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The floor is coated in a familiar sweet-spicy mix of ale and liquor, tacky beneath her boot as she enters Troubadour and Whip. Its scent permeates the air— collides with wisps of cigarette smoke and strong perfume— creating a heady atmosphere of revelry. Indulgence.
Much like other Dock Town haunts, she has been here before. Always in the morning, when most of its usual patrons are asleep.
Plied with your chosen vice of the night, you never know just how filthy the place is. Creaky barstools, and permanent stains, and mysterious stenches concealed by so much debauchery it’s almost unrecognizable.
An inebriated couple shoulders past her, out into the cold, and Neve suspects that it’s the last breath of fresh air she’ll be having for the rest of the evening.
Further into The Whip, she starts losing track of her own thoughts. There is too much to see. Too much to taste. Too much to touch. Many have fallen prey to their whims before, she’s sure— have let all common sense take leave in the face of temptation— but Neve Gallus isn’t an amateur.
She’s not here for pleasure.
There is blood in the water, and she is the only one with the nose, the stomach, the gall for it.
“How about a drink for the lady?” The man’s breath is sour and vile, curling into her nose as he leans into her space.
She has barely warmed her seat.
“No,” Neve responds, pinching her nose, an eye trained on the tables that have been sequestered from public use. The who’s who of Minrathous have been spotted gathering, and they’ve made The Whip their north star.
If she finds something, she’ll find it here.
The man, however, isn’t dissuaded by her very evident rejection. Instead, he presses into her side, face pockmarked, and ruddy, and grinning, and really. She does not have the time for this. “Oh, come now…” he says, “don’t be such a mope.”
She’s on the brink of freezing his insides when the bartender slams a hand against the counter behind them— so hard that it jolts sobriety into at least eight different people. The man pulls away promptly and withers upon seeing what he’s up against.
Beneath the bartender’s palm, the edge of a paring knife glints dangerously. She’s new. A stranger. A variable unaccounted for. She does not look like the type to bluff. She does not look like the type to give out warnings, either.
The detective racks her brain for a list of The Whip’s employees, but none match the unwavering gaze. The steady jaw. The twitch of her mouth as she stares the man down— as though through the unforgiving sight of a crossbow— and passes him a cold, cold glass of water. Rings of condensation smeared across oak.
“On the house.”
Neve Gallus has never been the type to get distracted.
Ever.
But…
The third casualty is Ulysses Orrozco. Male. Forty-eight years old. Husband to Gloria Orrozco and father of two. He’s a governor beloved by all, up until his death. And just like the others, Orrozco’s sins have been broadcast through a rain of flyers in the dead of night:
Vyrantium Governor, Voyeur of Torture
Damning evidence was meticulously attached to each of the leaflets, his victims" identities redacted or omitted completely.
All Neve can do now is confirm.
She still sees the mystic residue clinging to his skin— a nearly invisible oil-slick sheen of despair and pain and suffering. It sours her stomach just to look at him.
“Do you mind if I…”
She nods in permission. A building headache squeezes her temples, and if she could, she’d throw herself into the ocean’s embrace for some semblance of peace.
The medical practitioner crouches next to the dead body, but the moment she makes contact, Orrozco’s skin and flesh begin to slough off. Rapidly. Too fast for any of them to find a way to reverse the process, much less figure out the root of it.
The decay continues until half of him has slipped through the dock’s wooden boards, reduced to nothing more than bone and molten gore. Later— much later— they find traces of a highly corrosive poison in the flesh they managed to collect.
Completely aghast, Neve looks away, toward the skyline, and imagines a shadow retreating on the roofs.
“It’s a new recipe.”
“What?”
The bartender— Freyja, Neve’s done her research— taps a dark blue concoction. “The drink. It’s a new recipe. You look like you need it.”
Its glass is sugar-rimmed, liquid swirled with edible glitter, giving it the impression of a starry night. Some type of fruity, pleasant-smelling thing with a pearlescent finish that’s hard to resist. If there were less sunlight sifting through the pub’s open windows, Neve is certain she’d be tempted to check if it tastes as good as it looks.
Instead, before she could stop herself— “Where did you say you were from, again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Say anything?”
There isn’t an ounce of hostility in her response. Just a question half-asked. Freyja lifts her brow and tilts her head. As if whatever Neve says next would be the most riveting thing she’s ever heard in her life.
A goading smile ghosts her lips, and Neve knows she doesn’t have to fall for it. Doesn’t have to explain herself. Doesn’t have to react at all.
But something about the other girl has her teetering on the edge of self-defense.
