This fictional chapter is set in Book 5: A Cauldron of Bitterness after Chapter Chapter 248 - The Key to an Unknown Lock from the perspective of Ana Gervin and what she has been up to while Sebastien is recovering at Undreaming Order Headquarters/Westbay Manor following the fight against Thaddeus Lacer.
This was written out of the desire to keep holding onto Book 5 and not wanting it to end just yet. Ana rules!
Ana
Month 9, Day 13, Sunday 7:00 a.m.
Ana’s mood had already soured for obvious reasons before she’d even set foot in the Undreaming Order headquarters. The place was an amalgamation of cryptic whispers and unnecessarily theatrical rituals. She could barely tolerate the aura of self-important mysticism surrounding the Order, and Deidre’s entire presence grated on her nerves. The woman was just… so extra. Calling upon the Raven Queen to use more blood magic when it already has done so much damage seemed inacceptable to her.
As she approached the doorway to Sebastien’s quarters, Ana could hear Deidre’s voice down the hall. She stood at the threshold and listened, her lips curling into a scowl.
Ana paced back and forth, her shoes clicking sharply against the floor of the Undreaming Order’s hall. Her thoughts were scattered, but one thing remained clear: Sebastien had nearly died. Someone had tried to erase him, torn his mind apart with blood magic, something so destructive it could have killed him. And now the bastard was still out there, free to try again whenever they pleased. She was done sitting back and hoping the next spellcaster who crossed Sebastien’s path was more competent. No. That wasn’t how she worked.
Damien’s hesitation was infuriating. She understood his reluctance, he wanted to play by his secret rules, and solve things with logic and careful planning. He was reluctant to ask the right people for help, and maybe in a different situation, that would be the way to go. But right now? Sebastien was still in a fragile state, his safety a question mark. She couldn’t wait around for others to “handle it.” She wasn’t about to let Sebastien become another victim because they were too polite to break a few laws.
She had to act.
Her mind drifted to the thought she’d buried deep in the back of her mind earlier, the kind of thought that didn’t sit well with people like Damien. The kind of thought that made her uncomfortable even as it flickered into her brain. But it was becoming more and more clear: if she wanted to keep Sebastien safe, she’d need more than just her magic. She needed something that would ensure his protection, something bold, something powerful, something that would let her fight back when everyone else was too slow or too squeamish.
Ana had already seen it, hours ago, in the depths of the Night Market. She’d felt the need for it the moment Damien had told her how close Sebastien had come to dying. The urgency, the gut-deep instinct to make sure he never had to go through something like that again.
Rending spells. It was a horrifying thought. Illegal, yes. Deadly, yes. And in his hands? Perfect.
She hadn’t planned to go shopping for one. She had been planning to spend her morning in a much more refined manner, sipping coffee with Damien and pretending everything was still normal. But after that look, Sebastien, pale and still in that narrow bed, helpless, it had changed something in her. There was no time for fine manners, no time for politeness, for respect for the law. She needed to level the playing field. The Night Market was her last resort. And if that meant breaking the law, so be it.
Month 9, Day 13, Sunday 11:00 p.m.
Ana had always considered herself more refined than the average smuggler or Night Market regular. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to navigate them. Especially when she was shopping for something very specific.
Something cute. Something illegal.
Something lethal.
She hadn’t planned to go shopping for rending spell devices on her way home, but after hearing from Damien just how close Sebastien had come to not waking up again, Ana collected herself and got to work.
Because she had seen him.
Curled up in that narrow bed at the Undreaming Order, pale and still. More vulnerable than she had ever imagined Sebastien Siverling could be. The kind of vulnerable that made her want to scream and break things and file formal complaints with the gods. The idea that someone had done this to him, had left him like that, like an overused puppet with fraying strings, had filled her with an almost uncharacteristic rage. She couldn’t punch the perpetrator. Yet. So she would do the next best thing.
Make sure that the next time anyone tried to hurt Sebastien, they’d be the one they never saw coming.
There were only a handful of stalls in the Night Market that dealt in compact, concealed enchantments, half of them overpriced, the other half definitely cursed. But Ana had grown up among Gervins. She could smell a scam like it was perfume on a letter. And she had no time to waste.
She bypassed the obvious vendors. The ones with “hex-proof” pendants and decorative wands. Instead, she walked with purpose, heels clicking on the cobbled paths between awnings like a rich widow in mourning.
Eventually, she found it. The place where her contacts informed her to find what she was looking for. A booth tucked under layers of canvas, practically hidden between a pickled eyeball seller and a man peddling “sympathetic fertility charms.” A woman in a white featureless mask stood behind the table, arms crossed, wearing opera gloves covering her skin.
Ana approached without preamble. “I’m looking for something charming and violent.”
The woman blinked behind the mask. “Explosive, corrosive, or directional?”
“Rending.” Ana said. “Skin-rupturing, blood-fountain, destroy-your-enemies-from-the-inside -out-rending.”
The woman paused. “Targeted or area effect?”
Ana smiled sweetly. “Both, preferably.”
