Page 16 of Orc’s Hex

I close it behind me.

“The person maintaining the sigil is inside Blackscar. They were in the Foundation Crypt last night. Blood in the channels, fresh—hours old at most.”

He doesn’t move. Absorbs it the way he absorbs everything—total stillness, active inside.

“How regularly.”

“Monthly at minimum. Possibly more in the past year.” I cross to the fireplace—the fire is the only warm thing in here and I’ve had three hours of sleep—and turn to face him. “Whoever this is knows the sigil’s architecture well enough to refine it. They’re not just keeping it alive. They’re improving the targeting.”

He moves away from the window, putting himself between the fire and me, and the shift in light makes it hard to read his expression.

He doesn’t want me to see what that landed on him.

“Who knows this hold well enough to move through it at night without being stopped.”

“Shorter list than it sounds. Someone the night watch wouldn’t challenge. Someone whose presence in the lower corridors doesn’t register as unusual.”

“My people.”

“Or someone who passes as your people.”

He goes still. The firelight cuts his jaw hard. His hands are loose at his sides in the way they’re loose when he’s deciding something.

A century of running this hold. Every person in it, known. One of them the reason his bloodline is dying.

“I’ll need the personnel records. Anyone with access to the lower crypt levels. The Blood Archive⁠—“

“You’ll have them.”

Flat. Immediate.

“I need to go back down. Properly, during the day, with time to finish reading the maintenance record. There’s more in the sub-inscription than I could get last night.”

He turns. That measuring look, and beneath it—something that has moved past assessment in the past two days.

He’s looking at me the way I was looking at the sigil last night. Like I’m something he needs to understand before he can decide what to do about it.

“You went alone last night.”

“I did.”

“You told Varek⁠—“

“I told Varek nothing I said was a lie. Nothing I did last night compromised the job or got anyone killed.”

He crosses the room. Stops two feet from me. The fire is behind me now and behind him it’s window-gray and cold, and the distance he’s put between us is the kind that isn’t comfortable, isn’t distant. It’s deliberate.

“You don’t go back down alone.”

“I work better⁠—“

“I know how you work.” His voice stays level but the air between us is not. “Someone fed that sigil while you were in the building. You were alone in the same room with it. You don’t go back alone.”

Not a request. He’s standing close enough that I can see the shadow beneath his jaw, and his eyes are on me with a weight that has nothing to do with the contract I signed.

“Fine.”

He wasn’t expecting that. A fraction of tension in his posture releases—barely visible, the kind of shift you only catch if you’ve been watching how he holds himself.