"What?"
Perez's indignant outburst was cut short. He frowned and looked at Ezra Hughes.
Even Hawthorne instinctively held his breath and hurriedly warned, "Don't provoke him, Ezra!"
But Hughes suddenly stepped forward, ignoring the motes of light drifting around him after being disturbed. His voice was not loud, yet it was exceptionally vicious.
"Since you want us dead, why haven't you done it yet, Reginald Perez? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for us to be persuaded by your twisted logic and kill ourselves?"
Perez's face instantly flushed red, as though Hughes had viciously struck a sore spot.
He abruptly raised the wand he had been gripping tightly, pointing its tip at Hughes. A fierce, resolute gleam flashed through his eyes, and his lips turned white from how tightly he pressed them together.
Yet the tip of his wand trembled faintly, beyond his control.
Aiming at a colleague who offered no resistance, one he had even gotten along with fairly well before, and truly speaking that lethal spell was not as simple as "casting a Charm."
Between them lay an abyss that most wizards could never cross in their lives, nor wished to cross—
It was not merely a restraint of law or morality, but an instinctive defense of the integrity of one's own soul.
Killing, especially premeditated killing of one's own kind—this sort of spell required more than the correct incantation and standard gestures. Most importantly, it required an intensely powerful, utterly unreserved desire to kill.
As a high-ranking official who had spent most of his life dealing with the Floo Network, Time Magic, and administrative documents, Perez might have been skilled at calculations, obsessed with forbidden knowledge, and even willing to make deals with tigers...
But when it came to personally killing someone, his soul, wrapped