Without a word, the masked vendor went into the back and returned a warded wooden box.
Sliding open the top, she set on the table something that looked like a simple bauble, a rabbit-shaped keychain, glossy white enamel with tiny rose-gold ears.
Ana stared at it. “You’re joking.”
The woman shrugged. “Seven rending spells. Based on condensed gravitational microbursts. Pulls flesh apart like taffy.”
Ana raised an eyebrow. “Seven contained in something this size?”
“Concentric shell core partitions, compressed glyphs.”
“How do you activate it?”
“Punch someone. With the ears. They must pierce the skin-barrier.”
Ana slowly, deliberately opened her uncomfortably heavy coin purse. “How much?”
“Six hundred gold.”
“Three hundred and a favor,” Ana countered.
The woman tilted her head. “What kind of favor?”
Ana leaned in. “I’m very good at making people forget things they saw. Especially people with official uniforms. You never know when that could be useful.”
There was a pause and after some further negotiation a gloved hand took the gold. “Pleasure doing business.”
Ana slipped the bunny keychain into her pocket like it was a brooch from a boutique. She didn’t even flinch when a rat skittered across her boot as she went back to her carriage.
She’d asked, out of curiosity, about getting a license for it, even a forged one. The masked woman had laughed. Actually laughed. “If you could get a license for that, darling,” she’d said, “you wouldn’t be down here with the rest of us. You’d be in the Council’s war room. The moment someone forges a permit for a Class V rending charm under three inches in size, the Vaults themselves send a retrieval team. People have been arrested just for asking.”
Unlike regulated weapons like stunning battle wands, which could be legally owned with the right paperwork and a self-defense justification, this was a purely offensive device, made for only one thing: ripping someone apart from the inside out. Its singularly lethal purpose made it impossible to justify as “defensive.”
It wasn’t about stopping someone.
It was about ending them.
Ana smiled and said nothing more. She already knew this would never be registered. And that was exactly the point.
As she left, she muttered, “If anyone ever hurts Sebastien again, I swear to all thirteen crowns, I’ll get one shaped like a kitten next and do the deed myself.”
After delivering the keychain to Damien, Nat had asked what she’d brought back from her “Night Market adventure” Ana had nonchalantly explained the item.
“Ask Damien so you can hold onto it if he isn’t here to give it to Sebastien when he wakes up. Tell him it’s from us.”
And Nat, sweet, clever Nat, had practiced her deadliest rabbit-punch technique in the mirror.
Ana worried about Damien’s safety as well but knew in advance that he would not carry an item like that given his attitude towards legality, or moral ambiguity, or “escalating tensions.” Undue influence from Lord Westbay. But that was fine. He could moralize and continue supporting Sebastien emotionally. Ana would handle the rest.
It was, in her opinion, a very fair division of labor.
Month 9, Day 15, Tuesday
Ana Gervin sat primly at the vanity in her temporary townhouse, twirling a silver quill between her fingers as if it were a dagger. Which, in some ways, it was. She tapped it twice against her lower lip, eyes narrowing in thought.
The goal, as always, was confusion.
Not the sloppy kind… no, that wouldn’t do. What she needed was curated disarray, rumors woven like an illusion spell: just enough truth to be believable, just enough nonsense to keep anyone with real power too tangled to ask the right questions.
Sebastien was recovering… barely. And while she was still furious he and Damien had kept her out of whatever madness they’d been involved in, Ana had channeled that fury into something more productive.
Misdirection.
That was her battlefield now.
One version of the story had Sebastien spending time at Pendragon Palace, of all places, where the High Crown was supposedly considering naming him a replacement heir. Ana had seeded that one at a garden party over champagne and too many canapés, casually mentioning how “distinguished” Sebastien had been looking lately and sighing, “Well, he’s always had a certain… royal bearing, hasn’t he?”
She had whispered it just loud enough for the loudest woman in the room to overhear. Within the hour, a minor earl was loudly proclaiming that he always knew the boy had noble blood. Ana almost choked on her melon slice.
The second rumor she set loose like a fox at a hunt - completely different: Sebastien had been spotted leaving Gilbratha aboard a ship helmed by a disgraced pirate captain, bound for who-knows-where. Ana had planted that one through a minor actress she’d once bribed with fine wine and glamour-enhancing potion. The woman was known for dramatic embellishments and loose lips, which Ana considered an asset.
“Aye, he wore a black coat and had a scar over one eye,” the woman had said, utterly delighted. “Swore vengeance on some pompous aristocrat, a Westbay, I think!”
Ana had chuckled to herself.
And then, her favorite rumor. A bit of performance art, really. A story about three con artists posing as Sebastien Siverling, running scams on moderately rich merchants. It was absurd, contradictory, and chaotic… but not impossible.
She’d even hired a trio of lookalikes for a single afternoon to strut conspicuously through three different parts of the city in “scholarly” clothing and suspiciously clean boots. One loudly asked sold “experimental essence-purifying tincture” at a back-alley apothecary. Another tried to sell a “Gervin family secret” to a gossip-hungry laundress. The third stood silently in front of the University’s east gate, feeding pigeons and muttering about ancient glyph structures.
