Yue woke up with blood in her mouth.
Not real blood, probably. But her tongue tasted metallic, and her skull felt like someone had tried to sculpt it from the inside out with the end of a crowbar. Her red sheets were half-kicked to the floor, the silk twisted and wrinkled, her blackout curtains drawn tight, the light behind them threatening war. Too bright.
Hangovers were not unfamiliar to her, but she still hated them. Not for the headache. Not even for the nausea. No. Yue hated hangovers because they dulled the edges. Everything felt slow, distant, blurry. Like the world had been dipped in static and smoke, and she couldn't find the thread that usually tethered her thoughts to reality. It made her feel like a copy of herself. And Yue did not tolerate copies.
She lay there, on the side of the bed where no one had slept for years, staring at the dim ceiling and listening to the hum of the city beyond her soundproofed walls.
Her room was still cold.
Her mouth was still dry.
And- Her phone was ringing. Painfully loud. Louder than the migraine.
She blindly groped across her bedside table and found the offending device buried under a sketchpad, a pearl-studded needle, and a half-eaten jar of lemon gummies. She brought it to her ear without looking.
"What," she rasped.
"MISS YUE!"
Cait's voice came through like a knife to the soul. Too shrill. Too awake. Too… what was i thinking again?
Yue flinched. "Lower your voice or I'll have you banned from breaks."
"I've called you six times. The boutique opens in twelve minutes, the autocleaners are jammed, and there's a new monster-grade order request sitting in your inbox marked URGENT—SS GRADE, and it's glowing red and I think the client hacked our security system to send it directly, and there's a line outside, and-"
Yue hung up.
Yue rolled over and buried her face into the pillow, groaning like a cursed soul exorcised too early. Her body ached in places that shouldn't ache unless she'd gone ten rounds with a mutated centipede-beast from Sector 11, and to her knowledge, she hadn't. Though given the state of her memory and the way her head was pulsating like a heartbeat in her skull, it wasn't entirely off the table.
SS-grade, Cait had said. Glowing red. Possibly hacked.
Yue let out a muffled scream into the pillow.
Yue peeled herself off the bed like a demon rising from a long slumber, dragging the sheets with her. She felt like a wilted orchid in a hurricane. Her black silk robe clung to her skin as she shuffled into the bathroom, the lights flickering to life with motion sensors.
She winced.
The mirror was a mistake.
The woman who stared back was pale, shadow-eyed, and vaguely menacing in a "might hex you with a designer sewing needle" sort of way. Her hair was a tangled mess of midnight black strands, half-slicked back with dried serum and pillow drool. There was lipstick smudged across her cheek like war paint.
Who did she make out to end up like this?
Still, she tilted her head. Not bad.
Ten minutes later, dressed in an oversized cashmere turtleneck and wide-legged trousers that looked expensive enough to insult someone, Yue finally picked up the phone.
14 missed calls.
9 from Cait.
3 from clients.
2 from an "unknown" number flagged in her database as "FLAGGED ENTITY: NOT HUMAN (TRUST LEVEL: 0%)." That was her older sister, of course.
She ignored them all.
Instead, she stared at the message Cait had sent six minutes ago.
[Image Attached: Surveillance Cam Feed 03-B]
A blurry still. Boutique front. Early morning light.
A line of hunters was waiting outside the locked boutique doors, half in armor, half in plainclothes. One of them was shirtless and bleeding. Another was holding a plasma leash attached to what looked like a semi-conscious winged beast.
And then she typed with one hand slowly.
[Sent]: Tell them they have 10 minutes. If they're still there when I arrive, I'm charging triple.
Meanwhile, at the boutique, Cait was a hurricane in trousers and a mismatched blazer, running back and forth between the reception desk and the workshop. The autocleaners were still jammed, and one of them was whirring menacingly in the backroom, chewing on a bloodstained glove it had sucked up too greedily.
She had sorted the order requests by threat level, printed three invoices, served two hunters questionable tea from the vending machine, and lied to a government agent about Yue being "in a private design consultation with a highly classified client" (in reality, she was simply too sleepy to deal with those arrogant hunters' bullshit).
"Miss Yue says ten minutes," Cait finally told the line of hunters outside, poking her head out through the front door.
"You mean she's actually coming?" someone asked.
"She's on her way," Cait said with an exhausted smile. "Which, by her standards, means we've been blessed."
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
The car ride was a blur.
