This was something she could claim for herself.

She took a deep breath and locked eyes with each of them. A spark of anticipation flashed through Ryuu’s eyes when he met hers, as if he could predict what she was about to say next. Teo’s words came back to her, telling her to decide what was important to her and put her mind to it entirely. These were her allies now, people who wanted to believe in something and fight for it. Not Kohl—not anymore.

As she opened her mouth to tell them her plan, Teo reached out and swiped the biscuit off her tray of food. She glared at him.

“Sorry. Hungry,” he said while chewing on the biscuit.

“I was going to eat that.”

Ryuu frowned. “You never eat anything.”

“If we’re going to fight Bautix, I’ll need all the energy I can get,” she said. “Bautix has made me into an enemy of the Steels. And me avoiding capture? Well, that makes me his biggest threat. Without all the people he’s blamed for his crimes in prison or dead, people will be free to point the finger at him.”

She beckoned them closer to hear the rest of her plan.

Later that afternoon, an hour after Aina had finished brewing a new, faster-working paralyzing poison with supplies purchased by Ryuu, they all gathered in his library.

Upon entering the room, the tapered cedar wood ceiling rising above her, Aina’s eyes immediately trailed toward the shadowed area behind the bookshelves where she’d first attempted to kill Kouta.

She glanced at Ryuu, who stood at the edge of the table in the sunken center of the library. There were bags under his eyes that hadn’t been there before Kouta’s death.

Her heart sank when she took him in. Whatever connection had been between them before was gone now, after her betrayal. He’d never send a shy smile her way or brush his hand against hers again.

He nodded at her as she approached, then turned back to the drawing he’d made of the Tower’s basic layout, with the subway blueprints underneath it.

Once Ryuu finished going over the plan again, Teo said, “So, Aina and I are going through the prisons again.”

Teo kept his face expressionless, just tapped his fingers along the table. His other hand moved toward the stitches on his forehead, the skin around it still bruised.

“If we do this plan right,” Aina told him in a reassuring tone, “we’ll cause enough trouble that they’ll barely catch a glimpse of us.”

Raurie reached over then, to point at a spot on the blueprints where Ryuu had drawn the prison’s corridors juxtaposing the subway tunnels. “So, you’ll go through the same vent … but you should start at a higher floor. You need to be as high up as you can get. Why not start at the seventh floor? The seventh, eighth, and ninth floors are where the Inosen are held, after all.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ryuu said. “While you two go through the prison, I’ll assist in presenting the black diamond to the princess at midnight exactly. Raurie will keep an eye out for Bautix while pretending to be my date.”