Word had spread like wildfire. Even Ana wasn’t sure what people believed anymore.
Which was perfect.
Because the real Sebastien?
He was recovering at Westbay Manor after getting his brains scrambled like eggs, ears still half-ringing with trauma and secrets that could unravel the city. And while he lay low, Ana made sure no one could find the thread that led to him. Every rumor was like a spell component. Every lie was a ward.
Still, she hadn’t forgotten the truth.
Sebastien hadn’t asked for her help. Hadn’t told her the full story. Hadn’t even let her fight. And Ana - Ana Gervin, destroyer of uncles and daughter of scandal, wasn’t used to being sidelined.
But as she set her quill down and leaned back in her chair, she smiled. They’d need her soon enough.
And when they did, she’d be there. Dressed to kill, teeth bared behind a polite smile, and wrapped in half-truths like a princess in velvet.
It started with a whisper over lunch. Not the clinking cutlery kind of lunch most people had but Ana Gervin’s sort. Silk napkins. Private terrace. Only three guests, all “friends” all with ears sharper than their daggers and mouths made for secrets.
The kind of girls who didn’t just spread rumors - they curated narratives.
This, Ana understood, was how empires were built. And protected.
That morning, over tea and perfectly buttered scones in the sun-dappled courtyard outside the University’s conservatory, Ana carefully deployed her favorite weapon: charming half-truths delivered to the worst gossips she could find.
Mira Gellings, of course, was there - chronic over-romanticizer and one of the leaders of what Ana had dubbed the Unofficial Sebastien Siverling Fan Club. Beside her was Hallie, who could remember every whispered rumor ever spoken within a twenty-foot radius. Ana didn’t even need to say things loudly. Just clearly.
“So,” Ana began, placing her cup down with precision, “if you hear he’s in Pendragon Palace negotiating a dynastic promotion, don’t be too surprised.”
Mira gasped. “Wait, what?”
Ana waved a hand with practiced modesty. “It’s probably just nonsense. But someone said the High Crown is reconsidering his heir, and Sebastien was seen entering the palace’s east wing. Alone.”
Hallie’s eyes lit up with scandalous delight.
Ana continued, voice airy. “Though personally, I think the version about the pirate ship is more romantic. The one with the ex-smuggler captain who bribed the port authority and now only sails at night? Very ‘Sebastien disappears under cover of moonlight.’”
“What about the con-artists?” Mira asked breathlessly. “Is that one real?”
“Oh yes,” Ana said solemnly, as if forced to admit it. “Three boys pretending to be Sebastien. Running cons in different parts of the city. I heard they made off with two thousand gold in alchemical reagents and left a noblewoman in tears.”
The girls were eating it up. But Ana wasn’t finished.
She leaned in a little, lowering her voice. “Of course, none of that is the real story.”
Both of them leaned in as well.
Ana smiled sweetly. “He’s just been spending time with me and Damien. Same as always.”
There it was. The true part: Sebastien had been staying at Westbay Manor. But the way Ana said it, so casual, so nonchalant, making it sound like the least interesting version of events. Just a trio of schoolmates, having tea and debate circles and pretending the world wasn’t teetering on the edge of madness.
This… this was her battlefield. Not duels or daring escapes, but the war of whispers. The politics of perception. Sebastien might battle curses and conspiracies, but Ana would twist society itself into armor for him. She would fight for him with reputation and misdirection, with silverware and gossip, with lies so loud no one could hear the truth underneath. He didn’t have to ask. This was her way of protecting him. Of being useful.
“No secret heir plots. No sea voyages,” Ana added with a wink. “Just us, a stack of books, and Damien trying to explain modern magical theory without falling asleep on his own notes.”
That was the version she wanted to spread.
Familiar. Innocent. Even a little boring.
And to make sure it stuck, Ana fed it to the right people, not the cautious, studious types, but the theatrical ones. The students who passed notes in class and turned minor hallway encounters into serialized romantic dramas. Within hours, it would be the “confirmed” truth that Sebastien had simply been off-campus visiting close friends. Naturally.
But just to keep things balanced, Ana made sure the other rumors stayed alive too. Whispers of necromantic duels in the tunnels beneath Gilbratha, half-remembered sightings of Sebastien boarding sky carriages to who-knows-where, and even a story about how he’d turned down a proposal from a foreign princess who had seen him in a dream.
Ana knew the key wasn’t consistency.
It was volume.
When someone eventually came looking for the truth, they wouldn’t know where to start.
And the actual truth that Sebastien had nearly died, that the wrong people might still be watching him, that she and Damien were dancing on the edge of something far bigger than them all that truth would be safely buried beneath layers of glorious, absurd distraction.
As Ana stood to leave, Mira clutched her sleeve. “Wait, are you sure you’re not dating him?”
Ana just laughed. “Please. If I were, you’d know by now.”
Damien flashed in her mind for a second.
“It’s definitely not me.” she smiled.
