TOBIAS’ POV

That was how I ended up in Catherine’s facility, wearing another person’s face and sneaking through her corridors.

Catherine was cautious, especially with Evelyn. Though she sometimes needed her power, she never allowed her near the true core of the operation.

At first, Evelyn’s questions had been dismissed with fond indulgence. Later, they were met with irritation.

After several arguments, Catherine began locking her out of meetings, diverting her access, assigning her to peripheral stabilization work and ceremonial tasks that looked important enough to soothe pride but revealed nothing essential.

She knew Evelyn was wavering.

Of course she knew. Catherine had not survived this long by failing to recognize doubt in the people around her.

But doubt was not yet betrayal, and Catherine’s arrogance made her believe Evelyn could still be managed.

That arrogance gave us room.

Under my guidance, Evelyn’s craft steadied in ways Catherine had never encouraged.

In turn, she taught me the rhythms of Catherine’s facility, the language of its staff, the habits of its guards, and the blind spots that arose because every tyrant eventually began to trust the fear they inspired.

Our plan was simple in concept but nearly impossible in execution.

Break the project from within.

Not destroy the facility outright. That would have been satisfying, but stupid.

Too many prisoners. Too many unknown substances. Too many systems that might kill every subject if disrupted without precision.

Catherine had built safeguards into her cruelty, as clever monsters often did.

We had to be smarter.

Soon enough, we found an opportunity, and we succeeded in freeing a test subject.

I still remembered the night Evelyn came to me with his file, her hands trembling—not from fear, but from rage.

“He’s still alive,” she said.

I looked up from the schematic I’d been studying.

“Who?”

“Aaron. One of the werewolf subjects. His mind is damaged, but not gone. Catherine listed him as unusable, but she hasn’t discarded him because there’s something in his response pattern she wants to study.”

Freeing him had taken three weeks of preparation and seven minutes of action.

Seven minutes in which Evelyn nearly burned through her reservoir, I broke two fingers forcing a service latch that should have opened cleanly, and Aaron had staggered through the extraction route half-conscious, his eyes wide and blank.

But we got him out. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

We moved him far enough for another contact to take over, someone Catherine’s people would not immediately connect to Evelyn or me.

By the time security discovered a subject had vanished, the trail had already split in four directions.

For one brief, hopeful moment, I thought we had found a rhythm. A plan of action.

Then Catherine tightened everything.

More guards. More wards. New access protocols. Rotating patrol routes. Psychic sweeps. Staff reassigned without warning. Entire labs moved overnight.

The project did not stop. It buried itself deeper.

After Aaron, we spent weeks clawing for another opening and found none large enough to use without collapsing the entire operation on our heads.

Evelyn grew quieter during that time. More withdrawn. More dangerous in the way people become when guilt begins sharpening them from the inside.

I feared for her. Feared that her need for absolution would push her to make a mistake.

Then Margaret arrived.

At first, I did not know it was her.

There were whispers about an important guest-turned-restricted asset, a woman Catherine had visited personally.

Anyone Catherine took a personal interest in was definitely worth looking into.

It took days before I confirmed her identity.

Margaret Lockwood.

Older, hollowed by captivity, stripped of the power she had once worn like a crown, but alive.

The first time I saw her through the narrow gap of a service corridor as guards escorted her to the upper level, my body reacted before my mind did.

My hand went to the blade hidden beneath my sleeve, and Evelyn had to step close enough to murmur a warning through her teeth.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Margaret’s presence changed everything.

Not only because she was an old friend.

Not only because she had trusted Catherine once, as so many had, and was now paying the price for that trust.

Margaret mattered because of what she carried.

Even weakened, even drained, even with Sylvia reduced to a shadow of the wolf she’d once been, Margaret’s bloodline held power Catherine clearly needed.

Power that might also be the fracture point in the structure we had been trying to break.

Psionic inheritance did not behave like witchcraft.

It did not obey the same channels. It did not root itself in the same bargains. It moved through blood, memory, resonance, and will in ways that could not be fully mapped by spellcraft alone.

Catherine had stolen from it once during Sera’s sealing, but theft was not mastery.

If Catherine needed Margaret’s wolf to bridge the hollowness in her resurrected puppets, then Margaret was not merely a victim.

She was leverage.

A key.

For several days after discovering Margaret, I watched. Waited. Tracked the guards assigned to her. Learned the timing of her meals, her movements, Catherine’s visits.

The plan was not to contact her yet. Evelyn insisted we needed a cleaner route, a stronger exit strategy, and more certainty about the wards around the dungeon before risking exposure.

Then Margaret was thrown back into the lower cell after Catherine had revealed Edward’s puppet to her.

The guards were careless after returning her. They logged the transfer late. One patrol was doubled at the west junction but missed the east corridor rotation.

A caretaker was ordered to check Margaret’s condition after impact.

That caretaker became me.

Which brought me to this moment, with Evelyn’s anger charging the changing room like the beginnings of a storm.

