Vell crouched behind a marble column, deep in the quiet corridors of the elven palace.
Curiosity had brought him this far, but now he was stuck.
He wanted to follow both the Irath diplomat and the Lord Chancellor, but without magic, he couldn't be in two places at once. And even with magic… the risk was too great.
He considered the Dico words that could create a duplicate of himself.
A doppelganger.
But the spell would be unforgiving. He didn't know the exact phrasing. One wrong syllable, and he might not duplicate himself at all.
He might split.
And that could kill him.
He could take the time to work it out, study and debate the phrasing, but by then, both targets would be long gone.
As he pondered, something caught his eye.
A shadow shifted where it shouldn't have. Quiet. Slow. Almost nothing. He noticed it only because he'd been staring straight at the spot.
Vell only caught it because he was staring at the spot it moved to.
The shadow moved again, too slow and careful to be natural and too precise to be a ghost.
There it was again, creeping along the base of the far wall, like a sliver of smoke gliding across stone.
Vell whispered, "Kro Imm."
A faint pulse of force left his palm, like a breath of wind, and brushed the shadow.
It shimmered.
Not a shadow at all. A figure cloaked in red.
"Limerence," Vell muttered.
Of course.
She'd never been one for subtlety.
Her idea of stealth was less about silence and more about assuming no one would dare challenge her. And here, in the inner halls of the elven palace, it was almost working.
Vell crossed the corridor quickly. She didn't see him until he was already beside her.
"You're terrible at sneaking," he said quietly.
She flinched, eyes wide, then scowled. "You move like a whisper. I move like a poem."
"You move like a poem told by someone drunk."
Limerence sighed. "I knew the vanishing powder was too weak. I brewed it myself, you know. Spent hours on it." She flicked a bit of dust off her sleeve. "Anyway. What are you doing skulking around?"
"What does it look like?" Vell said. "I'm sneaking. I saw the Lord Chancellor speaking with an Irath diplomat. I felt like they were hiding something, and now I want to find out what."
"Mm. Same," she said. "Saw them go separate ways after the argument."
"I can't follow both," Vell said. "Not without... complicated duplication."
"You mean killing yourself by accident?" she said sweetly.
"Roughly."
"How romantic." She raised a brow. "Well, lucky for you, I have no plans tonight. And I want answers too. This place reeks of secrets. And I'm not about to sit idly while that Irath worm tries to poke through the Queen's ashes."
Vell nodded. "Then we split."
"I'll take the Chancellor," she said quickly. "Elven arrogance will make it easier for me to evade them. You take the Irath. They're all paranoid, so we'll be more guarded."
"Agreed. We meet back here in an hour?"
"Two," she said. "I may need to set something on fire."
Vell sighed. "Two. But no fire. Please."
"Relax, hubby," she purred.
And with that, she turned, threw a handful of dust from a pouch on herself, and vanished into the dark.