“Well, I know that.” Neve can already feel the stupid flush creeping up her neck. “I just don’t make a habit of taking drinks from strangers.”
Freyja’s mouth forms around a circle— an exaggerated show of understanding as she nods, painfully slow. Without saying another word, she leans forward and retrieves the drink.
Up close, she smells like wood smoke and bergamot.
The air goes still. Electric.
Their eyes meet and— “I can stop being a stranger if you want, detective.”
Neve stops fucking breathing.
They find an eighth body in the Catacombs.
The flyers that were spread all over Dock Town that night document how to find her, but not much more. Instead, the evidence of her misdeeds is piled high beneath her. A mountain of smuggled historic artifacts stolen all across Thedas, gleaming and grisly and golden.
Her head was cut clean off and perched atop her chest, neatly settled between her hands. They were careful with examining the scene, this time around, additional mages and medics stationed nearby in case the body undergoes another unexpected reaction.
It’s the talk of the town. A riot underground.
Neve can’t help but feel like the lot of them are being toyed with, when— after two hours of what the public now calls “authorities just mucking about”— the body does not disintegrate. It does not do anything, in fact, beyond what a dead body already does.
Prying open the dismembered head’s jaw, Neve finds a small flower. The fifth one from this case.
A jasmine.
Intact, and fragrant, and white.
Freyja de Riva arrived at Dock Town’s shores roughly five months ago. The murders started one month later.
It’s quiet from where she’s stationed, tucked between massive crates near the back entrance of the pub. Neve has been waiting for almost two hours in the bitter cold, and Freyja’s shift was supposed to end thirty minutes ago.
It’s hardly the worst stakeout of her career, but there’s a needling inside her stomach that persists despite many attempts to quash it. An anticipation for something unknown that makes her toes curl— like it’s her first day on the job again, even though she’s been doing this for years.
“What are you doing in there?”
Freyja suddenly manifests in the form of a silhouette and Neve jumps out of her skin— has to force herself to swallow the gasp that lodges itself in her throat. There is no one else on this street. No murmurs to distract Neve from Freyja’s footsteps. So how is it that she flew under her radar?
“I thought I dropped my ring,” she feigns without missing a beat. Her own heart is a rabbit inside her chest, and when she makes a motion to leave, the bartender doesn’t move a single inch to let her through. Trapped. Captive.
Wood smoke and whisky and bergamot.
Her breath is suspended in her lungs as she waits for the pin to drop. She’s always had a morbid fascination with testing her limits, but right now, the other doesn’t seem so dangerous.
Only a bit distracted.
“You’re out a little late, aren’t you?” Freyja asks.
To her credit, she has assimilated into their community well. Adopted the no-nonsense look most Dock Town dwellers have— lashes thick and sooty with mascara, lips painted red like blood. She leaves her coat unbuttoned. Wide open. And peeking out of the low, low neckline of her top, a snake coils over her sternum and disappears beneath the fabric.
Neve’s mouth goes dry.
“Night is young,” she responds with a shrug, ignoring the hammering in her chest. In her ears. In her pulse.
It may be a trick of the light, but Freyja hovers closer. As if some imperceptible wind has pushed her body ever so slightly forward.
“Night is young,” Freyja repeats— and she looks like she might say something else. Do something else. But then she’s clearing her throat and drawing her coat in and stepping back to let Neve through.
The sudden lack of warmth is staggering.
“Don’t get lost on your way home, Neve…”
She watches Freyja leave, entranced.
It ends the same way it begins.
Troubadour and Whip has a reputation for attracting stories, and when Neve finds a trail to follow, it ends up leading her back to its grimy, salacious halls.
What the others fail to realize is that the eight murders do have a connection. It has been buried in so many dead ends and red herrings and judicially backed lies that it was nearly impossible to figure out.
Right under their noses— a secret circle that has been the stuff of legend for almost a century.
Cut one head off and another will always grow back. The only way to stop them is to cut them down, and cut them down quick.
Though that may be the case, The Ninth is a slippery one and the most dangerous of them all. If information from the Threads could be trusted in any way, they would already be seeking reparations for their fallen comrades.
And Freyja isn’t as slick as she thinks she is.
Neve shoulders past guest after guest, but she makes it a little too late.
In the flimsiest slip dress— a vision in scarlet— Freyja stands in front of The Ninth, ink-black wings on full display. It sweeps over her shoulders, her biceps, the exposed slope of her back, and seems to ripple when she moves.
A falcon mid-flight.
Neve is already halfway across the room before she can even think.
