The thing about cornered animals is that they always make stupid decisions.
History is littered with examples—rats that gnaw through live electrical wires trying to escape traps, deer that leap directly into traffic while fleeing hunters, entire civilizations that chose mutual destruction over surrender because pride turned out to be more important than survival.
Desperation has a way of short-circuiting the parts of your brain responsible for things like "risk assessment," "long-term planning," and "not doing monumentally stupid things that will probably get you killed," replacing them with pure, crystallized commitment to whatever path seems least immediately fatal regardless of its long-term viability.
And so here I was, standing on the balcony of a condemned theater and watching our fortune being carried away by enhanced slaves working for a man who'd just demonstrated he could destroy us on a whim, realizing that I was about to make the kind of decision that historians would later describe as "bold" if it worked and "catastrophically stupid" if it didn't.
I hurtled down the stairs so fast my boots barely kissed the wood, my body already committed to whatever half-formed catastrophe was swirling in the chaos of my thoughts.
I brushed past a few of the crew members who'd frozen in various states of shock and confusion, their faces carrying that particular blank expression that comes from watching something terrible unfold before you and not knowing whether intervention would help or make you part of the disaster.
Brutus tried to reach out for me as I passed, his massive hand extending toward my shoulder in what was probably going to be either a warning or an attempt to physically restrain me from doing something moronic, but I ducked under his grasp with enhanced reflexes and kept moving.
Julius had fallen to his knees in the center of the lobby, fingers digging into the threadbare rug as if it were the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth, his face twisted into an expression of such profound frustration and despair that it was almost painful to witness.
The broken wine glass lay scattered around him in a constellation of shards that caught the artificial moonlight and threw it back in fractured patterns. Each ragged breath he took sounded like it cost him—inhale sharp and desperate, exhale slow and heavy, carrying the quiet, crushing weight of his dreams collapsing in real time.
I dropped into a crouch beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched, then leaned in to whisper directly into his ear with the kind of urgency usually reserved for bomb defusals or last-minute escape plans.
"First and foremost," I hissed, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn't carry beyond the two of us, "I didn't know Oberen, of all people, was your landlord."
Julius's fingers dug deeper into the threadbare rug, knuckles bleaching white with the strain, but he kept his gaze fixed on the floor.
I continued speaking in that same urgent whisper, my words coming faster now as I tried to compress complex strategy into digestible chunks. "Listen to me—the smartest play here is to cut our losses. Refuse to pay, let him evict us, and find another location before this gets worse. We can rebuild somewhere else, somewhere that doesn't come with a landlord who's apparently decided we're his new favorite source of exploitation. It's not ideal, but it's survivable, and survival beats principle when you're this outmatched."
Julius clutched the rug so hard I thought the fabric might tear, his face twisting with frustration that bordered on physical pain. When he finally spoke, his voice came out soft—so quiet I had to strain to hear it over the ambient noise of the frozen party around us.
"I can't," he said simply. "I can't just... give up on this place. Not now. Not after everything." He swallowed hard. "You don't understand what this theater means to me, what it represents."
I tilted my head. "What do you mean? It's just a building, We can find another—"
"It's not just a building," he interrupted, his voice sharp with emotion before softening into something more vulnerable. "This was my family's legacy. My grandfather... he was the one who built this place. Spent his entire fortune commissioning the architects, importing materials, creating something that would outlast him. But he died the year it opened, never got to see it become what it was meant to be."
He paused, his jaw clenching. "My father inherited it, ran it for twenty years before the scandal happened. My father's business partner embezzled everything—our accounts, our investments, even mortgaged the theater without telling anyone. By the time we discovered it, the debts were insurmountable and we were forced to leave it behind."
He looked up at me then, eyes wanting. "I spent years dreaming of reclaiming it, restoring it, making it something beautiful again. And now—finally, finally—I have the resources, the crew, the plan to actually make that happen." His voice cracked slightly. "If I walk away now, I'm admitting that I failed. That all those dreams were just delusions. That I should have stayed in whatever gutter I was heading toward and stopped pretending I could be something more than a disgraced noble playing at entrepreneurship."
