“Got you! Got you!”
On the reef-strewn beach, a pale paper doll the size of a human hand clung to Rhine’s pant leg.
Its mouth had been cut into a permanent smile, but the voice that poured out of it was neither male nor female—just sharp, grating, and wrong.
“Got you! Got you!”
Skye froze.
“An investigator’s paper spirit…” she whispered.
Paper spirits were cut-paper charms infused with a thread of magic. Most were fragile little helpers—good for carrying notes, lighting candles, fetching keys.
But an investigator’s paper spirit was made for hunting people.
It worked like a tracking hound, except it didn’t need a scent. Investigators would animate the paper at a crime scene, let it “taste” whatever traces were left behind, then release it.
If it found a matching trace, it flew. It latched. And it screamed.
It wasn’t perfect—too easy to disrupt, too easy to break—but when a case had no leads, it was the kind of desperate tool the precinct would still use.
Skye’s mind raced.
If they’d brought one of those… they were investigating a major case.
And Rhine had been at that scene.
The soldiers arrived in a hard circle, but they didn’t shove him or draw steel.
They couldn’t.
Rhine was a Free Man before the Sea Throne—personally titled by the Crown.
So the Windrest knights stayed polite, even as their men formed an airtight wall.
Skye, as an “insignificant black cat,” got exactly one moment of respect: a soldier kicked her aside for being in the way.
She landed badly, hissing, then crept around the ring to listen.
Rhine, meanwhile, looked almost bored.
“What is this about?” he asked, calm as if the screaming paper doll was a mild inconvenience.
The lead knight lifted two fingers. The paper spirit peeled itself off Rhine’s leg and fluttered into the knight’s hand, its cut mouth snapping shut.
“Mr. Rhine,” the knight said with a thin, unreadable smile, “we’re investigating the murder of three Windrest noble knights outside the city. By decree, you’ll need to come with us.”
A “request,” spoken like a courtesy.
A corridor opened in the soldiers’ ring—narrow, controlled.
Rhine only nodded. He didn’t argue. He didn’t resist.
He simply went.
*
When their footsteps faded, only Skye remained on the rocks, the sea wind turning her fur to needles.
“Three noble knights…” she muttered.
She remembered that road.
Days ago, she and Rhine—Rhine disguised, Rhine carrying a legal identity that wasn’t his—had been stopped by three patrol knights. Noble-born Transcendents. They’d been searching for answers about Moros’s death.
Rhine had tried to de-escalate.
But the knights had pressed harder. Threatened to lock their supernatural abilities. Threatened to haul them back to Windrest Keep.
Eventually, words ran out.
Rhine killed them.
Now the keep was sending paper spirits to hunt the murderer.
And this time… the paper spirit had found him.
Skye paced the damp rock, panic rising.
If Rhine were innocent, the court could be forced to follow procedure. With his Crown title, Fell wouldn’t dare go too far.
But Rhine wasn’t innocent.
He was guilty as sin.
What stopped Skye cold was a different detail.
Rhine had killed them as an Infiltrator.
No one—no one except her—knew he had that second Class.
Which meant the autopsy would show an Infiltrator’s signature on the wounds… and it would point away from Rhine.
Unless Fell had already accounted for that.
Skye’s eyes narrowed.
“Then I’ll go first,” she decided.
She turned and ran for Windrest Keep.
*
Windrest Keep’s Storm’s Eye hall was all stone and gold and practiced silence.
Governor Panglos Fell sat high on his dragon-carved throne, wearing surprise like a ceremonial cloak.
“My dear Viscount,” he said, looking down at the grieving man below, “I sent you to catch a killer. Why have you dragged Mr. Rhine into my hall?”
Viscount Albert Tilly stood with wet eyes and a trembling jaw.
“Albert,” the governor continued smoothly, “I know you’ve lost two sons. And now your niece. But you can’t accuse Mr. Rhine without cause.”
He even turned toward Rhine with a touch of apology.
Rhine understood immediately.
Good cop. Bad cop.
The “victim” had a face—Albert Tilly, the grieving noble, demanding justice. And the victim had “found” Rhine.
So now Rhine had to prove his innocence.
If he could, Fell didn’t have to tear the mask off and make it personal.
If he couldn’t… then even a Crown title wouldn’t protect him from the charge of killing nobles.
Albert stepped forward, voice shaking with righteous fury.
“Governor, I followed your order. The killer was hidden—cunning. So I consulted a scholar and used an investigator’s paper spirit. It was the paper spirit that seized Rhine.”
Fell clucked his tongue.
“A paper spirit? A child’s parlor trick,” he said loudly. “Viscount, this is absurd.”
“It’s not!” Albert snapped back. “The paper spirit finds anyone who’s been to the crime scene. Mr. Rhine must explain why he was there.”
Fell’s expression softened into something almost paternal as he turned to Rhine.
“Rhine,” he said warmly, “if the viscount believes you were at the scene, then perhaps you can tell him where you’ve been these past days. Who you’ve met. Let him rest.”
Every gaze in the hall swung to Rhine.
Rhine only smiled.
He couldn’t give them an alibi. He’d been disguised. Anyone who’d seen him wouldn’t recognize him now.
So he pivoted—back to procedure.
In Windrest, unclosed cases meant bodies were preserved in special alchemical solutions to protect evidence. Even nobles didn’t escape that rule.
A wound’s supernatural “aspect” could be read.
If the killer had been an Infiltrator, it would show.
And everyone in this room believed Rhine was “only” a Hunter.
Rhine was about to speak—
When the great doors opened.
Bootsteps crossed the hall without hesitation.
Skye walked in.
Not as a cat.
As a young woman in light armor, chin lifted, posture sharp enough to cut.
She strode past Rhine as if he didn’t exist, then stopped at an angle before him.
In the same moment, a whisper threaded through the soul-contract between them.
Stop staring. We’re strangers right now.
Rhine’s eyes widened.
So that was it.
Skye could become a cat, and she could become human. Of course she could. She was a dragon—shape was just another kind of weapon.
And the “Great Diviner of Windrest Keep” everyone whispered about…
Rhine felt a flush of belated embarrassment.
He’d mocked that diviner’s predictions once—right in front of Skye.
Skye ignored his expression and faced the throne.
“What is it?” Fell asked, impatience bleeding through his voice. “Why are you here?”
“Because of a divination, Father,” Skye said, smooth and bold. “And because this concerns Mr. Rhine.”
The hall stirred. Nobles leaned in. Even Fell watched her more carefully.
Skye took out a report and stepped toward Albert Tilly.
“Viscount,” she said, speaking as a Transcendent to a noble, “an investigator’s paper spirit is a low-grade spell. It’s easily disrupted. It’s not evidence.”
She tapped the report.
“If you want the truth, you need the autopsy.”
She handed it over.
“I had this retrieved from the precinct. Your niece—and the two knights—were killed by an Infiltrator.”
Albert stared down, face shifting through shock and calculation.
That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
Fell recovered first, laughing lightly as if it had all been a harmless misunderstanding.
“I told you,” he said grandly. “A mistake.”
His smile thinned as he looked back at Skye.
“But tell me, Skye… why did you come in person?”