Yue sat curled into the leather seat of her automated transport like an offended cat dragged to an appointment. A latte steamed in the cupholder untouched. Her sunglasses shielded her headache from the morning light, and the pulse of her migraine throbbed against the rhythm of the city. Buildings screamed past. Smoke curled from a ruptured sewer vent in Sector 4. Somewhere overhead, sirens wailed as a sky-beast was hunted across power lines.
She closed her eyes. Imagining something calm to atleast help her a bit.
Ten minutes. That was the contract she'd set. If the universe didn't respect her time, it could be billed.
The boutique came into view like an overpopulated sightseeing place. Polished black tinted glass, a glowing sigil of her name above the door like a curse. Hunters were still lined up outside, tapping boots and fiddling with weapons. A few turned their heads as her car rolled up, quiet as a ghost.
She stepped out, all black-on-black elegance and drowsiness, and the crowd parted like silk torn down the middle.
Not out of respect.
But out of fear of dealing with her rage.
Yue didn't look at any of them. Not the shirtless berserker with dried blood down his chin. Not the psychic whose third eye was glowing through his forehead bandage. Not even the tall, hooded one at the end of the line with a mini snowstorm above his head.
The boutique door slid open with a soft hiss, and Cait appeared with the expression of someone preparing to fight twin dragons with nothing but a cup of tea and a bucket of fear.
"Miss Yue, welcome back," she greeted breathlessly.
"I live here."
Yue walked past her without comment. The temperature inside dropped by five degrees.
The boutique was immaculate, of course. Cait had done well. The armor displays shimmered under low lighting, polished plating and stitched runes whispering power in every curve. But Yue saw the mess immediately. A thread spool misplaced. A seamstress bot caught mid-glitch. One of the security drones had a smudge on its lens.
Unacceptable.
Still, she didn't stop walking until she reached her private fitting chamber, the room where only her hands could finalize a design, where the floor was lined with reinforced rune-thread, and the walls heard no secrets they would tell.
She stopped just before the doors.
"Where is the client?" she asked, not turning.
"They… didn't enter," Cait said carefully. "Said they'd only come in after seeing you. Said you'd understand."
"I rarely do."
"They also said this."
Cait handed over a datachip, silver, oblong, humming softly with protective spells. Yue took it between two fingers and studied it. The rune carved into its side was unfamiliar. Old. Pre-Collapse, even. Ancient magic.
She's here?-
Yue closed her eyes. Breathed once, deeply.
"Who delivered this?" she asked.
Cait paused. Her fingers were twitching. Not in the usual flustered sort of way—but like she was restraining something. Her smile, too, was wrong. Too crisp. Too polite. Like it had been cut from a customer service manual and glued onto her face.
"No one. It was just there this morning. Sitting on the reception desk, like someone walked past our barriers, past the internal enchantments, the alarms, everything, and left it." She said it with a little too much calm. Her tone was soft, but rehearsed. Practiced.
Yue turned her head just slightly to study her assistant. Cait wasn't sweating. She wasn't flushed. But her eyes… they flicked to the door too quickly. Her thumb was rubbing the edge of her clipboard, fast, in short circles. Not nervous. Controlling.
A spike of suspicion touched Yue's gut like the ghost of a needle jabbed too deep.
"You're sure?"
Cait met her eyes. "Yes. I checked the surveillance feed. It blinked out for twelve seconds. When it came back, the chip was there."
Yue didn't reply. She stared a moment longer. Long enough that Cait's fingers started to tremble for real. Then, slowly, Yue turned back to the door.
If Cait was hiding something, she was doing a terrible job of concealing it.
And yet… Yue didn't press. She could have. She should have. But she didn't.
Not because she trusted her.
But because Yue understood something most people didn't.
You only pull at loose thread when you're ready to unravel the whole garment.
And right now, she was not ready.
Instead, she said flatly, "Put the shop into lock-mode. No walk-ins for the next six hours. No commissions unless marked S-GRADE or higher. And if anyone asks for me—"
"They won't get you," Cait finished quickly, like muscle memory. "Understood."
Yue gave her a single nod and entered the private chamber, the reinforced door sealing behind her with a mechanical click.
The lights came on gradually, illuminating the workspace in warm golds and soft silvers. The walls were lined with enchanted materials. Glowing threads coiled like silk serpents, slabs of beastbone glimmering faintly with residual heat, needles that vibrated in rhythm with the operator's mana. This was her sanctum. And yet, she didn't move to the workbench. She didn't touch the hydrascale still secured in its vault.
Instead, Yue sank into her velvet chair and stared blankly at the wall for a long, long moment.
So. Ivonne was back. Or had been watching. Or had never left.
And then she felt a large, cold hand creep up to her shoulder.