I step forward carefully.

Garen’s voice cuts the room like a thunderclap.

"Stop. Right there."

I stop. Not because he ordered it. Because the voice arrived at my body before my brain processed the syllables.

"You think a boy like you can pass himself off as Alden? With that miserable energy?"

My mind sprints. First through every visual detail of the president, then through the room itself, scanning for everything I can grab in two seconds.

Garen has the face of a war statue—a granite jaw, blond hair in an immaculate military cut, glacial blue eyes the same shade Lola wore. There isn’t a thread of stubble, isn’t a trace of doubt anywhere on the bronzed face. Only the rigidity of a man born to give orders and watch them executed.

He isn’t wearing a suit. He’s wearing a tailored fabric armor in a blue so deep it borders on black, gold cufflinks dulled to a matte finish, glinting like military insignia. Six-foot-four of sheer command, military grit, and noble blood.

His posture is so straight that every other executive in this building probably looks bent compared to him.

He walks around his desk and stops in front of the central oak coffee table. The silence that follows isn’t fear. It’s reverence. Almost religious.

"You have fifteen seconds to explain yourself and leave." The voice isn’t a shout. It’s a contained thunder that carries through the floor. "In this company, ethics is not a suggestion. It is the foundation. You are impersonating a legitimate acquaintance. That is treason."

He folds his arms across his chest. Closes his eyes like stockpiling patience before he uses any of it on me.

He doesn’t sit. Just stands there, waiting.

I scan past him.

Behind his mahogany desk, no golf trophies. No achievement photographs. Just a miniature replica of the king’s mithril sword sitting on contracts worth millions of GNC, working as a paperweight. And one old family photo, where his severe eyes soften by a single degree—only when looking at his youngest son. At Veric.

There. The dynamic.

I have my hook.

"You’re right. I’m not Alden."

His face goes a shade redder. The fifteen seconds are running. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"But just as your dear son is Veric, I’m the dear son of the man you respect. Dryden Sands. Son of Alden Sands."

I know it isn’t enough. I borrowed my father’s name and lied to get into this room, and that lie is still hanging in the air between us. I have to push past it before he can punish it.

"My father is alive. I met with Boris Warwick. He confirmed it."

His eyes open.

His whole expression rearranges itself.

For half a breath, the granite mask cracks. Something raw shows through—shock, recognition, grief that wasn’t supposed to be in the room with us. Then the executive comes back online and the mask reseats itself.

"You lied to be here. What guarantees me that you aren’t lying again to deceive me? Boris and Alden are missing. There’s no way to confirm anything you just said."

The killing intent arrives.

It hits the back of my neck before it hits my brain. My knees are working overtime to hold me up. My pulse is in my throat. I keep my face exactly where it is.

"I’m your son’s best friend. He reported in to you this week. He came in second in the academy entrance exam—and I’m the one who came in first. The one who carried him to that result."

It’s another buy-in. Trade contact for credibility. Use the family hook I just identified.

But something in my gut is telling me it isn’t going to be enough.

Garen walks back to his desk. Picks up a cigar from a small wooden box. Lights it with a slow, ritual gesture. The authority drops from his shoulders into something quieter. More contemplative. The mask falls.

"I hate lying spies. I’ll definitely have to kill you, boy."

He says it like a man choosing what to order for lunch.

"Don’t take it personally. You did your best. But everything you’ve said is public Thirstfall record. Pure bullshit."

The energy in the room detonates.

His killing intent isn’t theater anymore. It’s a switch he’s flipped, and the air between us went from cold to vacuum. He’s not bluffing.

Shit. I didn’t peg him for hot-headed.

There’s only one play left.

I empty my lungs slow. Push the words out flat, the way you read a verdict.

"In two years you die at the hands of the Deepwarden."

The cigar pauses two inches from his mouth.

"And I can prove it. The name you’re looking for is Joseph. And the plan—Tide of Every Morning—is going to fail."

Silence.

Absolute.

Engineered.

A silence the entire floor is suddenly listening to without knowing it’s listening.

Garen Azurea is looking at me the way a condemned man looks at the angel that just announced his sentence.

The cigar lowers, untouched. His other hand braces on the edge of the desk.

When he speaks, the thunder is gone. The man who walked toward me with the voice of a god speaks now in something closer to the voice of a cornered cat.

"The ’Tide of Every Morning’ plan..."

He stops. Swallows.

"...hasn’t left my own head. Not a single word of it has been written down. How...?"

I let the question hang. He needs to be the one to finish that sentence in his head, not me.

I step forward. Not far. Just enough that his eye-line has to move to track me.

"Like I said." I let one corner of my mouth tip up. Small. Controlled. A smile I picked up from Lola, three steps ahead of everyone in the room. "My name is Dryden Sands."

I extend my hand toward him across the coffee table.

"And it’s going to be excellent doing business with you, Mr. Azurea."

He doesn’t take the hand yet.

But he doesn’t move away from it either.

The cigar burns slow between his fingers, dropping a thin column of ash onto a contract worth more than every life in District 4 combined.

We stand there. Two men in a quiet office. One of us with everything to lose. The other already lost it once.

The pressure starts to recede.

He reaches out.

He takes my hand.