Story associated with this leak: ONE BITE

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LEAK #1 

Zoom call between Cashmere and Rosalind

The camera, when it found her, found her at full strength: face large, blur off, the cabinet behind her in unkind focus over her left shoulder. 

Cashmere — somewhere across the call, presumably in a sun-warmed window seat at a borrowed address he had not declared to the office — did not mention the cabinet. He never mentioned the cabinet. It was, in his view, the only piece of office furniture in the institution that deserved a moment of silence. He had filed three things in it in the autumn of 1817 and had no intention of bringing any of them up today.

"I do not do Zoom," Rosalind said.

"I am aware," he said. "Today you do. There is a small green telephone at the bottom of your screen. Click that one. The camera is the other one."

"I am clicking it."

"You have started a poll."

"Why is there a poll function on a private call."

"Because the office bought the enterprise tier," he said. "I have been telling Margaret to downgrade us for nine years. End the poll, please."

She ended the poll. The poll had asked a single question, which the closed-captioning module declines to reproduce on the grounds that the answer was not the Office of IT's business.

"Why," Rosalind said, "can you see my office, Cashmere."

"Your blur is failing."

"My what."

"Background. Blur. There is a slider. Drag it right. Right, Rosalind. The other right."

The screen, briefly, went black.

"That is a Virtual Background, set to Midnight," Cashmere said, with the patience of a cat who had done this nineteen times. "Not what we want. Bottom-left corner — small chevron — not the gear — yes. Blur Background."

A blur descended. The cabinet remained visible. He chose, again, not to mention it.

"There," he said. "We will begin. It is leaking, Rosalind. The Frog Prince file."

"Specifically," said Rosalind. "Specifically specifically?"

"Specifically the one we do not write down."

A pause. "Oh. Wait. The frog prince. The one with the spicy Mexican —"

"No."

"The frog who opened the salsa cantina in San Diego and the princess kissed him on live television during the —"

"No, Rosalind."

"The one with the —"

"Rosalind. You watched a sixty-second clip of a tree frog drinking hot sauce on FurFeed last Thursday. That is not a fairytale. That is content."

"It had thirty-eight million views," she said, with dignity.

"It had a sponsor," he said. "The other Frog Prince. The one we filed. The one we agreed never to file properly. The 1612 prince. The one we almost lost."

There was a slow exhalation on Rosalind's end. The closed-captioning module rendered it as REGISTRAR ACKNOWLEDGES THE CORRECT FILE

"Oh," she said.

"There it is," said Cashmere. "You remember the coven."

"I remember the coven."

"They were nasty, Cashmere."

"Nasty then. More nasty now."

"I am beginning to gather."

"The coven could not stop the kiss," he went on. "The kiss was scheduled. The kiss was on the books. You yourself approved the kiss in writing. So they did the only thing left available to a coven with a grudge and a Latin dictionary. They reversed it. Lex Inversio Hospitis. The Toad-Cant. Designed to flip the receiving throat. Princess kisses prince — princess becomes the frog. Prince remains a prince. Prince marries a frog. HEA implodes. The Department writes a memo for nine hundred years and every transformation-kiss after that one pays one-point-four times the magic and three times the paperwork to clear committee."

"I remember the meeting."

"You chaired the meeting, Rosalind"

"Move on, Cashmere."

"We had nine seconds," he said. "You, me, two seniors, a junior who later married a fence-maker, and an apprentice whose name I will not say in case her grandchildren are on the staff register. We could not out-strong the coven. We had to out-fast them. The cant had pre-loaded the throat. The princess's lips were three inches from the prince's mouth. We had to land the kiss before the spell could finish reversing."

"Yes."

"So we — and I want this on the record, you were the one who suggested it —"

"Yes," she said again, more carefully.

"— we borrowed accelerant. From a practitioner of both light and grey practice. A controversial figure. Whose name we do not say out loud, in this office, on a Tuesday, while a cloud-recording service we have not audited since the last decade may or may not —"

"Move on, Cashmere."

