The seasons shifted at Black Tower Academy like the slow grinding of millstones—imperceptible day by day, undeniable across the span of years. Autumn winds carved new patterns into the ancient stone corridors, wearing grooves where generations of apprentices had walked before. Grimm stood at the window of his modest quarters, watching the last amber leaves spiral down into the courtyard below. Two years had passed since that night in the library archives, since Ravenna's pale fingers had first traced the runes on his amulet, since the pact that bound their fates together.
Time had not been kind to the boy who had entered these halls with fourth-grade aptitude stamped across his records. It had forged him into something else entirely.
The morning bell tolled—a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the ancient stones. Grimm turned from the window, his movements precise, economical. He had grown taller, his shoulders broader, though he remained lean compared to the battle-knight apprentices who trained in the yards below. His black hair, once unkempt, was now tied back with a simple leather cord. But the most significant changes were invisible to the casual observer: the way his eyes moved, constantly cataloging exits and angles; the slight pause before he spoke, as if calculating variables; and in dim light, the subtle elongation of his pupils into vertical slits—a mark of the changes working through his flesh. The faint scent of alchemical reagents clung to his robes no matter how thoroughly he washed them.
He touched the amulet beneath his shirt—a habit now, unconscious as breathing. The metal warmed against his skin, a reminder of the power sleeping within.
Outside his room, the corridor bustled with activity. Apprentices hurried past, their robes a spectrum of colors denoting their specializations—blue for water, green for earth, red for fire, white for air. Grimm moved through them like a shadow, unnoticed and unremarked. This was his preferred state. Invisibility had become his armor.
In the dining hall, two hundred apprentices broke their fast amid a cacophony of voices and clattering dishes. Grimm collected his portion—gray porridge, hard bread, diluted juice—and found his customary corner. The food was sustenance, nothing more. He had trained himself to view it that way, to strip away the comfort of taste and texture. Every resource saved, every moment not spent on pleasure, was a moment invested in survival.
"You're doing it again."
Ravenna's voice, soft as falling snow. She slid onto the bench across from him, her own tray barely touched. Her dark hair was pulled back in an intricate braid that spoke of time spent before mirrors, time Grimm could not afford.
"Doing what?" he asked, though he knew.
"Disappearing." She reached across the table, her fingers brushing his wrist. "Even when you're here, you're somewhere else. Planning. Calculating."
Grimm met her eyes. They were gray, like winter mornings, and they saw too much. "The trials for second-grade apprentices begin in three months. The survival rate last year was sixty-three percent."
"Statistics." Ravenna's lips curved, not quite a smile. "You speak in statistics now."
"Statistics keep me alive."
She didn't argue. She never did. She pushed her untouched bread toward him. "Eat. You'll need your strength for elemental theory. Professor Vance has been asking about you."
Grimm's fingers stilled around his spoon. "What did he want?"
"To know why a fourth-grade aptitude student is scoring in the top percentile on practical examinations." Ravenna's voice dropped, barely audible above the hall's din. "People are noticing, Grimm. You can't hide forever."
He ate the bread, chewing mechanically. She was right, of course. The careful balance he had maintained—appearing competent enough to avoid dismissal, unremarkable enough to avoid attention—was becoming impossible to sustain. His mutation studies had progressed beyond theoretical exercises. The changes were subtle still, hidden beneath his clothes and his controlled expressions, but they were real.
The amulet pulsed once, a heartbeat against his chest.
Two years. He had survived two years in a world that should have crushed him. But survival was no longer enough. The path ahead wound through shadows deeper than any he had yet navigated, and at its end waited truths that would reshape everything he understood about power, about humanity, about what it meant to exist.
Grimm finished his meal and rose, Ravenna falling into step beside him. Morning sun slanted through the high windows, casting their shadows long across the stone floor. Two shadows, intertwined, stretching toward an uncertain future.
The elemental theory classroom occupied the eastern tower's third floor, a circular chamber with windows facing the rising sun. Professor Vance stood at the center, his white robes immaculate, his beard braided with silver rings that caught the morning light. Twenty apprentices sat in the tiered seats surrounding him, notebooks open, quills poised.
