The pouch with the wrong wax didn't feel like a close call.
It felt like a message.
Someone inside Grimridge had still been willing to risk carrying a lock tool in broad daylight, which meant two things at once: Rowan's network had more hands than Cassian had cut so far, and those hands believed Cassian's attention was stretched thin enough to miss small details. That second belief was the more dangerous one, because it usually meant a bigger move was already in motion somewhere else.
Cassian didn't say any of that out loud. He didn't need to. The way he changed Sable's route in mid-step, the way his hand stayed anchored at her waist through the corridors, the way he spoke in short, quiet instructions to Jace without looking like he was giving orders, it all carried the same underlying truth.
Grimridge wasn't being tested by chance anymore.
It was being measured.
