The alley still smelled like blood.
Raziel leaned against the brick wall and watched Odessa tear into Lucian, and let his mind do what it always did when there was nothing useful left to do.
It went somewhere quiet.
He was fifteen right now.
Technically an adult by Phaedran law, the war had made sure of that.
The kingdom couldn't afford to keep children as children when it needed soldiers and priests and bodies to fill the gaps.
So at fifteen, you were done.
You were a person.
You had rights and responsibilities and nobody owed you anything anymore.
He'd been fifteen for a long time.
The first time, he'd been fourteen and alone in the St. Celeste orphanage, watching other kids get chosen.
Families came through twice a year.
They walked the rows of cots and looked at the children the way merchants looked at produce, checking for damage, checking for value.
They never stopped at his cot.
He had blue hair and blue eyes.
The kind of blue that didn't belong to any family in the capital, didn't belong to any bloodline the Church recognized.
A Bluebird.
That was the word they used, and they didn't mean it kindly.
A northern anomaly.
Something that made people uncomfortable in the way that things do when they can't be categorized.
Nobody adopted a Bluebird.
He'd aged out of the orphanage at fifteen, walked across the courtyard into the academy's novice program, and that had been that.
No ceremony or family waiting, just a new set of robes and a cot that was slightly better than the last one.
He hadn't cried about it then, he didn't think about it now.
Much.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous those substances are?"
Odessa's voice cut through the quiet. She had Lucian backed against the wall, her green eyes burning.
"They're addictive. They ruin lives. You could have killed someone."
Lucian mumbled something about knowing what he was doing.
"Fun?" Odessa's voice dropped, which was worse than shouting.
"The Kingdom is on the edge of collapse. Our faith is crumbling. And you're playing with black market alchemy because you're bored?"
She stepped closer. Lucian shrank.
Raziel watched.
He'd filed Lucian as a type. Noble, arrogant and predictable.
The kind of person who'd never had to sit in a row and wait to be chosen and go unchosen, over and over, until the waiting stopped mattering.
But this Lucian, the one going quiet under his cousin's anger, the one who'd chosen to stay at the academy instead of going home to a duchy that would have taken him back without question, this one didn't fit the file.
Raziel didn't know what to do with that yet.
He filed it away.
***
Half an hour later, they were in a tavern.
Crowded, dim, tucked into a side street.
The air smelled like roast meat and spiced wine.
Nobody here would ask questions about a Paladin sitting with two teenagers who were technically adults.
Lucian had recovered completely.
He was already flirting with a waitress and telling a story that was getting louder with each sentence, as if Odessa hadn't been about to arrest him thirty minutes ago.
The emotional recovery of a cockroach.
Odessa hadn't touched her food.
Hood up, watching the door.
Raziel picked at his plate without appetite. His mind was running the numbers.
High-ranking Paladin.
Lucian's cousin.
Suspicious of him, but not hostile.
Motivated by duty, not politics.
If he played this right, she was exactly the kind of asset he needed for what came next.
"You're quiet, Raziel," Lucian said, pushing a cup toward him. "Try the wine. It'll loosen you up."
"I'm fine."
"You're staring at your food like it insulted you."
"Lucian."
"What?"
"Stop talking."
Lucian opened his mouth, Raziel looked at him. Lucian closed his mouth, which was a minor miracle.
Raziel turned to Odessa.
"Lady Odessa. I need your help."
Her green eyes locked onto him analyzing.
He'd learned a long time ago that the best way to seem trustworthy was to not flinch when someone was trying to read you.
"Help with what, Brother?"
"A friend of mine is missing," he said, keeping his voice low.
"A Sister at the Academy, she disappeared weeks ago. No one's seen her, no transfer notice or explanation."
"A friend?" Lucian cut in, grinning.
"Raziel's special friend. Sister Seraphina, the bookworm." He winked at Odessa. "I think our little Raziel is in love."
"Shut up, Lucian."
Odessa ignored her cousin. Her Paladin instincts had activated, he could see it in the way her posture changed, the way her eyes stopped moving toward the door.
"What happened to her?"
"She disappeared," Raziel said, choosing each word. "And I found something, a message on the library wall, written in blood."
He paused.
"The symbol matched the marks of necromancers."
The word landed on the table like a dropped weapon.
The tavern noise didn't stop, but it seemed to, for the three of them.
"What?" Odessa leaned forward. "Are you certain?"
"It matched what I've seen in the forbidden texts," Raziel said.
He let a small amount of fear show in his voice. "The ones they say were destroyed centuries ago."
"That's impossible," Odessa said. "They couldn't have entered St. Celeste without inside help."
"Without whose help?" Lucian interrupted, mouth full of bread. "Those are old wives' tales."
Odessa ignored him. Her gaze stayed on Raziel.
"Unless..." she breathed.
Unless it was someone from the inside.
Raziel didn't say it. He let her reach it herself.
People believed conclusions more when they thought they'd found them.
"Every Paladin Order should be investigating this," Odessa said. "A disappearance like this doesn't go unnoticed."
"No one is looking for her," Raziel said. "It's as if they wanted her disappearance to stay quiet."
He let the silence do the rest.
Odessa's jaw tightened.
"It's as if they were involved"