I nearly protested—nearly launched into a pragmatic lecture about sunken costs and the wisdom of cutting losses before they cut you deeper, about how clinging to bricks and memories in this world was a one-way ticket to an early grave—but something about the naked vulnerability in his voice stopped me.
I sighed—long and heavy, the kind of exhale that drags the weight of the world with it, the sound of someone reluctantly shouldering a burden they never asked for but couldn't seem to walk away from either.
"Fine," I said quietly. "Then I'll find a way out of this. I don't know how yet, but I'll figure something out. Just... trust me. And maybe pray to whatever gods you think might answer, because we're going to need some divine intervention to pull this off."
Oberen cleared his throat then—a polite, almost courteous sound that cut straight through our whispered conversation. I glanced up to see that he was watching us, those bright green eyes fixed with unblinking interest, that terrible smile still lingering on his lips.
"How touching," he said, his voice warm despite the words dripping with condescension. "Such loyalty between employer and employee. Or are you partners? The relationship dynamics in these small operations are always so delightfully ambiguous."
He took a few steps closer, his fur coat catching the moonlight and making him look almost ethereal if you ignored the predatory gleam in his eyes.
"You must be Loona. Yes, I recognize you—how could I not? I was actually present at your little arena match, you know? Spectacular performance, truly. The way you orchestrated that entire humiliation ritual, the theatrical flair, the sheer audacity of destroying a woman's reputation so thoroughly—magnificent entertainment. Best show I'd seen in years, honestly."
He carried on like that, his words pouring forth with the relentless grace of a river that had long ago worn its own canyon through resistance—effortless, inevitable, gathering speed as he wove elaborate praise of the match's subtleties, the political undercurrents now swirling through high society, and the exquisite scandal that would be savored for weeks to come.
I forced myself to engage with false wit, throwing in appropriate responses at the right intervals—"You're too kind," "I live to entertain," and "Natural talent, really"—while my mind raced through our options with increasing desperation.
Denying Oberen the money would result in immediate eviction, so that was completely off the table. Julius had made his position clear, and I'd just committed to finding a solution that let us keep the theater, which meant compliance—at least on the surface—was the only path forward in this regard.
The next option I considered would be fighting my way out of it—to simply overpower Oberen and his guards, take back our gold by force, and deal with the consequences later.
But then I glanced at the two Velvets who were still methodically hauling crates toward the door, their movements efficient and unhurried, and I froze.
No. That wouldn't work either.
These weren't just slaves—they were trained killers. Professionals who'd spent years honing their capabilities until violence became an art form they'd mastered completely.
I'd barely managed to land a single hit on Iskanda during our training sessions, and she'd been going easy on me. Fighting Velvets who were actively trying to kill us? That wasn't a fight. That was suicide with extra steps.
And even if I could rally everyone else to band together in some kind of desperate last stand, it would put them all in grave danger I wasn't willing to risk. Felix, Nara, Willow, Julius, Brutus, the various crew members drinking wine and trying to pretend they weren't witnessing their new employer's complete destruction—none of them deserved to die because I'd made a terrible decision.
And so my third option would be to negotiate—find some angle, some leverage that would make Oberen reconsider his position or at least reduce his demands to something manageable.
But negotiate from what position, exactly? Oberen held all the leverage, had us completely cornered, and he knew it. Negotiation required some kind of mutual benefit or threat, and I could offer neither right now.
For a second I thought about Mavus—that mysterious clown-faced crime lord who'd been helping Julius, who'd mentioned having business with Director Thalen, who clearly had resources and connections we couldn't match. But no.
He'd been gone ever since we'd left for the hot springs, had specifically mentioned having "important business" to attend to that couldn't wait. Even if I could somehow contact him—and I had no idea how—there was no guarantee he'd intervene, and asking for help would just put us in debt to yet another powerful person with unclear motivations.
In the end, I was at a complete loss for what to do. Every option I considered dead-ended in disaster, every path forward seemed blocked by obstacles I couldn't overcome, and the clock was ticking down on a deadline measured in the time it took to carry crates out a door.