Page 91 of Innocent Until Proven Witch

I help the woman down from the cart, catching her arm when the current nearly takes her legs out from under her. She grips me with both hands, harder than she probably realizes.

"We thought we were going to die," she manages, the words spilling out of her in a rush that is entirely honest and entirely understandable.

I nod toward higher ground. "Go."

She doesn't argue. Nobody argues anymore, not with the storm pressing in from every direction and reality dismantling itself around them. The family disappears into the crowd moving toward safety, and another scream rises from somewhere along the harbor before the last of them is out of sight.

I spin toward it.

A fishing vessel has broken loose from whatever remained of its moorings and is crashing through the harbor street with indiscriminate violence, scattering people in every direction. A merchant tumbles into the floodwater before anyone can reach him.

I dive without deliberation.

The current hits like a wall — cold, violent, the kind of cold that makes the body want to stop functioning — and the merchant surfaces a few feet away, flailing with the frantic energy of someone who has completely lost their bearings.

I grab him by the collar and haul him upright. The man immediately latches on with both arms.

"Easy," I say, already pulling us both toward the shallower edge.

The merchant coughs hard, water streaming from his face. "I can't swim," he announces with genuine alarm, as though the information might change the laws of physics.

"You're doing a remarkable job of proving otherwise," I reply, and drag him the rest of the way to solid ground.

By the time we reach it, Gideon is already there, a child hanging from one arm and an elderly woman gripping the other, a cut above his forehead leaking blood that the rain keeps washing away before it can dry. The man seems entirely unaware of it.

He notices me and raises an eyebrow. "Still alive?"

"Unfortunately," I reply, which earns a short, sharp snort of amusement. If Gideon can still produce sarcasm under these conditions, things are not yet beyond recovery.

A crash echoes across the harbor and everyone turns — another section of dock collapsing into the surge, the wood giving way with the sound of something that was never meant to go quietly.

The storm continues growing, and beneath the noise of it I feel something that sits differently from the rest. Something focused. Deliberate. The kind of pattern that suggests a hand behind the chaos rather than simply nature doing what nature does.

My stomach tightens with the particular certainty of a conclusion I have been working toward for days.

Aldric. This has his fingerprints on every piece of it.

"Finn!"

A fisherman stumbles toward me through the crowd, pale and shaking which goes beyond the cold. I recognize him immediately — one of the survivors pulled from the northern routes months ago, a man who had spent weeks recovering and then quietly returned to the water because it was the only life he knew.

"What happened?" I ask, steadying the man by the arm.

The fisherman swallows hard and glances around before he speaks, as though saying it aloud might complete some circuit he would rather leave open.

"Before the storm," he begins, his breathing uneven. "I saw someone. Standing near the rocks on the eastern shore." He pauses. "It was Aldric."

Gideon's head comes up sharply.

I say nothing, only wait, letting the silence do its work.

"He was carrying something," the fisherman continues, his voice dropping lower. "It was glowing. I don't know what it was, but the moment he raised it, the waves started moving toward him instead of away." His eyes widen slightly at the memory of it. "Then everything went mad."

The words settle between the three of us, and neither Gideon nor I need to speak to understand what they mean. Another piece. Another confirmation. The relic, already beyond doubt, already beyond speculation — Aldric had it, had used it, and had done so in full view of at least one witness who survived to report it.

"Finn!"

I know that voice before I turn.