Chương 207: 30. Destroying Evidence 2

I couldn't laugh. Because I knew that feeling far too well—the specific nausea of realizing it isn't that you're unlucky, it's that the entire current has turned, and you happen to be standing in it. Yozora continued.

"As we moved outward, the sea routes and coastal roads grew harder to travel. Resupply ports that used to let us through stopped doing so. Sea lanes with no fighting anywhere near them were searched like it was wartime. In some stretches, the Sea Dragon Clan sealed the passage outright." Ignicia's eyes darkened. Visibly. So did mine. Because none of this was theoretical to us. Naval blockades. Mass inspections. Coastal troop repositioning—Ignicia and I had collided with all of it personally.

Yozora wasn't telling a different story. She was tracing the same map from a different road. This time, Lei Lian didn't wait for me to speak. She said, low: "Consistent with the tower's border reports." Yozora didn't acknowledge it. She let a breath pass, then said:"This one didn't dare go back last night—not because she feared the gates would close." For the first time, a thin rasp entered her voice.

"It's because she believed something would happen outside the city first. Today." The room went quiet again. Not from surprise this time—from the weight of something too direct to deflect. Like someone had set a knife on the table. Unsheathed. Visible to everyone. Ignicia didn't ask about method. Didn't ask how she knew. She only looked at Yozora, for a long moment, weighing something exceedingly fine. She wasn't judging whether Yozora sounded honest.

She was judging whether what Yozora feared was the same thing we were already hunting. Finally, she spoke.

"Are you afraid of me?" Yozora didn't answer right away. She was smart enough to know the question wasn't are you afraid of a dragon princess. It was something with considerably higher stakes. After two long breaths, she said quietly:"Yes." Ignicia's expression didn't shift.

"Then why didn't you simply run further, last night?" Yozora lowered her eyes.

"Because in some places, running gets you killed faster than staying still." The moment she said it, I knew she'd cleared at least half the test. Because that wasn't a pretty answer. That was the kind of thing you only say after you've run, and seen, and survived, and learned the lesson through your own skin. Ignicia finally moved her gaze off Yozora and onto me. My whole body tensed on reflex.

"You've all heard her," she said. The words were for the room, but her eyes stayed on me.

"Nothing she's described is new." I nodded.

"I've seen the border myself."

"I collided with the sea blockade directly," Ignicia added, flat. Lei Lian said, low: "Matches the tower's reports." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Three separate roads. Three separate points of contact. The same picture. Yozora's account had just stopped being a story a stranger spun to save her own skin. It had become a third coordinate on a map that was resolving into something uncomfortably coherent.

I understood, roughly, why Ignicia hadn't simply had her pinned down and interrogated outright. Interrogating a person is easy. But when that person happens to describe exactly what you've already seen with your own eyes, she stops being merely a person. She becomes a signpost. Ignicia looked back at Yozora.

"What you're still not willing to say—I won't force it out of you. Not yet." Yozora's lashes flickered, barely. So did my eyebrows. Her Highness, saying "not yet" instead of "tell me now or burn"? That sentence alone deserved its own entry in the Harbor District's Annals of Unexplained Phenomena. I revised that assessment about three seconds later.

"Not because I've gone soft," Ignicia said.

"Because forcing you now wouldn't get me anything useful." …Right. There she is. She leaned back against the edge of the table, tapping one finger against the wood.

"Cedric."

"Here."

"You didn't bring her here just so I could clean up after your evening's stupidity, did you?"

"Of course not."

"Good." Her gaze swept over me, cold as a winter inspection.

"Then tell me. Do we hold her here, or send her back out along the line she came in on?" The full weight of the room landed squarely in front of me. She already had her own answer. She was making me say it aloud. I took a breath.

"If we hold her now," I said, "the connection outside the city dies immediately. The fact that she didn't dare go back last night means it's already unstable. If she disappears into our custody, whoever's watching will only pull back faster." Ignicia said nothing. Which meant I had to keep going.

"But if we let her go back—or at least let the outside believe she can go back the way she came—we get to see exactly who panics over the fact that she's still breathing." The harbor commander frowned at me like a man who thought the stakes were too high. Alvira's unease showed plainly in her posture. Jessi narrowed her eyes, clearly calculating whether this particular bet was worth the table. Yozora said nothing.

She only watched me—quietly enough that I couldn't tell whether she was checking if I was pushing her into the fire, or checking whether I at least understood what exactly I was pushing her into. Ignicia studied me for a long moment. Then she smiled. Thin. Dangerous.

"So the room fee wasn't a complete waste after all."

"…Thank you for the compliment."

"That wasn't a compliment." She turned back to Yozora.

"You may go back." Yozora's breath caught, half a beat.

"But not the way you're imagining." Ignicia's voice stayed perfectly even.

"I'm not releasing you because I trust you. I'm releasing you because I want to see whether you're worth someone else silencing before I get the chance." At that, Yozora's fingers finally curled tight. She understood. We all did. This wasn't clemency. This was live bait. Ignicia went on, tone as placid as someone deciding what to order for lunch.

"You go back the way you came. How you return, where you go, who you see—exactly as you normally would." Her eyes stayed fixed on Yozora.

"I'll have people on you. If you step off the line, I burn you first. If you don't—" She paused. The curl at the corner of her mouth was, in a very specific and technical sense, cruel.

"—then we'll see who's in such a hurry to move first today." The room fell so silent that the only sound left was the occasional soft crackle of the lamp burning through its oil. Yozora stood there, her face not pale, exactly, but I could see the precise moment she understood: she hadn't been protected. She'd been set on the edge of a blade. And the crueler truth was this— She had no other road. If she refused to go back, the line outside the city would collapse instantly.

If she went back, someone might already be waiting to collect on her. Ignicia's whole plan depended on the latter being true. Caught between them, my chest tightened. Not from pity. From the recognition that this was, in all likelihood, the only move on the board that wasn't outright stupid. Yozora stayed silent a long while. When she finally spoke, her voice had gone very soft.

"…And if something truly happens after this one returns?" Ignicia looked at her, and answered without a shred of warmth.

"Then you'd better still be alive by the time I get there." My temples throbbed. From anyone else's mouth, that sentence would have been a threat. From hers, it somehow functioned—against all reasonable expectation—as a kind of guarantee. Yozora blinked, clearly startled. She probably hadn't expected a dragon princess's promise of protection to sound structurally identical to a warrant that might see her burned alongside whoever came for her. Slowly, she lowered her head. Not submission.

More like acknowledgment—the kind that comes when you've accepted you're already inside the game, and pretending otherwise is a luxury you no longer have.

"…This one understands." Ignicia nodded once, as if the matter were settled. Then she turned to Lei Lian.

"Have your people on the perimeter."

"Yes," Lei Lian said.

"Jessi."

"Right here."

"If she tries anything on the road, break her legs first. Then bring her back." Jessi smiled—a far more genuine smile than any she'd worn at my expense that morning.

"Understood. I'll keep a close eye on the pretty little key our young master brought home." I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose. Great. Now even the "key" metaphor was official policy. Alvira glanced at Yozora and added, quietly:"Her scent is even more tangled today than it was last night." Yozora looked up and met her eyes directly, for the first time. There was no hostility in it—more a brief, quiet recognition.

She'd realized, apparently, that the dragon princess wasn't the only one in this room who could see what she'd brought back with her.