Daian seizes the opportunity to ensnare her knife-wielding arm with his own, trapping it. He reverses his grip on his dagger and stabs Ginnix just above her collarbone, piercing the artery there and spraying the parlor ceiling with her blood. An animal sound of surprise and rage escapes her throat as she falls to the plush carpet.

Daian places the sole of his right boot on the agent’s chest and jostles her tentatively.

“No black eagles sitting in a tree,” he whispers.

“Daian…?”

He looks back at Lexi, almost as if he’s forgotten she’s standing there.

“Oh, don’t be afraid anymore,” he softly bids her. “They can’t hurt you now. I promise, the Protectorate Ministry will never hurt you again.”

Somehow Lexi is anything but soothed by his words.

“You seem… very different than you did just a relatively short while ago.”

Daian only blinks at her vacantly at first, then a light of realization seems to ignite behind his eyes.

“Oh well.” He shrugs, smiling pleasantly. “I’m afraid I wasn’t quite as incapacitated as I let on.”

“Obviously,” Lexi says, glancing at the carved-up corpses that have once again turned her parlor into a charnel house.

Daian’s expression turns grave. “I do apologize for deceiving you. That was wrong. You have been nothing but an exceptional hostess, and I thank you.”

“It’s more than your injuries,” she persists. “You appear to be acting… quite differently than you did upstairs.”

Daian sighs, his demeanor quickly becoming annoyed and impatient. “Yes, well, we’re downstairs now, aren’t we? And the situation has changed, as you said, from what it was a short time ago.”

“How is it different?”

Daian uses the tip of his dagger to very lightly scratch his right temple, smearing a mixture of the three Ministry agents’ blood above his eye there.

“Well, I was waiting for Taru to return with this mountain of evidence your husband is supposed to have uncovered. I had originally hoped to find it on my own, just as I had hoped to find Brio himself if he was still alive. You see, I really was on your side this entire time, Lexi. We sought the same things. We simply have different motivations. But my investigation was cut short, if you’ll pardon the choice of words.”

“Taru was right,” Lexi says. “It was no accident you answered the call and came to the tower the night I was attacked.”

Daian shakes his head. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on your Gen for a very long time. I simply seized an opportunity.”

“Is spying on my Gen part of your Aegin duties?”

“Of course not. But being an Aegin makes it much easier. That’s why I chose it. It gives me just enough power to perform my true duties while rendering me obscure enough to go unnoticed by our enemies in the Ministry.”