Heena tilted her head, considering. "Wouldn’t ’X’ be a better na?"
Ashton blinked, montarily thrown off his rhythm. Then he grinned, that wild, unrestrained expression that made him look half-mad. "Oh. Yeah. That. X. Call it whatever you want—I’m sure the bastard has a dozen aliases anyway." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Point is, X is the one propping him up. Without that backing, the Bureau would’ve dragged him in by the scruff ages ago. Probably would’ve dismantled his entire operation and scattered the code to the void."
Heena tapped the table, her nails clicking a steady rhythm against the lacquered wood. An unregistered heroine system, backed by an even dirtier back-end system that didn’t officially exist. The kind of shadow infrastructure that required serious resources, serious protection, and serious dirt on the right people to keep running.
This was bigger than she’d initially thought.
Ashton’s expression finally turned serious, the manic energy draining from his face like water through a sieve. When he looked like this—focused, intent, almost dangerous—it was easy to rember why the Bureau kept him around despite his countless violations.
"So here’s what I wanted to tell you," he said, voice dropping to sothing more businesslike. "One, the white lotus’ favorability isn’t just emotional currency—it’s literally her lifeline. Drop it below a certain threshold, and she breaks. Not taphorically. Actually breaks. And when she breaks, her system ’suffers’ and can barely function. I’ve seen it happen before in similar setups. The host deteriorates, the system starts glitching, and eventually the whole thing collapses like a house of cards."
He held up a second finger, and Heena noticed the faint scars across his knuckles—remnants of worlds she didn’t want to know about.
"Two, that criminal system isn’t just freelancing for kicks. He’s hooked into X, and there are ’many’ criminal systems like him currently running around completely open. No registrations, no supervision, no oversight whatsoever. It’s a whole network, Heena. A shadow Bureau operating in parallel, and they’ve got enough backing to stay invisible."
He t her gaze squarely, and for once there wasn’t a trace of mockery in his silver eyes.
"So you need to be careful, Heena. If you’re going to target Seraphina’s favorability vein, expect X to retaliate. This isn’t just one cockroach you can step on and forget about—it’s a nest. A big one. And they protect their own." He leaned back in his chair, and the smile returned, thinner this ti, sharper at the edges. "Now the real ga starts."
Heena’s lips curved slowly, a expression that would’ve made her five useless husbands flinch and stamr.
’Weak vein. Shared death. Pain feedback. Hidden patron.’
A complete tactical map was already forming in her mind, pieces slotting into place with satisfying precision. Seraphina’s vulnerability, the system’s dependence, X’s investnt in keeping the operation running, the potential chain reaction if she pulled the right thread...
Oh, this was going to be fun.
---
The silence stretched between them for a mont, comfortable despite everything. Then Ashton’s attention shifted, and Heena felt the quality of his gaze change.
He looked her over with the practiced eye of soone who’d inhabited dozens of bodies and learned to read the tells of each one. His gaze lingered on the faint flush in her cheeks, barely visible against her pale skin. On the way her fingers trembled just slightly as she gripped the calligraphy brush, the tremor so subtle most people would miss it entirely. On the deliberate control in her breathing, the rigid set of her shoulders.
This body’s infamous "condition" wasn’t exactly a secret. Even he had heard about the Ravencourt bloodline’s ridiculous drive, that inconvenient inheritance that made certain... urges significantly more intense than the average person’s. It was the kind of thing that would’ve been a re footnote in family history if the bloodline hadn’t been so politically prominent.
And if Heena herself weren’t currently bound to five of the most useless n he’d ever had the misfortune of encountering.
"You already have five husbands, you bastard," Ashton said bluntly, abandoning all pretense of tact. "Why don’t you use them? Why suffer like this when you’ve got perfectly functional options already installed in your household?"
Heena didn’t even glance up from her work. She just dipped the brush with practiced precision, eyes fixed on the docunt in front of her, each stroke of ink controlled and perfect despite the tremor in her hands.
"Because," she said calmly, voice as level as if she were discussing the weather, "I don’t like trash."
The words were delivered with such casual disdain that Ashton couldn’t help himself—he snorted, the sound inelegant and genuinely amused.
He sauntered closer, boots soft on the carpet, moving with that predatory grace that ca from too many lifetis spent in too many dangerous situations. He stopped only when he was leaning over her desk, his face about half a ter from hers, silver hair falling forward to fra his face. Close enough to see the fine details of her expression, the minute tightening around her eyes, the way her jaw set just slightly.
Close enough to be interesting.
Before he could inch nearer, testing those boundaries the way he always did, Heena’s voice dropped, cold and flat as a blade pressed to skin.
"If you dare co any closer than this, I swear I’ll report your little vacation to the ’main’ system. Let’s see if they don’t throw you into those all-gay worlds permanently this ti. I hear they’ve developed so new ones specifically for problem cases. Very... imrsive, from what I understand."
Ashton froze.
The threat hit exactly where it was ant to, and he imdiately took a full step back, hands raised in surrender, a nervous smile pulling at his lips. Those worlds weren’t a joke—he’d been sentenced to three consecutive assignnts in them after his last major violation, and the experience had been... educational, to say the least.
"Oh my, calm down, calm down. No need for that kind of nuclear option." He tilted his head, and the grin turned mischievous again, though he stayed well outside her specified radius. "If you want, I can help, you know. I’m flexible. I can be bi. I do n and won. Very equal opportunity, very progressive of ."
Heena finally looked up from her docunt, and the movent was slow, deliberate. She gave him a once-over from head to toe, her gaze clinical and assessing, her expression transforming into sothing that could only be described as pure, distilled disdain.
"I wouldn’t dare gamble on that," she said dryly, each word articulated with precision. "God knows how many diseases you’re already carrying. Your dical file probably has its own dedicated archive section by now."
His eye twitched. "Did you just ’mock’ ?"
"Of course not," Heena replied smoothly, already lowering her gaze back to the scroll, brush moving again in steady strokes. "How could I mock you? I’m just stating facts. Empirical observations based on docunted evidence."
She eyed him coolly over the edge of the paper, pen still scratching across the page in that maddeningly calm rhythm. "Maybe you’ve forgotten, but the way you’ve died in so worlds is nothing to be proud of. What kind of idiot host racks up HIV in one life, AIDS in another, then a lovely combo of STDs in the next? Should I keep going, or shall I pull up your full dical history? I’m sure the Bureau would be ’fascinated’ to review it again."
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