She sees Freyja laugh— head thrown back and throat exposed. Sees the Ninth’s hand leech on the bartender’s skin, moving from her spine to her ass as she bends down to pour them a drink. Neve’s skin is crawling. Hot.
Her vision goes blurry as she circles Freyja’s wrist with her fingers and tugs her close enough to mutter in her ear.
“We need to talk.”
Freyja kisses her back like she’s been starved, all teeth and tongue and a bruising grip on Neve’s waist as they both stumble against the bathroom door, locking themselves in with a click . While the reality of outside sifts through the cracks in a muffled, disjointed melody, Neve’s brain has all but shut down, because she’s moaning into Freyja’s mouth, and it’s echoing against deep, viridian tilework and oh — this feels so good.
She feels so good.
Freyja’s fingers trace her nape and weave into her hair, slightly pulling as the kiss grows deeper. Urgent. Frantic. Neve’s back hits the edge of a sink, and without pulling apart, she’s lifted onto the marble— legs spread as wide as they can go, the crushed velvet of her dress pooling around her waist.
Freyja steps forward and teases a thumb against the lace of her underwear. A testing and gentle roving, but it’s enough to make Neve’s breath hitch. Enough to make her hips shift up and into the friction. Into the pressure. More, more, more …
She’ll be embarrassed about the desperate whining sounds she makes, later. Study the pros and cons of yielding that sort of information to a virtual stranger. But now… now.
The heel of Freyja’s palm grinds against her clit through the fabric, and before she could protest. Before she could take matters into her own hands— a single digit slides the cotton of her panties aside, and goes around, over, inside her slit in one deft motion.
“You’re so wet,” Freyja groans into the base of her throat as her head falls back from pleasure.
The other girl’s free hand roams, scorching a trail up her thigh, her belly, coming to rest on the mound of her breast as she slides another finger in. Then another.
Flicks her wrist again and again, fingers curling, until Neve forgets everything other than the teeth grazing her collarbone, and the wet-hot clutch of her cunt around Freyja’s fingers, and her heartbeat drumming against her ears.
Freyja rubs a tight circle around her clit and Neve whimpers. Her entire body is tense— a system of livewires flayed open and exposed. Her blood runs thick and hot and heavy in her veins, and she’s so close. So fucking close.
Neve sinks her teeth into the salt-sweat skin of Freyja’s shoulder. Rakes her nails down ink-black wings. Freyja retaliates by pinching her nipples and tugging, the calluses of her palms digging into Neve’s flesh as she squeezes. She can feel how wet she is. Can feel the slick dripping down the crease of her ass as her body winds up and up and up— an endless and torturing wringing.
Freyja’s mouth moves against her cheek. Breath hot and sweet and “That’s a good girl—”
She comes, and she comes, and she comes.
Freyja de Riva is dangerous.
She built a greenhouse, far off city limits. A small, unassuming thing filled with aconite and hemlock and belladonna. Some other caged plants I can’t identify. She grows them with flowers. The normal ones.
To disguise? To detract? It’s hard to tell.
She’s using them for these murders, and I think I’m going to let her.
They find The Ninth body floating miles off Minrathous’ coast, flyers tacked to his sunken one-man boat. There was nothing odd about it. Nothing outstanding at all. And it’s exactly how they— and their entire operation— deserve to die.
Withering. Quiet. Without fanfare.
Neve runs into Freyja again, a year later— months after the detectives of Minrathous tabled the case. Due to a lack of conclusive evidence, yes, but also due to the public’s militant belief in karmic justice.
It’s the first of its kind.
An anonymous vigilante unofficially pardoned for their crimes.
She thought the other would have jumped ship, by now, but she supposes that would have been more suspicious than this—
Basking in the rare Minrathous sun, scratching a stray cat’s ear on the beaches of Dock Town. She’s wearing a simple white blouse. Tailored pants that reach her ankles. If Neve squints, she almost looks like she belongs.
But Freyja de Riva isn’t like them, is she? She’s not anything like anyone.
“Careful, or that one might follow you home,” Neve says, frozen where she stands.
Surprised, Freyja turns to look at her, dark hair falling off her shoulder in waves.
There’s a moment suspended between them. A decision to make between knowing or moving on. A glint of recognition in Freyja’s eyes that matches her own— but neither of them are willing to bring it up. Not now.
Not yet.
Not when the sun is sinking in the horizon, painting the sky in gorgeous hues of pink and purple and orange and there’s a promise of a new day ahead.
When they finally decide, time stutters to a start again, and Freyja smiles. Genuine and unbridled and so, so bright.
Bergamot and jasmine and sea salt.
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”