The Inquisitor's Gilded Prey

Chapter 4: Metal Whispers

The wind and rain swirled into the room following Linus Clovis’s heels. He didn't bother to close the door, letting the damp, icy draft lash at the flickering gaslights like a whip.

This was his first move: shattering the enclosure of her environment to make his prey feel exposed and unsettled.

Lillian Wylde stood behind the counter. Even from three meters away, Linus could feel the abnormal waves of heat radiating from her. Her hair was a mess, her collar slightly parted, and she looked like someone who had just jolted awake from a feverish nightmare, yet was desperately trying to maintain a crumbling sense of dignity.

"Church business," Linus said, removing his soaked hat and tossing it onto a dusty chair with a casualness that suggested he was in his own backyard. "You don't mind if I take shelter from the rain, do you, Miss Wylde?"

"If I said I did mind, would you leave, Inquisitor?"

Lillian’s voice was raspy, but unexpectedly steady. She didn't cower like an ordinary commoner. Instead, she braced her hands against the edge of the counter, her amber eyes—shimmering with the gloss of a high fever—locking onto his. "After all, there’s usually only a badge’s width between 'trespassing' and 'requisitioning'."

Linus c****d an eyebrow.

Interesting. A sick cat, but one that still kept its claws out.

He didn't answer. Instead, his long legs carried him across the floor, his black leather boots striking the old wood in a heartbeat-steady, intimidating rhythm. He bypassed the seating area and walked straight toward the shelves lined with dangerous chemicals.

He was invading her territory. Her safe zone.

"I heard some rumors next door," Linus’s slender fingers drifted lazily across a row of bottles labeled with skulls. The tips of his deerskin gloves made a faint scratching sound. "Rumors about a certain... 'surgery' that technically never happened."

He stopped abruptly, his finger resting beside a bottle of highly unstable nitroglycerin.

"In this neighborhood, ordinary doctors only know how to bleed a patient. But you..." Linus turned, leaning back against the shelf, his gaze pinning her like a hawk’s. "You not only sliced open a child’s throat but miraculously extracted a foreign object without leaving so much as a scar."

He leaned forward, his aura of predatory aggression descending like a landslide. "Tell me, Miss Wylde. Did you use a scalpel? Or did you use something that... requires no physical contact at all?"

Lillian’s temples throbbed violently. The tinnitus from the overload made Linus’s voice sound like the screeching of metal—sharp and agonizing.

She knew what he was testing for. He was waiting for her to slip, waiting for her to crumble.

"You overestimate me."

Lillian took a sharp breath of the searing air, forcing her fingers to relax their grip on the counter. She raised a hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Her movements were slow and deliberate—the languid grace of someone long-suffering from illness, masking the tremor in her limbs.

"I didn't slice his throat. That was the work of emetics and lubricants, guided by a touch of luck."

She pointed to a bottle of olive oil and some ipecacuanha root on the top shelf, her lips curling into a pale, mocking smile. "That is science, Captain. Magic in the eyes of the ignorant; elementary chemistry in the eyes of an expert. Is the Church now putting 'knowledge' on trial?"

A beautiful counterstrike.

She had just categorized his suspicion as "ignorance."

The chill in Linus’s eyes deepened, but the smirk on his lips grew.

"Science," he mused, tasting the word. Suddenly, he pushed off from the shelf and closed the distance to the counter in two swift strides.

Too close.

The scent of cold rain, leather, and a faint metallic tang of blood instantly enveloped Lillian.

Linus didn't stop. He pulled the copper button from his pocket and, right before her eyes, held it between two fingers and tapped it lightly against the glass countertop.

Clink.

The crisp sound of metal on glass.

Lillian’s pupils constricted uncontrollably. That was her "Resonance point." To her heightened senses, that tiny sound was as deafening as a thunderclap.

Linus caught that split-second of rigidity.

"If this is science," he hissed, leaning down and bracing his hands on either side of the counter, trapping her between himself and the medicine cabinets behind her. His deep-sea blue eyes were less than ten centimeters from her nose. "Then can you explain why this button, which fell from your person, retains a magnetic reaction stronger than high-purity gold ore?"

His voice was dropped to a low, dangerously intimate whisper. "It’s burning, Miss Wylde. Just like you are right now."