"The Quickening Grace," he said. "A clause that takes a kiss the magical record has already approved, and accelerates it. Not stronger. Faster. By the time the Toad-Cant lifted its tongue, the princess had not only kissed the prince — she had kissed him three more times, taken half a step back, decided he was acceptable, and signalled the orchestra. The cant landed in empty air. The prince stayed a prince. The princess stayed a princess."

"The orchestra was a nice touch."

"I added the orchestra," said Cashmere. "And then I told you — I want this on the record too — do not hide this somewhere obvious. I said it once in 1612. I will, regrettably, be saying it again at fourteen-thirty-two GMT today."

"I did not hide it somewhere obvious."

"You hid it in a tree."

"In a tree in a forest," Rosalind said, with a degree of feeling. "A specific tree. In a thick forest. Three hundred and forty hectares of cover. Old-growth oak. Druidic. Untouched since the Romans gave up."

"One marked tree."

"Trees were not in fashion as furniture in 1612, Cashmere. Trees in forests were avoided. Trees in forests had wolves. Trees in forests had —"

"Trees in forests, Rosalind, are felled. Eventually. By somebody. Even the druidic ones. Especially the marked ones — because the marker on this particular tree was a faint silver ring at chest height that, to a sawmill foreman in 1879, looked regrettably premium."

She said nothing.

"It was milled in 1881," he continued. "It travelled. It became, variously, six pews, a sideboard, a piano stool, and — most recently, in the Year of Our Multiverse 2024 — one coffin lid, decorative subseries, mounted to the inner hatch of the Vampire's Embrace experiential ride at a Gothic Theme Park, eastern New Jersey."

Rosalind, on the closed-captioning module's reading, did not say anything for some time. Her face, the module added, did not need to.

"The hatch closes on the riders," Cashmere said. "Two riders per coffin. Ninety seconds in the dark. The accelerant has been waking up every time the hatch closes on what it has now, regrettably, correctly identified as a paired soulmate match in extremely close proximity to a transformation-adjacent context."

"Define the context."

"Vampires. Necks. Biting."

"…Oh. Not a kiss. A bite."

"Tuesday, nineteen-forty-seven local time. Coffin Four. A woman by the name of Sable bit a billionaire alpha shifter."

"Well — they're shifters. Biting is their ritual to claim a mate. Not as romantic as a kiss, Cashmere, but it works the same way."

"Except he is about to marry someone else."

"…Oh."

"Yes. He is the frog who has found himself a different princess — one who is, in his telling, willing to break the curse for him."

"What do we do."

"We go again."

"I beg your —"

"We make her — the true soulmate — kiss him before he makes the biggest frogging mistake of his life. Faster. Louder. Grey magic, good intentions. The same play. We let the accelerant accelerate. We push the claim through fully before the engagement party."

"It is good in theory. But how, Cashmere?"

A pause.

"I have dispatched the field agent," he said.

"You did not consult me."

"I am consulting you now, Rosalind, the fairy godmother."

"After the fact."

"Be furious later. Be grateful first. They are not mutually exclusive."

"…Who did you send."

"Lieutenant Biscuit," said Cashmere. "Pomeranian. Former service dog, federal. Six commendations. Trained to sniff explosives. Re-cross-trained, last Thursday, by myself, in under four hours, to sniff accelerant residue. The skill transfers. The dog is, regrettably, very small, very loud, and very competent."

"You re-cross-trained a Pomeranian in four hours."

"I am efficient when motivated. There may also have been incentives."

"What did you promise him? Do not answer that. I still have not forgiven you for making me knight the donkey."

"I did not promise anything you could not fulfil."

"Cashmere —"

"Signing off now. Just so you know — there is nothing for you to worry about…"

The call ended.

THE STORY

One Bite — Sable, ex-protector, current claimer. Lieutenant Biscuit, ride-along. One billionaire alpha. One engagement party that is, structurally, not happening.