The sun rose on a new Catherine.
The woman who stood in the library in the first light of dawn was not the same one who had entered it the night before.
The pain, the grief, the rage… these fires had consumed everything, leaving behind only a plain of cold ashes from which a clarity of absolute thought emerged.
She was no longer haunted by her past; she was armed by it. Every betrayal, every scar was a lesson; every death, a piece of data.
She walked to the large map of the city, no longer with the fury of an avenger, but with the calculating eye of an heiress surveying her estate.
The Rook's empire. Her empire. It had been stolen from her before she even knew it belonged to her. The quest was no longer to destroy it, but to reclaim it. The succession would be hostile.
Her mind went to work, re-evaluating every piece on the chessboard in the light of this new objective.
Valerius: A man of his position had influence over commercial licenses, port regulations, the appointments of magistrates.
The Rook's empire, to prosper, had to have legal facades, businesses that laundered his money and secured his power.
Catherine would begin to subtly guide Valerius to attack these businesses, without his knowledge, under the pretext of fighting corruption or serving the city's interests.
She would use his vanity to incite him to saw off the branches on which her true enemy was sitting.
Mathieu: To find and heal him was no longer just a matter of restoring an asset. It had become a priority for understanding the enemy's weapons.
The curse eating away at him was perhaps a creation of the Pathway of Pride, the art of her father or one of his underlings of the same pathway.
To defeat her father, she first had to understand his strengths. Mathieu had become a biological and spiritual puzzle to be solved.
Jun-Ho Park: He was the living archivist of her father's empire's birth.
Thirty years of secrets, of names, of places, of methods, were locked away in his broken mind. Making him talk was no longer an option; it was an absolute necessity.
The plan involving Doctor Thorne was good, but it had to be refined. It was no longer just about obtaining a confession. It was about achieving a transfer of loyalty.
She sat and drafted a new message for Thorne, more detailed, more perverse than the last. In it, she described a complete psychological strategy.
Thorne was to position himself as the only one capable of understanding Park's haunting.
He was to use the name Anne not as an accusation, but as a point of connection, a shared pain.
"Tell him the child's spirit does not cry for vengeance, but asks for peace," she wrote.
"Tell him she does not blame him, but the man who defiled his soul with that order.
Offer him absolution, not from the Church, but from a power that understands the weight of secrets. Tell him you serve a Lady who can break the chains of the past.
Break his fear of The Rook by replacing it with the hope of a redemption that only you can offer. I don't want him to talk.
I want him to confess.
To me, through you."
She sealed the letter, ready to send it with Leo.
Every piece was in place. Her mind was clear, her objective, absolute.
For the first time, she felt fully in control, not of a chaotic power, but of her own destiny. She was thinking about how to deal with Thorne at the same time.
This man was very dangerous and she was relying on him too much; if she couldn't ensure his loyalty, she had to find a way to get rid of him.
And the backup plan where Valerius would fall could be accelerated; she was sure this man would soon end up miserably, he is too close to forces that are beyond him.
It was at this moment of icy certainty that a servant knocked on the library door. It was Leo, but he was not bringing a reply from Thorne.
He held a message that had just arrived from the herbalist's shop, Madame Lin's dead drop.
Catherine took the note, her heart suddenly wary. It was too soon for a full report. It was an urgent message.
She deciphered it quickly.
Madame Lin's words were concise, written in their usual code.
"Target Old Crow has disappeared.
The house is empty. One of my sparrows who was watching the alley saw an unmarked carriage arrive in the middle of the night.
Two men got out, entered the house, and came out a few minutes later with a third person, probably Old Crow.
The bodyguard left with them. The house is now abandoned. The nest is empty."
Catherine stood motionless, the note crumpled in her hand. Her plan, so brilliant, so perfectly elaborated, had just collapsed.
She had waited too long.
She had spent too much time savoring her revelation, building her new worldview.
And during that time, her adversary, a man who did not have the luxury of doubt or introspection, had acted.
Milo's alert had been enough.
The Rook, realizing one of his most precious secrets was threatened, had not waited to see where the attack was coming from. He had simply removed his piece from the board. He had moved Jun-Ho Park to an unknown location, a new cage where neither she, nor the Church, nor anyone could find him.
A wave of frustration should have washed over her.
But in its place, a new, strange, and unsettling sensation took hold. It was not anger. It was not fear. It was a hint of twisted admiration. A shiver of respect.
She had underestimated her opponent.
She had thought she was playing against a monster, a tyrant complacent in his power.
She now realized she was playing against a spymaster, a strategist as swift, as paranoid, and as ruthless as she was, especially since this man, The Rook, was powerful.
She had never seen The Rook, but he commanded respect; he had the strength and intelligence that went with it.
She looked at the map of the city, which now seemed immense, infinite. Her father was out there, somewhere, and he had just shown her that he was still one step ahead.
A thin, almost imperceptible smile touched Catherine's lips.
"So, the old man still knows how to play," she whispered into the silence of her fortress.
"The game will be more interesting than I expected."