"Elemental affinity," Vance intoned, his voice carrying the weight of decades of instruction, "is not merely a measure of magical potential. It is a reflection of the soul's resonance with the fundamental forces of existence. Fire speaks to passion, transformation, destruction. Water to adaptation, healing, the eternal flow. Earth to endurance, growth, foundation. Air to freedom, thought, the intangible."
Grimm recorded the words without truly hearing them. He had read Vance's textbooks cover to cover, committed the theories to memory. The professor's lectures were review, nothing more. His attention drifted to the windows, to the clouds gathering on the horizon, to the patterns of light and shadow playing across the stone floor.
"Today," Vance continued, "we examine practical demonstration. Miss Millie, if you would."
A girl rose from the second tier, her movements hesitant, almost apologetic. She was slight, with pale skin that seemed to absorb rather than reflect light, and hair the color of winter frost. Her robes hung loosely on her frame, as if she had recently lost weight she could not afford to lose. When she turned to face the class, her eyes—pale blue, almost colorless—fixed on some point beyond the windows, avoiding the gazes of her peers.
Millie. Grimm knew the name, had seen it on examination rosters. Ice affinity, second-grade aptitude. Unremarkable in a cohort where first-grade talents commanded attention.
She raised her hands, palms up, and began the incantation. Her voice was soft, barely audible, but the magic responded immediately. The temperature in the room dropped—not gradually, but in a single breath. Frost crackled across the windowpanes. Breath misted in the frigid air, and the scent of snow—clean, metallic, impossible indoors—filled the chamber.
Ice crystals formed above her palms, spinning, growing, taking shape—a delicate sculpture of frost that resembled a flower, petals unfolding in impossible geometries.
"Excellent control," Vance observed. "Note the precision, the restraint. Ice magic is not merely cold; it is structure, order, the suspension of change. Miss Millie demonstrates the classical approach."
The frost flower hovered for a moment longer, then dissolved into vapor. Millie lowered her hands, her shoulders curling inward as she returned to her seat. She passed close enough to Grimm that he caught the scent of her—snow and pine, the smell of high mountains and isolation.
"And now," Vance said, his tone shifting, "a demonstration of opposing affinity. Miss Mina, if you please."
The girl who stood was everything Millie was not. Where Millie was pale and withdrawn, Mina burned with presence. Her hair was a cascade of copper and gold, her skin kissed by sun even in the depths of winter. She moved with the confidence of one who had never known doubt, never questioned her place in the world.
She did not wait for Vance's instruction. Her hands rose, and fire answered.
It began as a spark, no larger than a candle flame, hovering above her palm. Then it grew, spiraling upward in a column of gold and crimson, twisting into shapes that suggested wings, a crown, a throne of burning light. The heat washed through the classroom, banishing the lingering chill of Millie's demonstration, raising sweat on Grimm's brow despite the winter air outside.
"The Sun Child," someone whispered behind him.
Mina's lips curved, acknowledging the title. The flame in her hand pulsed, brightening, and for a moment Grimm thought he saw something within it—not merely fire, but a resonance, a connection to something larger than the classroom, larger than the academy itself.
"Remarkable," Vance said, though his expression had tightened. "Though I would remind Miss Mina that elemental demonstration is an exercise in control, not spectacle."
The flames vanished. Mina lowered her hands, her smile unrepentant. "Fire cannot be contained, Professor. Only directed."
"A philosophy you will find tested in the trials." Vance turned to address the class. "Observe the contrast. Ice and fire, order and transformation, restraint and passion. Both are valid paths. Both have strengths and limitations. The wise wizard learns not only their own affinity but the nature of opposing forces."
Grimm's quill moved across his parchment, recording the lecture. But his attention remained divided. He watched Millie, hunched in her seat, staring at the desk before her as if she could disappear into its grain. He watched Mina, basking in the attention of her peers, her confidence armor-plated and impenetrable.
Two girls, two elements, two approaches to power. And between them, himself—no elemental affinity to speak of, no natural talent, only the slow, dangerous accumulation of forbidden knowledge.
The amulet warmed against his chest, a silent reminder.
He was not like them. He would never be like them. But that did not mean he could not surpass them.
Class ended with the noon bell. Apprentices filed out, chattering, comparing notes. Grimm remained seated, reviewing his annotations. When he finally rose, he found Ravenna waiting by the door.
"Impressive demonstrations," she said, falling into step beside him.
"Standard elemental theory," Grimm replied. "Nothing unexpected."
