Chapter 8: The Double-Edged Charm

Chapter 8: The Double-Edged Charm

The last notes of the waltz faded, but the dissonant chord of Katarina’s offer still echoed in Alex’s mind. He stood frozen on the edge of the dance floor, the glittering ballroom seeming to tilt on its axis. The entire house is infested. Her words were a poison of their own, seeping into his assumptions, corroding his certainty. He had been hunting a snake from a rival garden, only to be told his own was riddled with them.

He retreated to the relative anonymity of the marble column, his eyes sweeping the crowd with a new, terrifying filter. Every smiling face, every polite nod now seemed like a potential mask. Who was the real enemy? The glamorous Polish spy who offered a truce, or the loyal Angevin lord beside her, secretly festering with heretical rot?

Valerius reappeared at his side, his face grim. "Her glamour receded when she left you," he stated, his gaze following the Countess as she gracefully accepted a glass of wine from a smitten young lieutenant. "What did she say to you?"

"She..." Alex began, struggling to frame the sheer complexity of her proposal. "She claims the Choronzon Cult is a mutual enemy."

Valerius made a scoffing sound. "A classic misdirection. Sowing internal distrust is the oldest play in the Commonwealth's book. Do not—"

He never finished the sentence. A sudden, sharp gasp cut through the ballroom’s genteel hum. On the ducal dais, the Duke of Normandy, who had been laughing with an elderly duchess moments before, had gone rigid. His face, ruddy with wine and good cheer, was now a ghastly, mottled white. He clutched his chest, his breath coming in ragged, bird-like pants. His heart, visible even through the thick brocade of his coat, hammered against his ribs at an impossible, frantic rhythm.

Panic, instant and contagious, ripped through the crowd. Women screamed. Men shouted for the Royal Physicians. The palace guard, caught flat-footed, moved to form a cordon around the dais, their polished armor reflecting the chaos.

Valerius ignored it all. His eyes were wide, his senses not on the man, but on the magic devouring him. He lunged forward, grabbing Alex’s arm with a grip of iron.

"It's a sympathetic charm!" he hissed, his voice cutting through the rising din. "A coercive link! His heartbeat is not his own!"

"What is it linked to?" Alex demanded, his mind snapping into sharp, analytical focus. The detective was back in charge.

"Something small, something terrified," Valerius replied, his eyes darting around the vast ballroom as if he could see the invisible threads of magic. "A creature with a rapid heartbeat, trapped and frightened to accelerate its panic. They've tethered his life force to it. It’s a Passer Mortis—the Sparrow's Death charm. A vile piece of heretical work." His gaze locked onto Alex's, filled with grim urgency. "If that creature dies, from fright or by a direct hand, the Duke dies with it. The sympathetic shock will instantly stop his heart."

The implication was clear. Any guard who found the poor creature and put it out of its misery to end the spell would, in fact, be the Duke's executioner. It was a perfect, double-edged trap.

"I must find the anchor," Valerius declared, his professional duty overriding all else. "The bird. It will be hidden somewhere within the palace walls, close enough to maintain the link's integrity. I will sever the connection." He didn't wait for a reply, turning and shoving his way through the panicked throng, a man of grim purpose moving against a tide of hysteria.

Alex was left alone in the vortex of chaos. One half of the problem was racing through the palace corridors. The other half was still here. The caster. The one holding the strings. They had to be in this room, watching their masterpiece unfold, maintaining the spell. But who? In a sea of hundreds of panicked aristocrats, how could he find the one person who was faking it?

He took a deep breath, forcing the adrenaline to sharpen his senses rather than overwhelm them. He couldn't see magic. But he could see people. He closed his eyes for a second, pushing the noise away, and focused.

[System]: Activate Behavioral Analysis Suite. Cognitive Overlay: Engaged.

The world snapped back into view, but it was different. Faint, ethereal data streams flickered at the edge of his vision. He wasn't just seeing people; he was seeing patterns. He scanned the crowd, his gaze sweeping over the screaming, the fainting, the ones rushing for the exits.

[Analyzing emotional states: Mass Panic Detected. Baseline: Hysteria/Fear.]

This was all noise. He needed a signal. He needed to find the calm in the storm. The one person whose internal state didn't match their outward expression. Katarina's words echoed in his mind: A war started by fanatics serves no one. She had positioned herself as an enemy of the cult. Was it the truth? He found her in the crowd. She stood near the edge of the room, her expression one of cold, analytical fury. Her posture was tense, her eyes scanning the room just as he was. Her fury seemed genuine, the fury of a spymaster whose carefully planned evening had just been immolated by a reckless act of terrorism.

[Subject: Countess Katarina Volkov. Emotional State: Controlled Rage. Deception Index: Low.]

So, not her. Or a deception so perfect even his System couldn't parse it. He filed it away. The entire house is infested. He forced himself to ignore the Commonwealth delegation, to ignore the easy, obvious suspects. He started scanning the Angevin nobles. He looked for the men and women who stood to gain from the Duke's death, the ones whose expressions of shock were just a little too theatrical.

[Cross-referencing behavioral baselines… Anomaly Detected.]

The System’s prompt flashed, drawing his eye to a man standing near a tapestry depicting an ancient imperial victory. Lord Valois. A man in his late fifties, from a minor but respected noble house, known for his staunch traditionalism and vocal support for the Duke. He was the picture of patriotic grief, one hand covering his mouth in horror, his eyes wide.

But his body told a different story.

While his face was a mask of shock, his posture was rigid, not with fear, but with intense concentration. A single bead of sweat traced a path down his temple, despite the ballroom's now-drafty chill from opened doors. His eyes, wide with supposed horror, weren't fixed on the dying Duke. They darted, quick and sharp, towards the ducal guard, assessing their formation, their confusion. He was watching the response, not the event.

And then Alex saw it. A tremor in the man’s right hand, which he held clenched at his side. He wasn't trembling with fear. It was the fine, persistent tremor of immense strain. The strain of maintaining a powerful magical link across a distance.

[Subject: Lord Valois. Stated Emotion: Shock/Grief. Biometric Analysis: Extreme Stress, Suppressed Exertion, Heightened Situational Awareness. Deception Index: CRITICAL.]

That was him. Not a Polish spy, not a cloaked assassin from the shadows. A decorated, trusted Angevin nobleman. One of their own. A heretic hiding in plain sight, a cancer at the very heart of the Imperium. Katarina hadn't been lying.

The Duke gave another choked gasp, his body convulsing on the dais. Time was running out. Valerius was somewhere in the labyrinthine castle hunting for a bird. The physicians were helpless. It was up to him.

Alex began to move. He pushed through the panicked, weeping nobles, his eyes locked on the back of Lord Valois's head. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a plan. He only had the cold, hard certainty of his deduction. He was a detective again, closing in on his suspect, a predator moving through a herd of panicked prey.

Lord Valois must have sensed his approach. He turned his head slightly, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes met Alex's across the chaotic ballroom. The mask of grief fell away, replaced by a flash of pure, venomous hatred. The heretic knew he had been seen. The game was up.