“So," I drawled, "are you going to lecture me or simply turn me into a toad and be done with it?”

Her glare deepened. “That spell is an insult to serious witchcraft.”

“So the lecture, then.”

“Tobias.”

I exhaled and headed toward the sink, the caretaker’s scarf hanging loose around my neck.

“I know what I risked.”

“No,” Evelyn said. “You know the danger in theory. You don’t know the extent of what Catherine is capable of."

I hadn’t heard Evelyn refer to Catherine as ’Mother’ since that day in the bar.

“I got there just in time," I said. "I stopped Margaret from killing herself.”

“And I am grateful she is alive,” Evelyn said, stepping closer. “But if you are caught, Catherine will not simply kill you. She will take you apart piece by piece because you are connected to Sera, to Margaret, to the original seal, to every unanswered question she has. You are not just an intruder, Tobias. You are a loose end with a pulse.”

Evelyn was right.

Catherine would not waste me if she found me. She would study me. She would carve through every memory I had of Sera’s childhood, every method I had used to stabilize her, every scrap of research I had gathered in the years since.

And if she learned Evelyn had helped me...

I looked at her.

The anger in her eyes was intense, but so was the fear she tried to bury beneath it.

“You should not have followed me down here,” I said.

“Not only did I,” she replied. “I covered the hole you left in the schedule and improvised three ‘emergencies’ to keep west patrol busy. You’re welcome.”

I pressed a hand to my chest. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you cared about me.”

Her eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mouth betrayed the faintest twitch.

“What did you tell Margaret?”

“To stay alive and alert. Not to agree to anything involving Sylvia.”

“You risked your life for a pep talk?” Evelyn shook her head. “Crazy old man.”

I chuckled, pushing off the sink and crossing to the bench where the rest of my disguise waited.

“So did it work?” Evelyn asked, watching me through the mirror. “Did you fix your broken friend?”

“Margaret is not broken,” I said quietly.

“She’s close,” she replied. “And close is where Catherine does her best work.”

The words hung there, ugly because they were true.

Catherine did not merely destroy people. She waited until they were nearly destroyed, then offered them a shape to crawl into, one she had designed in advance.

That was what she had done with Sera.

With Evelyn, though Evelyn had clawed her way back before the shape fully closed around her.

“We need to move faster,” I said.

Evelyn let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “Why the rush? Tired of your Maldives vacation?”

I ignored her snark.

“Margaret’s presence changes the timeline.”

“Catherine’s suspicion changes it more.”

I looked at her. “Has she said anything?”

“Not directly.” Evelyn’s mouth tightened. “But she asked why I was near the lower medical corridor yesterday.”

“What did you say?”

“That I was checking inventory discrepancies after the sedative count came up wrong.”

“Did the sedative count come up wrong?”

“It did after I changed it.”

I almost smiled. “You’re getting better at lying.”

“Really? I had a terrible teacher.”

“Ungrateful student.”

“Reckless mentor.”

For a moment, the years between us settled into the room—the old boatyard bar, the chalk circles, the arguments, the first fragile trust, Aaron stumbling half-alive through a service tunnel while Evelyn held a ward together with blood running from her nose.

We had come far.

Evelyn sobered.

“Catherine believes someone is interfering again,” she said. “She doesn’t know who, and I don’t think she suspects me fully yet, but she is narrowing the walls. If we want to use Margaret as a fracture point, we have to decide how before Catherine makes her move.”

I nodded.

“We keep Margaret alive,” I said. “We keep Sylvia unclaimed. We find out when Catherine intends to attempt the extraction, and before that happens, we give Margaret a way to either escape or sabotage the ritual from inside it.”

Evelyn stared at me.

“That is not a plan. That is a collection of wishes.”

“It is the beginning of a plan.”

“It is barely a direction.”

I gave her a look. “You—”

A knock sounded at the far door of the changing room.

Evelyn turned her head, listening.

“Shift change,” she murmured. “You need to be gone in three minutes.”

I picked up the scarf and began tying it again, watching the man in the mirror disappear beneath the woman Catherine’s guards ignored.

Before I finished, Evelyn spoke.

“Tobias.”

There was something different in her tone.

I looked at her.

She hesitated, which was rare enough to matter.

“When you said I could have become a great witch...” Her gaze dropped, then lifted again with irritation, as if the vulnerability had offended her by existing. “Did you mean it?”

I thought of the boatyard bar, of the first spell she threw at me, of Catherine’s shadow stretched long across a life that should have been allowed to choose its own shape.

I thought of Sera, too, because regret had a cruel way of making echoes out of unrelated people.

“Yes,” I said.

Evelyn’s expression did not change much, but the air in the room eased by degrees.

“You still can,” I added, tying the scarf beneath my chin. “Catherine built half her empire by convincing powerful people they were only useful inside the cages she made for them.”

Evelyn looked at me for a long moment.

Then she straightened, and when she spoke again, her voice was all business.

“Then let’s break the cages.”