Fog always had a flavor in Night Haven.

  This morning it tasted like ash and static. Like old wards burning down.

  Christine Silvers tucked her chin deeper into her collar and kept moving. The delivery pouch bumped gently against her side, its weight oddly comforting. Some jobs were heavier than others—literally, magically, metaphorically. This one ticked all three boxes.

  She didn’t know what was in the container. That wasn’t her job. She didn’t ask, didn’t peek, didn’t speculate. Rule number one: Deliver the package. Rule number two: Don’t die doing it.

  Everything else was just a matter of improvisation.

  She took the long way back.

  Not out of paranoia—though she wasn’t ruling that out—but because habits saved lives. And trail signs worked best when they weren’t obvious.

  Halfway down a crumbling side street, Christine slowed her pace and ducked beneath a sagging awning covered in frost-brittle ivy. The wall behind it was scored with old graffiti and burnt spell tags, most too faded to read.

  Perfect.

  She reached into her coat and palmed a chalk stub—pale gray, cold to the touch, wrapped in a thin coil of copper thread. One of Rekka’s little tricks. It looked like nothing, but to the right eyes, it burned like a flare.

  Christine crouched and made the mark near the base of the wall: three lines, one broken in the middle. Courier code. Message received. Path clear. Contingency in play.It would hold for twenty-four hours. Maybe less if someone with the wrong kind of magic scrubbed it.

  She stood, blew warmth into her gloves, and glanced once—just once—back the way she came.

  The trail sign shimmered faintly, then faded into the wall.

  That was enough.

  She kept moving.

  She was three steps past the charm shop when she caught the sound she didn’t want to hear: heavy boots, off-rhythm breathing, and the unmistakable metallic clink of someone who carried too much gear and not enough self-awareness.

  Christine held her pace—steady, casual, uninterested. Just pivoted down the side alley with a rusted-out bike rack and a drain that hadn’t worked since the last leyline surge.

  The boots followed.

  She ducked under a crooked support beam and turned left without looking back. One more block and—

  “Courier!”

  Christine sighed.

  She turned around slowly, one hand in her pocket, the other loose by her side.

  The man standing at the alley’s mouth was broad-shouldered, fire-red faced, and sweating under a too-tight coat lined with arcane thread. Some kind of homebrew armor. His boots were reinforced, and he carried a wand holster on his belt that hadn’t seen a cleaning charm in years.

  It took her half a second to place him.

  Grell Mavrin. Potion broker. Short temper. Had once tried to bribe her into breaking a confidentiality clause for “just a peek” at a Fae delivery.She hadn’t taken the bribe.

  “You got nerve walking this route after what you cost me,” he growled.

  Christine tilted her head. “You mean the job where you forgot to mention the bottle was volatile past the second moon phase and nearly ruptured my bag?”

  “You broke the enchantment when you refused the privacy clause!”

  “It was full of memory siphons,” she said, voice flat. “That’s not a clause, Grell. That’s a trap. I don’t run traps.”

  “You lost me a client.”

  She shrugged. “You lost them when you decided to screw them over with mislabeled inventory. I just happened to be the one who read the inventory.”

  Grell’s hand twitched near his wand.

  Christine didn’t move. Not visibly. But her weight shifted, subtle. Balanced.

  “You don’t want to do that,” she said. Calm. Direct.

  “Maybe I want to remind people what happens when you act like you’re above the rules.”

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  “I am the rules, Grell. Courier code. You remember what that means?”

  He sneered. “It means no one cares if something happens to you between drop points.”

  She gave him a long look. “You’re real confident this is one of those places.”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. The city buzzed low behind the tension. A single drip of water hit the pavement. Christine never broke eye contact.

  Then Grell swore under his breath and stepped back.

  “This isn’t over,” he said.

  “It was over the second you opened your own package,” Christine replied. “Try not to screw up the next one.”

  He vanished around the corner, boots stomping hard enough to echo.Christine exhaled, turned back toward the street, and walked faster.

  She made it to the edge of the next block before her pulse started to level out.

  Grell was a pest, not a predator. Noise and sweat and short-sighted rage. Easy enough to read, easier still to avoid once he’d burned off the bravado.

  Christine adjusted the strap on her courier bag and rolled her shoulders once. The tension didn’t vanish, but it slid back to manageable levels.

  She reached the corner and started across the street.

  That’s when she felt it.

  Fast. Cold. Wrong.

  Not the creeping dread from the vault. Not Grell’s clumsy tail.

  This was precision.

  She pivoted mid-step.

  The figure was already moving.

  Tall. Hooded. Gliding, not running—but closing the distance with unnatural speed. No faction colors. No visible weapons. Just motion and intent.

  Christine’s hand went to her pocket. Not the knife charm. Not yet.

  “Wrong target,” she called. Loud, clear.

  The figure didn’t slow.

  Christine swore and turned—sprinted for the alley to her left. Two steps in, the shadows behind the dumpster shifted. Another one.

  Flanked.

  She ducked low, pivoted hard, and slammed her shoulder into the second figure before they fully stepped into her path. It wasn’t graceful, but it was fast—and it gave her the space to bolt down a narrow service lane lined with old fuse boxes and dead rune lanterns.A shout followed. Not a name. A signal.

  She kept her gaze forward, resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder.

  Christine vaulted a low gate, landed in a crouch, and cut down another side passage—this one steeper, darker. Her breath stayed steady. Controlled. She’d been chased before.

  But not like this.

  Whoever they were, they weren’t trying to warn her off. They weren’t trying to talk.

  They were trying to take.

  She didn’t stop until she reached Marrow Square—a half-dead plaza flanked by shuttered businesses, vending oracles, and a mail drop warded by three competing factions.

  Neutral. Tense. Perfect for a pass-through.

  She dropped into a noodle stall at the far end, sitting like she belonged there. Didn’t order. Just waited.

  Fifteen seconds. Thirty. A minute.

  No footsteps. No watchers. Just the hiss of noodles and the quiet hum of city static.

  Christine let her head rest against the window frame.

  “It's fine,” she muttered.

  It wasn’t.

  The handoff point was nestled between two abandoned warehouses on the edge of Ashmill District. Christine arrived two minutes early. She circled once—standard protocol—then slipped into the narrow gap and found the marker.

  Three scratches in the brick wall. Blue chalk smear.

  She unslung the courier bag and placed the container on the ledge.Then she waited.

  A click. Movement.

  A figure approached, fully covered, face masked in shimmer mesh.

  They examined the package. Left a matching sigil token. Picked it up.

  Christine stepped forward, took the token, turned it over.

  Authentic. Clean. Impossibly boring.

  It was done.

  The job was done.

  So why did her gut still twist like she’d just handed over something alive?