Chapter 5: I Know How To Cage Our Little Witch

Thornwick was asleep when Garrett moved through its streets.

The Beta was a shadow in the darkness, his massive frame somehow managing to slip through the village unnoticed. This was one of his skills, the ability to be seen without being remembered, to gather information without leaving fingerprints. Centuries of war had taught him how to move like a ghost through enemy territory. A sleeping village held no secrets from someone like him.

He started with the taverns.

The first one...the Red Fox, was still lit from the inside, though barely. Garrett stepped through the door and assessed the space immediately. Three drunk patrons. One bartender wiping down glasses. No one important. No one who would have information about the girl or her father.

The second tavern....The Broken Crown, was different.

This was where the real business happened. Garrett could smell it in the air: debt and desperation and the particular reek of men who had gambled away their lives. He sat at a table in the corner and ordered a drink he didn't plan to touch.

The bartender's name was Marek. Garrett had already learned that much from watching the village earlier. Marek was a man who kept ledgers. Not official ones, but the ones that mattered. The ones that tracked who owed what, and to whom, and what happened when they couldn't pay.

"You look like someone who knows things," Garrett said quietly when Marek approached. It was the kind of statement that worked on men like this, men who prided themselves on knowledge, on being in the center of the village's secrets.

Marek's eyes narrowed. "Depends who's asking."

Garrett placed a purse of coins on the table. It was a small gesture, but meaningful. "I'm asking. And I'm willing to pay for answers."

It took ten minutes.

That was all it took for Marek to provide Garrett with a complete picture of Thornwick's financial underbelly. And at the center of that picture was one man: Morgana's father.

His name was Aldric, and he was drowning.

According to Marek's carefully detailed accounting, Aldric had debts scattered across multiple locations. To the tavern-keepers of Thornwick. To the merchants who supplied goods. To traveling traders who had extended him credit that would never be repaid. In total, Marek estimated the debt at approximately five hundred gold crowns, an astronomical sum for a man in Aldric's position.

But that wasn't all.

"There's something else," Marek said, leaning closer, his breath reeking of cheap ale. "Aldric owed significant money to a man named Corvus. Corvus works for the loan sharks down South. Serious people. The kind of people who break fingers when payment is late."

"And has Aldric paid?" Garrett already knew the answer.

"No. He's three months late. Corvus was here last month, looking for him. Made some threats. Said if Aldric didn't have the money by the end of this season, he'd start taking payment out of his daughter's hide."

There it was.

Garrett left the tavern and moved deeper into Thornwick's shadows. He needed to verify this. Needed to find Corvus or someone connected to him. It took another hour of careful navigation through the sleeping village, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a small house on the edge of town where three men were still awake, playing cards and drinking.

Corvus was the one with the scarred face.

Garrett didn't approach directly. Instead, he used his connections, the network of wolves and Betas that served the Kings, to send a discreet inquiry. The response came back within the hour, delivered by a messenger who appeared and disappeared like smoke.

Corvus's debts were legitimate. Aldric's debts were real. And the threat against the daughter was very much active.

By the time Garrett had gathered the final pieces of information, the sky was beginning to lighten toward dawn. He had what the Kings needed. A complete map of Morgana's father's financial ruin. A detailed accounting of every debt, every person it was owed to, every consequence that would follow if payment wasn't made.

And most importantly: a way to leverage it all against her.

***

The Kings were exactly where Garrett had left them.

They hadn't moved. Hadn't slept. They were still in that room, still waiting, but there was a different energy now. The anticipation had sharpened into something dangerous. Something ready to strike.

Garrett pushed open the door and bowed deeply.

"Your Majesty," he said, his voice steady and formal. "I have the information you requested."

Theron's silver eyes fixed on him immediately. "Speak."

Garrett laid out everything he had learned. He spoke clearly and methodically, cataloguing each debt, each person involved, each consequence hanging over the girl's family like an axe. He described Aldric's gambling addiction in clinical detail. He explained the threat from Corvus. He detailed the financial spiral that had left Morgana's father with no options and no way out.

When he finished, the room was absolutely silent.

Theron was the first to move.

The eldest King rose from his seat slowly, and a half-smile spread across his face. It was the smile of someone who had just seen the perfect strategy laid out before him. The smile of a predator who had found the exact weak point in his prey's armor.

He looked at his brothers.

"I know how to cage our little witch," Theron said softly, and his voice carried the absolute certainty of someone who had just won a game that hadn't even properly begun.