"You noticed, then. The contrast between them."
He glanced at her. "What do you mean?"
Ravenna's smile was knowing. "Millie's ice is beautiful but fragile. She fears her own power, fears what it represents. Mina's fire is overwhelming, uncontrolled. She believes her talent makes her invincible." She paused, her hand finding his. "Both are wrong about power. As you will teach them, in time."
Grimm said nothing. But he filed the observation away, another piece of the puzzle that was Black Tower Academy, another variable in the equation of survival.
The academy's eastern wing housed the library's restricted section, a labyrinth of narrow corridors and locked doors where knowledge too dangerous for general consumption waited in dust and shadow. Grimm had discovered it by accident, tracking a draft to its source, and had since made it his habit to study in the spaces between the shelves, where the light was dim and footfalls rare.
Today, however, he was not alone.
Voices drifted from around the corner—low, conspiratorial, speaking of things that had no place in academic discourse. Grimm pressed himself against the shelving, becoming part of the shadows.
"—the Blood Sail representative arrives next week," one voice said, male, rough-edged with an accent from the coastal territories. "They're looking for prospects. Young ones, with potential but no connections."
"Dangerous," a second voice replied, female, cultured, cautious. "The Academy officially condemns the Alliance."
"Officially." The first speaker laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "Unofficially, half the faculty has dealings with them. Where do you think the rare reagents come from? The restricted texts? The Academy looks the other way because the Alliance provides services the official channels cannot."
Grimm's breath slowed, controlled.
The Blood Sail Alliance. He had heard the name whispered in taverns, seen it scrawled on bathroom walls, dismissed it as rumor and legend. Yet here were two people speaking of it as fact—an underground organization operating within Academy territory, neither fully criminal nor sanctioned, dealing in forbidden knowledge and dangerous services.
"And the Black Tower?" the woman asked. "What of them?"
Silence stretched, heavy with unspoken weight.
"Different creature entirely," the man said finally. "The Alliance is commerce. The Black Tower organization—the secret society, not the Academy itself—is... something else. They don't deal in goods. They deal in transformation. Mutation. The kind of magic that changes what it touches."
"Heresy."
"Power." The word hung in the air. "They've been watching the new cohort. Looking for candidates. There's a boy, apparently. Fourth-grade aptitude, but scoring off the charts in practicals. The organization has taken an interest."
Grimm's hand moved to his chest, to the amulet hidden beneath his robes. His heart hammered against his ribs, but his face remained still, schooled in the mask of neutrality he had perfected over two years of marginal existence.
"A fourth-grade?" The woman's voice rose, then dropped again. "Impossible."
"Improbable. But the observer's reports are consistent. The boy is... unusual. Something in his eyes, they say. The way he moves. The way he watches."
Footsteps retreated, voices fading into the labyrinth of shelves. Grimm remained motionless for a count of sixty, then ninety, ensuring they were truly gone. When he finally moved, his limbs felt distant, disconnected, as if he were operating a puppet rather than inhabiting his own flesh.
They were watching him. Had been watching, perhaps from the beginning.
The knowledge should have frightened him. Instead, he felt something else—a cold calculation, an assessment of variables. If the Black Tower organization sought candidates, they sought those with particular aptitudes. Those who could not succeed through conventional means. Those desperate enough to embrace forbidden paths.
He was all of these things.
The corridor stretched before him, dimly lit by flickering witch-lamps. Grimm walked its length, his footsteps silent on the stone. At the end, a window looked out over the academy's central courtyard, where apprentices gathered in clusters, talking, laughing, living lives uncomplicated by the shadows that gathered at the edges of their world.
He saw Millie there, alone on a bench, her book open but her eyes fixed on the middle distance. He saw Mina surrounded by admirers, her laughter bright and sharp as breaking glass. He saw the hierarchies that governed their existence, the visible and invisible structures that determined who would rise and who would fall.
The Blood Sail Alliance. The Black Tower organization. Factions within factions, powers behind powers. The academy was not merely a school; it was a battleground where larger forces tested their pieces, where the game of civilization played out in miniature.
And he was a piece now, whether he wished it or not. Marked by the Black Tower's observers, noted in their records, catalogued for future use.
Grimm touched the amulet through his robes. The pact he had made with Ravenna bound them together, gave him access to power he had not earned. But it also made him visible, drew attention he could not afford.
