Redsand Canyon as the building continues to burn

casually immortalizing this because it is a giant mood. also hope you like metaphors

Had Finley been privy to Renard’s own assumptions—that she withheld information intentionally, to dodge Nemisis’ wrath—she might have been amused. The dark spitfire, for all her venom and bestowed authority, didn’t particularly scare Finley on her own. Perhaps it was the odd way she’d skulked from the encounter, indicating something physically amiss that Finley lacked the insight to recognize. Even Donovan’s claims of his partner’s bloodthirsty past didn’t scare Finley, at least not in the way a pup would yelp at a wayward shadow.

Nemisis “scared” Finley the same way one feared a child on a throne: almost laughable in their absurdity, if not for the guillotine looming above all their subjects’ necks. The stupid compliance of such a ringleader’s forces could be formidable as a swarm, or so Finley had heard. Stupid. But dangerous.

All right, maybe Nemisis did unsettle Finley, in that roundabout way. The realization, locking every last doubt into place like a jigsaw’s long-withheld solution, could have left the subordinate shuddering. But Finley was, ultimately, no more clued in to Renard’s intentions than he to her own, and the dots hung tortuously unconnected.

It was much easier to concern herself with Donovan’s judgment. The Saints were his pack, or so he’d framed it, and he’d instated such a volatile wolf as his second-in-command. Who could blame the child when her guardian stood idly on the sidelines?

“He has a way with words” indeed. On which note, “surprising” was certainly a choice word. Of course the ambitious would meet challengers, and Donovan’s (so-called) warrior pack would naturally be the type to incite confrontation where there was none. So had Finley’s birthplace; their mere presence in an area could send the locals rioting, rabid for the mere crime of existing in an arbitrary radius. But there lie a key difference: Helios had been nomadic. The Saints, as advertised, were not.

The Saints, at this rate, were boiling in their own canyon and cranking up the heat.

Finley let Renard’s words linger unanswered for a few moments, baiting him to fill the silence. Were his distraction genuine, surely his words would have been less loaded. And by now he must have known he was being studied; the sentiment, if so, was mutual. The closest he’d get, for now, was a noncommittal nod.

To a different wolf she might have made a throwaway comment about the territory shift, from bleeding sequoias to barren stone. But Renard remained conspicuously pricker-free. Such a topic, bordering dangerously on complaint, was plan B. Always a good thing to have.