amiable merchant, parading himself in public like a harmless businessman.
Since when did an organization that large move so transparently?
If Gallo is just a mask, then the real head of the façade is standing in front of me.
When her eyes lingered on him a moment too long, the corner of his mouth curved—half amusement, half acknowledgment.
"Sharp."
"Good. Since we're both hiding, we'll keep this between us."
His fingers brushed his jawline, as if debating whether to laugh.
Both of them turned in the same instant.
Killing intent swept down the west-facing corridor like a cold wind.
"We've picked up a tail."
Cesare murmured. He sounded almost entertained.
A heartbeat later, he shoved Medea behind a marble statue.
What are you doing—?
"Shh."
She went rigid. And then she saw them.
Men in dark garb, each with a white cord tied around one arm—just like the ones she'd seen cutting through Samon's shadows outside.
So they aren't just after Etienne.
They're hunting the façade as well.
Medea's eyes narrowed, and she sank further into the dark behind the statue.
"A welcome guest has arrived."
Cesare said lightly. He stepped into the corridor, arms outstretched as though greeting old acquaintances.
The men's intent was clear: not a warning, not a capture.
They meant to kill him.
No one spoke. Blades flashed through the air.
Every sword in the hallway was aimed at one man—Cesare.
Their swordsmanship was far beyond anything Samon's hirelings could muster, but even so, they were outmatched.
Cesare's blade carved elegant arcs through the air, each cut efficient and brutal. Bodies fell one after another, the corridor filling with the metallic scent of blood.
He was like a demon unsealed from a stone tablet—merciless, unstoppable.
His sword-work was drenched in slaughter, yet his movements remained unnervingly simple and graceful.
Medea, who had watched battlefields drenched in blood in a previous life, studied the attackers closely.
That footwork...
Why are they using the sword style of the fallen Katzen imperial family?
Cesare hesitated.
His arm stiffened, fingers paling, then darkening at the tips with a sickly blue hue.
A convulsion of the curse.
It lasted only a second.
For a swordsman of that caliber, one second was long enough to die.
An assassin's blade flashed toward his chest.
Thunk.
The attacker jerked as an iron arrow punched through his neck from the side.
Cesare stared in the direction the shot had come from, disbelief flickering in his eyes.
Thunk. Thunk.
BOOM.
The corridor erupted in a series of small, contained explosions. White smoke billowed, ceiling plaster and stone fragments raining down.
Visibility collapsed into chalky white.
When the dust finally settled, the hallway was empty.
"Damn it! We lost them—where did they go?!"
"You saw the First Prince stumbling, didn't you? He's had another attack. He can't have gone far. Find him!"
The Secret Passage
Count Etienne's residence held stone statues of all shapes and sizes along its galleries.
Behind one in particular—the statue of Eros, a boy with wings and a mischievous smile—there was a hidden door.
The passage snaked beneath the Minister's estate and emerged onto a quiet street in the royal city.
In my last life, Jason and I fled to Katzen through this road.
While the white smoke and flying debris hid them from view, Medea dragged Cesare behind Eros and shoved open the concealed stone panel.
"We have to move."
The mercenary didn't argue. He simply let her shoulder his weight and followed.
They descended into the narrow tunnel, walking in near-total darkness.
The only sounds were the echo of their breathing and the muffled roar of the burning mansion above.
With her vision useless, every other sense sharpened.
His body was heavy, but solid. Heat radiated off him in slow waves. Now and then, a low groan or a rough breath brushed against her ear.
In two lifetimes, past and present, I've never been this close to a man who wasn't Jason.
Her face grew hotter with each step—whether from exertion, proximity, or both, she refused to consider.
When she heard the strain in Cesare's breathing hitch into a quiet growl of pain, she pushed the thoughts away and focused on walking.
To avoid leaving an obvious trail, Medea passed by the first exit, then the second.
Only at the third, after what felt like an eternity of blind walking, did she stop.
Creak.
The heavy door opened straight onto a back street.
The houses here were shabby, walls chipped and crooked. At this hour, not a soul stirred.
Medea glanced around, then guided Cesare into a recessed alleyway cloaked in shadow.
She lowered him carefully to the ground and examined him in the faint light.
His fingers, still half-curled around the sword hilt, had turned a mottled black and blue.
He coughed once—a harsh, tearing sound—and spat blood. It hit the stone with a dull splatter, black instead of red.
Poison.
Rolling up his sleeve, she found what she'd been afraid of: two small punctures on his forearm, the veins around them swollen and dark as ink.
Fire Behind · Fangs Within
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