Chapter 33: Felt [2]

She watched the boy’s face the way someone watches a mirror they don’t much like looking into. He took one long, shuddering breath and finally chose.

"Felt," he said, the name a surrender. "My name is Felt. My job was simple. Get in, pretend to be a student, blend in. I was supposed to gather information on troop and team positioning across the different exam brackets and feed it back for whatever he’s planning." He said it all in a rush now that the dam had broken. "I was never told the full shape of the attack, only pieces. Which brackets to watch, which names mattered. Nothing that would let me betray the whole operation even if I wanted to." He insisted, his voice cracking again, "Which I very much do."

Cane nodded along, filing every word away.

Raven finally spoke, her voice flat. "We can’t trust a single thing he’s saying. He’s a Talon."

Felt flinched at the word, his shoulders curling in. It landed on him like an accusation he didn’t have the strength left to argue with. Cane’s mouth curled into a slow, pointed smile. He turned to look Raven dead in the eyes.

"You used to be a Talon too, didn’t you?"

Raven stuttered, actually stuttered, caught completely off guard. "I—what does that—?"

Before she could recover, Cane reached over and gave her ass a playful, open-palmed smack. The sound was sharp, and the impact pulled an undignified, girlish yelp out of her that neither of them expected. It was a firm, plump handful even through the fabric, gone as fast as it landed. She rounded on him immediately, her glare sharpening into something murderous.

"You came to me for help," he reminded her, his voice easy. "I’m good at this. Reading people. Finding the crack in someone’s resolve and pressing exactly there. So maybe the smart move is to just let me handle it."

She kept glaring at him for a long moment, the tension in her jaw not fully draining. Then, grudgingly, she pouted and looked away, her arms crossing tight over her still-torn top. It was a belated attempt at modesty that did more to draw the eye than hide anything. Which, judging by how pleased he looked, was exactly the outcome he’d been angling for.

Felt watched the entire exchange with open, uncomprehending confusion. He glanced between the two of them like he was trying to work out what kind of alliance he’d stumbled into. A noble who smacked a former terrorist’s ass mid-interrogation and a terrorist who let him get away with it wasn’t a dynamic anything in his training had prepared him for.

Cane turned his attention back to Felt, his tone casual. "I need you to do something for me. Go back to Alexander. Tell him the team led by Yelena is going to be moving north."

Felt blinked, confused, clearly expecting something more complicated. After a second, he nodded, fast and frantic, and took off running back through the trees without another word.

Raven watched him go, then turned to Cane. The annoyance was gone, replaced by genuine worry. "That wasn’t smart. Alexander has ways of keeping people quiet. Permanent ways. You just sent a scared kid back into that with a lie in his mouth. He’s got no combat training worth mentioning, no real cover if Alexander so much as pauses to ask a second question. I’d know. I used to be the one asking."

Cane’s smile didn’t falter. "I know. I know Felt’s probably going to betray us the second Alexander raises an eyebrow at him. I’ve factored that in already. It’s not a blind spot."

Her eyes went wide. Her voice jumped a full register. "What the fuck do you think you’re doing, then? If you already expect the information to go straight back to the enemy?"

Cane, entirely unbothered, reached over and smacked her ass a second time. "Relax. Shut up. Just watch how this plays out." He explained, his voice patient now. "The false intel isn’t meant to fool him forever. It’s meant to buy us the one thing we actually need: control over where he decides to move first. Feed him a lie about Yelena’s team heading north. Either he takes the bait and commits resources somewhere we’ve already accounted for, thinning his forces on the real target, or he smells the setup and hesitates. He’ll second-guess every piece of intelligence Felt’s ever handed him. It slows him down just as effectively." He looked at her, his expression serious for the first time. "Either way, Alexander ends up reacting to us instead of the other way around. A man reacting is a man who’s already lost the initiative he thinks he still has. All you’re actually going to need to do, when the moment comes, is finish him off once I’ve already softened him up."

Raven turned that over, visibly running the logic against every instinct honed by a year of actual field experience. "It’s not a bad read," she admitted, her tone grudging. "Reckless, still. Banking on a scared kid holding together under pressure he’s clearly not built for. But not stupid." She added, quieter, "This is exactly the kind of plan Alexander himself would have run." She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult.

"Probably both," he said.

Raven reached back to rub the sting out of her own butt, glaring at him with real irritation now. "Stop doing that. It actually stings."

Cane grinned. "I could give it a gentle squeeze instead. Purely as an act of charity, to make it feel better." He waggled his eyebrows. "Maybe check on that mystery bra colour while I’m down there."

Her glare didn’t waver for a second. "You will do no such thing." She turned on her heel, putting a few feet of very deliberate distance between her hips and his hands, muttering something under her breath about perverts, allies, and how she apparently couldn’t have one without the other.