He needed to understand these factions. Needed to know their strengths, their weaknesses, their purposes. Knowledge was survival, and survival was everything.
The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold. Grimm turned from the window and descended into the deepening shadows, already planning, already calculating.
The game had begun. He would not be a pawn.
The laboratory occupied the tower's basement level, a space reserved for advanced students with special permissions. Grimm had acquired his through persistence rather than privilege, wearing down the administrators with requests until they granted him access simply to be rid of him.
At midnight, the space was his alone. The other apprentices had retreated to their quarters, to sleep or socialization or whatever activities normal people pursued in the dark hours. Grimm had no use for such things. The night was when his mind sharpened, when the distractions of daylight faded and he could focus on the work that mattered.
He bent over the workbench, examining the tissue sample under the magnifying lens. It was his own—harvested from his forearm, a small sacrifice for knowledge. The mutation was progressing, cellular structures rearranging themselves according to patterns he had induced through alchemical treatment. Slow, careful, controlled. Nothing like the horror stories of failed mutations, of flesh run wild and minds broken by transformation.
"You should rest."
Ravenna's voice from the doorway. She wore a cloak over her nightclothes, her hair loose around her shoulders. She had taken to checking on him during these late sessions, a guardian against his own obsessive nature.
"In a moment," Grimm said, not looking up. "The cellular division is reaching a critical phase. If I interrupt now, I'll lose three days of progress."
"And if you collapse from exhaustion, you'll lose more than that." She crossed the room, her footsteps soft on the stone. "You're not the only one who studies late, you know. I passed Millie in the library an hour ago. She looked worse than you do."
Grimm's hands paused. "Millie?"
"Sitting in the corner by the frost manuscripts, staring at the same page for twenty minutes." Ravenna leaned against the workbench, close enough that he could smell her—jasmine and old paper, the scent of the archives. "She carries a weight, that girl. Family expectations, I think. The ice clans have fallen far from their former glory."
"You know her history?"
"I know everyone's history." Ravenna's smile was faint, tired. "It's what I do instead of sleeping. The Frostwhisper family was once prominent in the northern territories, advisors to the High Council, masters of ice magic that could freeze armies in their tracks. Three generations ago, they lost their seat. Now they're barely acknowledged in the records."
Grimm filed the information away. Millie's melancholy, her withdrawn nature, the way she seemed to apologize for her own existence—it made sense now. She carried not only her own burdens but the weight of her family's decline, the expectation that she would restore what had been lost.
"And Mina?" he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.
"The opposite problem." Ravenna's tone sharpened. "The Sun Child, they call her. Born to a family that traces its lineage to ancient solar worship, raised on stories of her own greatness. She believes her talent makes her superior, that natural affinity is the only measure of worth."
"She's not wrong about the power of natural talent."
"She's wrong about everything else." Ravenna's hand closed over his, stilling his work. "Grimm, look at me."
He looked. Her eyes were shadowed in the lamplight, serious in a way that made his chest tighten.
"Mina will be your enemy," Ravenna said. "Not because you choose it, but because she cannot tolerate the existence of someone who succeeds without the gifts she was born with. She needs to believe that her superiority is earned, that the world is fair. You are proof that it is not."
"And Millie?"
"Millie..." Ravenna hesitated. "Millie might be an ally. Or she might be too broken to be anything at all. The weight she carries has bent her nearly to breaking. Whether she snaps or springs back depends on what happens in the next year."
Grimm turned back to his work, but his thoughts had shifted. The academy was not merely a collection of students and teachers; it was a web of histories, grudges, ambitions, and fears. Millie and Mina were not simply classmates. They were representatives of different approaches to power, different responses to the world's injustice.
"Why do you tell me these things?" he asked.
"Because you need to understand the board before you can play the game." Ravenna's hand withdrew, and he felt the loss of warmth like a physical ache. "The trials are coming. Alliances will form, enemies will reveal themselves. You need to know who can be trusted and who cannot."
"And you?" The question escaped before he could stop it. "Can you be trusted?"
Silence stretched between them, heavy with the weight of their pact, the secrets they shared and the ones they kept. Then Ravenna laughed, soft and sad.
"I am the only one you can trust, Grimm. And the one you should trust least of all." She turned toward the door. "Finish your work. But sleep before dawn. The world will still be here when you wake."
