"Phoenix took the money," Ignatius said, not with judgment but with the weary understanding of someone who'd watched desperation drive good people into impossible choices too many times across too many centuries. "He took it, and he got close to Cole, and it very nearly destroyed both of them when the truth came out."
"But it didn't," I said quietly, because I'd seen them together. At games. In the stands. The way Cole's eyes found Phoenix in every crowd like a compass finding true north.
"No," Ignatius agreed. "It didn't. Because Phoenix ultimately chose Cole over his own survival, and Cole—after considerable pain—chose to understand rather than condemn." A ghost of something that might have been admiration crossed his features. "They are remarkable, those two. But that is not the point."
He returned to the desk and opened a second folder—thinner than the first, its contents sparse in a way that felt deliberate. Like whatever was inside had been carefully, methodically scrubbed.
"The point," Ignatius said, "is the man who approached Phoenix. We never found him. He used a burner phone, disconnected after Cole's All-Star weekend. Paid Phoenix in cash—untraceable, no serial number patterns that led anywhere useful. No CCTV footage that produced a usable face. No digital footprint worth the name." Ignatius's voice was flat now, almost clinical. "My investigators—and I employ very good investigators, Cinder, the kind governments hire when they want problems to vanish—found nothing. A ghost. Someone with the resources and the expertise to approach a vulnerable target, apply precise psychological pressure, and disappear without leaving a single thread to pull."
Cinder leaned forward. "You said he claimed to work for Cole's father."
"Not verbally. It was an assumption. Edward Armstrong-Wells had every motive, he'd been controlling Cole for years, using him as a financial asset, binding his dragon through means I won't describe in detail because they make me want to burn things." Ignatius's composure flickered for just a moment, a flash of heat in his gray eyes that reminded me, viscerally, that this man was not human. "But the deeper we dug, the less the connection held. Wells was many things—cruel, possessive, obsessed with control—but his methods were institutional. Lawyers. Contracts.Corporate structures. He operated through systems he owned. He didn't hire anonymous strangers to bribe street kids with envelopes of cash."
"Someone used Wells as a cover story," I said, the realization settling into my gut like ice water. "A convenient bogeyman. Someone Phoenix would believe without questioning, because Wells was already the villain in Cole's story."
"Yes." Ignatius's voice carried the weight of someone who'd spent months turning this over and finding only sharp edges. "And now we have Gavin. A different target, a different approach, but the same method. Find someone vulnerable. Apply pressure through something they care about—Phoenix's friend, Gavin's debts. Direct their attention toward a player on this team. And disappear before anyone can trace the thread back to its source."
Cinder's fingers had gone white where they pressed against his thighs. I could feel the tension radiating off him, not panic, not yet, but the particular stillness of a mind working at full capacity, assembling pieces into a picture he didn't want to see.
"You think it's the same person," Cinder said.
"I think it's the same operation," Ignatius corrected. "Whether it's one individual or an organization, the methodology is identical. Patient. Precise. Targeted at the people closest to dragons on this team, rather than at the dragons themselves." He glanced at us. “And by dragons, I don’t know if we’re just talking hockey players or something else.”
The word hung in the air between us—dragons—and I watched Cinder absorb it without flinching. He'd known for less than twenty-four hours what Ignatius and I were, and he was sitting in a dragon's study, processing the implications of a coordinated intelligence operation targeting our kind with the composure of someone reviewing lab results.
I didn't know whether to be awed or terrified on his behalf.
"Gavin may not even know what he's really looking for," Ignatius continued. "Someone could have framed it as a simple sports story—unusual medical data, anomalous player performance, the kind of thing that sells to outlets hungry for scandal. He doesn't need to know about dragons. He just needs to deliver the data, and whoever is behind this will know exactly what they're looking at."
Cinder exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Did you keep physical files at home?" Ignatius asked sharply.
"No. Everything's on the team's server, but I detailed all Taz’s readings, and if someone could access them…” He trailed off. “I have shorthand notes on my phone only I could understand.” Ignatius's expression sharpened further—something dangerous and precise moving behind his eyes, like a predator recalculating the distance to its prey.
"Your phone notes," he said, his voice deceptively mild. "Where are they stored?"
Cinder
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Felt the blood leave my face in a rush so sudden it left me dizzy. "They're in my notes app," I said slowly. "Which syncs to—"
"The cloud," Ignatius finished, and the word landed like a verdict.
My stomach dropped through the floor. I grabbed my phone, fingers fumbling, pulling up the settings with hands that had gone clumsy and numb. The iCloud sync icon sat there, cheerful and innocuous, the little spinning arrow confirming that every note I'd ever typed had been faithfully uploaded to a server I didn't control, accessible from any device with my credentials.
My credentials. Which were tied to an Apple ID Gavin had created using his own email address nearly a year ago, back when he'd insisted on "streamlining" our digital lives. Back when I'd been too worn down, too controlled, too desperate tokeep the peace to argue about something as mundane as digital account management.
"Oh God," I whispered.
Taz's hand found my back instantly—cold, grounding, an anchor against the vertigo threatening to pull me under. "Cinder. Talk to me."
"My Apple ID," I said, the words coming out thin and rapid. "It's Gavin's email. His actual email. He set everything up. When we were together. I changed the password after I left him, but the Apple ID itself—" My throat constricted. "The Apple ID is still his email address. He controls the inbox."
The silence that followed was painful.
"If he wanted to," Doryu said quietly from his chair, his pen pausing over his notebook, "he could reset your password anytime. He'd get the reset link directly. Your password change wouldn't matter."
"He'd have full access," I confirmed, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else—someone far away, watching a disaster unfold through glass. "Every temperature reading. Every anomalous cardiac rhythm. Every baseline I flagged as outside normal parameters. It's all there. Everything I documented about Taz."