Lillian had nowhere to retreat. Her back was pressed against the cold handles of the cabinets.

The pressure from this man was physical, suffocating. His arrogance as a high-ranking official, combined with the raw pheromones of a predator, sent a wave of dizzying nausea through her "sensory overload" state.

It wasn't just psychological fear. It was physiological torture.

His proximity made the surrounding magnetic fields haywire; she could feel the rune-etched sword at his waist humming with a hungry vibration.

She wanted to push him away. She wanted to impale him with shards of metal. Her instincts were screaming.

But her reason was a wire stretched to its breaking point.

Lillian bit the tip of her tongue, using the flash of pain to claw back her sanity. She didn't flinch. Instead, she met his gaze and suddenly raised her hand—

Linus, expecting an attack, tensed his muscles instantly.

But Lillian merely pulled a white cotton cloth from beneath the counter. Then, right in his face, she covered her nose and mouth and erupted into a fit of violent, chest-racking coughs.

"Cough! Cough-cough—!"

The coughing didn't seem faked—her lungs truly felt like they were on fire. She shook with the effort, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. Her sudden fragility instantly shattered the sword-point tension of the moment.

"Cough... If you don't... cough... mind catching the flu..." Lillian gasped, using the cloth to maintain a distance between them, her eyes flashing with a hint of mockery. "By all means, stay as close as you like, Inquisitor. I hear the Church’s medical insurance doesn't cover infectious diseases."

Linus froze.

The predatory atmosphere was abruptly punctured by this mundane "germ warning."

His instinctive obsession with order and cleanliness made him recoil an inch.

In that one-inch gap, Lillian seized the narrative.

"As for the magnetism," she said, surreptitiously hiding the smear of blood on the cloth (the blood from her bitten tongue), her voice weak but sharp. "I am an alchemist who spends my days dealing with mercury, lodestones, and electrolytic copper. My clothes, my hair, even the crevices of my fingernails are saturated with metallic micro-particles. If that is evidence of a crime, you should go and arrest every blacksmith in the city."

She looked up, her amber eyes shimmering with a defiant intelligence, as if she were looking at a temperamental child.

"Or is it that the famous 'Hound of the Church' simply doesn't understand what an occupational hazard looks like?"

Dead silence.

Only the sound of the rain and the hiss of the gaslight remained.

Linus stared at her for a long time.

The excuse was airtight. It even carried a sting of professional disdain for a layman like him.

He slowly straightened his posture, withdrawing his aggressive stance. But the suspicion in his eyes didn't vanish; rather, it deepened because her answer was too perfect.

Too clever.

For a common apothecary, her reaction time, her composure, and her logic were far too refined.

"An occupational hazard," Linus chuckled softly, pulling his gloves back on. He adjusted his cuffs with a slow elegance, as if the brute who had just pinned her into a corner never existed. "A fine explanation."

He reached out, snatched the copper button from the counter, and slid it back into his pocket.

"But I forgot to tell you one thing, Miss Wylde."

Linus walked to the door and paused amidst the swirling rain. He turned his head, his sharp profile looking exceptionally cold in the shadows.

"To control the 'non-existent' plague caused by that monster, City Hall has just signed an order. Starting tomorrow, all registered apothecaries are subject to the Church’s mandatory mobilization."

Lillian’s heart sank.

Linus turned fully, a glint of predatory triumph flashing in his azure eyes.

"So, flu or no flu, I expect you at the Inquisition at eight tomorrow morning. Bring your 'science,' and that razor-sharp tongue of yours."

"Don't be late. I don't like waiting."

BANG.

The door slammed shut.

Lillian’s strength vanished. She slid slowly down the side of the counter until she hit the floor. She gasped for air, her mask of composure disintegrating into violent tremors and cold sweats.

She had won the battle of words.

But she had lost her freedom.

That man didn't care if her explanation was reasonable. He just needed an excuse to drag her out of her legally protected shop and into the Inquisition—a place filled with runes, null-stones, and torture racks.

That was his home turf.

"Bastard..." Lillian gripped the blood-stained cloth, her eyes devoid of tears, burning instead with the cold light of someone pushed to the edge. "You want to play logic games? Fine, Linus Clovis."

"Let’s see who gets devoured by their own logic first."