She was gone before he could respond, her footsteps fading into the corridor's darkness. Grimm sat alone in the lamplight, the tissue sample forgotten, her words echoing in his mind—*trust me* and *trust no one* tangled together until he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
That was their bond. That was the price.
He returned to his work, but his focus had fractured. Outside, the night deepened toward morning, and somewhere in the academy's shadows, forces moved and watched and waited.
The academy's gardens were abandoned in the pre-dawn hours, frost silvering the dormant flower beds and bare branches. Grimm came here sometimes when sleep eluded him, when the walls of his quarters felt too close and the air too still. The cold cleared his mind, sharpened his thoughts.
Today, he was not alone.
Millie sat on a stone bench near the frozen fountain, her knees drawn to her chest, her breath misting in the frigid air. She did not look up as he approached, though he knew she had heard him. Her awareness was sharper than her withdrawn demeanor suggested.
"You're the fourth-grade," she said, not a question.
"Grimm."
"I know. Everyone knows." She finally turned her head, her pale eyes catching the starlight. "The boy who shouldn't exist. The mistake in the records."
Grimm sat on the opposite end of the bench, leaving space between them. "I've been called worse."
"I haven't called you anything." Millie returned her gaze to the fountain, to the ice that had stilled its waters. "I'm merely stating facts. Fourth-grade aptitude should preclude advancement. Yet here you are, scoring higher than first-grades on practical examinations. It's... noteworthy."
"Suspicious?"
"Interesting." She pulled her robes tighter around her shoulders. "The academy is full of mysteries. Secret organizations. Forbidden research. Students who succeed despite the odds. I find it comforting, actually."
"Comforting?"
"Proof that the system is not as rigid as it appears." Her voice dropped, barely audible. "That there are paths forward even when the road seems blocked."
Grimm studied her profile, the delicate bones, the shadows beneath her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. "Your family," he said carefully. "The Frostwhispers."
Millie's shoulders tensed. "You've been asking questions."
"I've been listening."
"Same thing." She was silent for a moment, then: "What do you know?"
"That your family was once powerful. That they lost their standing three generations ago. That you carry the burden of their restoration."
"How... comprehensive." Her laugh was brittle, like ice cracking underfoot. "Yes, the Frostwhispers were great once. Advisors to the High Council. Masters of ice magic that could freeze rivers, halt armies, preserve life through the long winters. My great-grandmother sat on the Council of Seven. My grandmother was exiled in disgrace. My father drinks himself to sleep in a manor that leaks and drafts and crumbles around him."
She turned to face him fully, and Grimm saw the pain she kept hidden beneath her withdrawn demeanor—the raw, aching weight of failed expectations.
"I am the last hope," Millie said. "The final chance to restore what was lost. If I fail, if I cannot advance to formal wizard, cannot reclaim our seat, cannot prove that the Frostwhispers still matter... then we are finished. Forgotten. Erased from the histories as if we never existed."
"That's not your responsibility."
"It's exactly my responsibility." Her voice hardened, ice forming in her tone. "You don't understand. You have no family, no legacy, nothing to lose. I have everything to lose. Every day I wake knowing that my failures are not merely my own—they are my family's, my ancestors', all those who came before and trusted that their descendants would restore their glory."
Grimm thought of his own past, the parents he barely remembered, the village that had cast him out, the years of survival without connection or belonging. He understood something of burden, of carrying weight that threatened to crush you. But Millie's burden was different—sharper, more defined, the weight of a name that had once meant something.
"The trials," he said. "They're in three months."
"I know."
"Survival rates are sixty-three percent."
Millie's laugh was genuine this time, if bitter. "You speak in statistics too."
"Statistics keep me alive."
"They won't help me." She stood, brushing frost from her robes. "I need more than numbers. I need..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter. Thank you for the conversation, Grimm. It's rare that anyone speaks to me as a person rather than a Frostwhisper."
She walked away, her footsteps soft on the frozen grass. Grimm watched her go, filing the encounter away with all the others, building his map of the academy's hidden landscape.
Millie was broken but not destroyed. Desperate but not hopeless. She could be an ally, perhaps, if he approached her correctly. Or she could be a liability, too fragile to trust in crisis.
Time would tell. It always did.
The training yard was empty save for the two of them, dawn still an hour away. Grimm had come to practice, to test the limits of his mutation-enhanced reflexes without witnesses. He had not expected company.
Mina stood at the yard's center, her robes discarded in favor of practice leathers, her arms bare despite the cold. Fire danced between her fingers, not a spell but a manifestation of her natural affinity, the power that leaked from her pores like sweat from lesser mortals.
"You," she said, not turning. "The fourth-grade."
Grimm stopped at the yard's edge. "Mina."
"Don't use my name." She finally faced him, her eyes catching the firelight, reflecting gold and crimson. "We are not equals. We are not friends. We are nothing to each other."
"Then why address me at all?"
Her smile cut like winter wind—clean, cold, and promising damage. "Because you interest me. In the way a bug interests a boot. You're an anomaly, Grimm. A mistake that should have been corrected. Fourth-grade aptitude, yet you persist. You survive. You even thrive, in your small way."
"Is that a problem?"
"It's an insult." The fire in her hands flared, casting wild shadows across the yard. "I was born with the Sun Child's blessing. Fire answers my call before I speak the words. I am the culmination of ten generations of selective breeding, of rituals and sacrifices and careful cultivation. You are a nothing, a nobody, a commoner with barely enough magic to light a candle. Yet here we are, in the same academy, competing for the same advancement."
Grimm said nothing. He had learned that silence was often the best response to anger, that it allowed the other party to reveal more than they intended.
"Do you know what the Sun Child means?" Mina asked, stepping closer. The heat radiating from her was palpable, a physical pressure against his skin. "It means I carry the sun's blood. Ancient lineage, divine blessing, the right to rule. My ancestors commanded armies, shaped kingdoms, burned civilizations to ash. And you... you are a rat in the walls, surviving on scraps and secrets."
"Yet I survive," Grimm said quietly.
"For now." Mina stopped an arm's length away, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath, smell the smoke that always clung to her. "The trials are coming. Do you think your tricks will save you when the testing begins? Do you think your little secrets, your late-night experiments, whatever you and that archive girl are hiding will matter when you're facing creatures that would tear you apart without thought?"
She knew. The realization struck him like cold water. She knew about Ravenna, knew about his studies, perhaps knew about the amulet and the changes it wrought in his flesh. How much? How deep did her information run?
"I don't know what you—"
"Don't lie." Her hand shot out, fingers closing around his throat with supernatural speed. The heat of her touch was searing, burning, but controlled—precise enough to threaten without truly harming. "I know everything about you, Grimm. I make it my business to know my competition. And you are competition, however little I wish to acknowledge it."
Her eyes blazed into his, golden and terrible. "I will advance to formal wizard. I will reclaim my family's glory. And I will do it without tricks, without mutations, without selling pieces of my soul for power I haven't earned. When I stand on the peak, it will be because I deserve to be there. Can you say the same?"
Grimm met her gaze without flinching, though his heart hammered against his ribs and his breath came short against her grip. "I can say," he rasped, "that I will be there. However I must. Whatever it costs."
For a moment, something flickered in Mina's expression—not respect, exactly, but recognition. The acknowledgment of a kindred spirit, however different their paths. Then it was gone, buried beneath the armor of her pride.
"Then we are enemies," she said, releasing him. "As it should be. The Sun Child does not ally with shadows."
She turned and walked away, fire trailing from her fingertips like banners. Grimm stood in the cooling air, touching his throat where her hand had been, feeling the burn of her touch fade into memory.
Enemies, then. He had expected no less. Mina's pride would not allow her to tolerate his existence, her worldview could not accommodate his success. She was a force of nature, brilliant and terrible, and she would stand in his path as long as they both remained in this place.
Good. Enemies kept him sharp. Enemies reminded him that he had not yet won, that survival was a daily struggle rather than a guaranteed outcome.
The sun began to rise, painting the sky in shades of gold that mocked Mina's fire with their natural beauty. Grimm turned toward the light, toward another day of study and preparation and careful, calculated advancement.
The trials approached. The factions gathered. And in the shadows, the Black Tower organization watched, waiting for the moment to claim their prize.
Grimm smiled, a rare expression that touched his eyes with something colder than Millie's ice, darker than Ravenna's archives.
Let them watch. Let them wait.
When the time came, he would be ready.