They found them.
The shout came like metal—quick, sharp, a thing that cut through the hush and the smoke.
Boots. Torches. The echo of iron on stone.
Beatrice moved before thought could form into fear.
She was fast even with one arm half-tied and her other bleeding. She moved like someone who had never learned the meaning of safety. She moved like a thing that had been carved raw and kept hungry.
"Go," she hissed. Her voice was a thin wire of command. "Now—out the passage."
The man who had freed Violet—he was not a noble, not the sort of man who wore clean cuffs. He grunted and shoved Violet toward the broken underpass. He kept a blade in his fist even as he dragged her. His face was made up of too many old hurts. He did not smile. He did not promise anything.
Beatrice's hand brushed Violet's shoulder—fierce, quick—like a benediction. "Remember this," she said. "If they split you from me, run to the river. Don't stop. Don't look back."
For a second — a blink — Violet thought: I will not leave her.
Her lungs wanted to obey. Her feet wanted to move. Her heart wanted to follow the silver-haired girl who looked like another version of herself.
But there was the other voice — the one that had lived inside her for years — the name she'd followed like a compass: Calla.
If Calla was here—if the woman who had sent guards and letters and trinkets was here—then maybe the things that had been splintered could be put together. Maybe she could finally ask one question and get an answer.
Her feet did not move.
Beatrice's eyes caught hers then—surprise, accusation, something like sorrow. "Violet!" she cried, and the sound was a blade.
The corridor shook with the footfalls. A torch tossed flame wide. The nearest soldier fell as Beatrice's dagger found his throat; he died without a sound. Then another lunged. The man who had free'd Violet took a crosscut and stumbled, screaming. The tunnel smoked.
"Move!" someone shouted, but Violet did not. She watched Beatrice pivot, vanish under swinging blades and throwing light. She saw her like a bright wound in the dark.
When at last the passageway collapsed behind a crash of stone, leaving a dust-slick hush, Violet was still there—paralysed by a pull that was not bravery and not fear but something like a need to know. The echo of Beatrice's boots died away. A moment later, a single, low sound threaded the quiet:
"Violet."
It was not Beatrice.
It was the voice that had kept her whole and kept her small; the voice that had tied her to nightmares and lullabies both.
Calla stood in the doorway. She was framed by the ruined arch, a silhouette of familiar angles and unfamiliar temper. The dust clung to her sleeves, to the hair that she had always worn tidy—yet the shape of her face was the same, the same patient line of jaw that used to bend over little scratches and scraped knees. For a breath of a second Violet tasted—hope.
She wore a long black veil, her feature of face barely visible.
"Mother?" The word ripped free before she could swallow it back. It came out smaller than the prayers she had mouthed to gods she barely believed in.
Calla's eyes softened, the way they had in faded snapshots Violet kept folded beneath her pillow. She stepped forward and the years folded into an instant. Her hands—hands Violet had once known—came up to touch Violet's face. They were warm. They smelled of leather, of old paper, of the faint lemon scent of the capital's gardens.
"You've grown," Calla whispered. "My little bird." The phrase fit like a returning glove, and for a thin, dizzy minute everything righted.
Violet let herself fall into the release of it. She let all the months of hunger and cold and searching pour out of her like water. "They—" she started. "They—" but the words tangled in her throat: Garrett—Maria—those names burst behind every breath. She told Calla about the wild night, about the men in masks, the way everything had been taken. She told the story simple and raw and real, the way a child tells of thunder.
Calla's hand cradled her head; her fingers were gentle as if she'd always done this. Tears came to Violet's eyes and she could not hold them back. Calla hummed something low—an old lullaby wordless and sweet—and Violet believed. She believed again with the terror of someone who has been starved long and given bread.
Then the pain came—white and sudden—and flare of a fist at the back of her skull. She never saw the shape that hit her. The last thing she felt was Calla's arms tightening around her as the world went slack.
Dark.
Black that tasted of rust and old iron. A hollow between ribs where breath had lived. Violet woke to the press of chains biting her wrists. Her ankle was buckled to cold stone. The cell smelled of damp and rot and the slow, sour stink of old sweat.
"Calla?" She croaked. No answer. Only water dripping in the dark like counting beads.
Panic rose first. She beat with her fists at the bars until her knuckles swelled. No one came. She shouted until the cell responded only with the iron echo of her own voice. The sounds outside were muffled; the world beyond the walls continued on like some distant, obscene carnival.
She tried to remember everything—how the light had looked when Calla had touched her. Had that warmth been real? Or had it been another trick—like the illusions that had taken Garrett and set him against ghosts? She had to know. She had to—
Days are thin in a cell. They melt and refreeze like ice on windowpanes. At first she counted. One. Two. Three. She whispered to herself names, things that tethered her to being. On the first day she tried the chains—they hummed with a blue pulse that made her skin itch. She whispered curses at gods and at the woman whose hand had been warm on her cheek.
On the second day, hunger made the world a single, consuming thing. She imagined a loaf of bread and tasted wood. She dreamed of Vael's crude grin and of Beatrice's pale fingers. She crawled over to the wall and pressed her ear to the stone, hearing the slow heartbeat of the city—the creak of carts, the murmur of voices, a distant bell that marked some indifferent hour.
On the third day, she stopped naming days altogether. The cell was a throat of black that never swallowed. She talked to herself in the dark until her voice sounded like a stranger's, then she wept until she could not tell salt from blood. The chains bit like teeth. The cuffs were cold enough to make one's bones ache.
Sometimes patches of memory returned like splinters: the Sakeli's coil and the paper that said, Found you, my little bird—a message that had been pushed into the capital's hands like a knife with a ribbon. Calla's handwriting. Calla's voice telling her things in the cottage. The way Maria had trusted and had been refused. The old promises. The ledger of favors tucked into sealed letters. All of it wormed under her skin and set her jaw to grinding.
She thought of Beatrice. Of the way the princess's eyes had gone blank when Violet's true hair glimmered silver in that lamplight. Would the princess survive? Did she cut her way free? Did Beatrice think Violet a decoy, or a danger? The questions bloomed in her like dark flowers. There was no answer in the cold.
On the third night—the one that tasted like iron and sleep—something changed. Footsteps. Heavy with purpose. A key scraped. A torch flared just outside the door, and light found her like a blade.
The gate scraped. A shadow filled the mouth of the cell. Hope rose so fierce she had to steady it with both hands. "Calla?" she begged.
The figure moved into the light.
It was Calla. She stood tall in silks that had not seen the soot of this city's underbelly—silks that smelled of citrus and money. Her hair was done in the careful style of the court. Her hands were empty. Her face was composed, a slow, deliberate mask.
Violet's chest unlocked. "Mother—" the name was a sob.
Calla walked toward her with a measured step. For a moment—one perfect, burning moment—Violet thought salvation had come at last. Calla tilted her head as if inspecting a coin. There was a small, slow smile at the corner of her mouth that did not meet her eyes.
Violet reached. "Please," she breathed. "You have to—"
Calla's fingers came up like a metronome and the palm connected with Violet's cheek.
The slap was clean and hard and full of the sort of disgust that leaves a permanent sound in the blood.
Calla stepped back, slow as a verdict, and looked at Violet with a cold, appraising stare. She did not soften. She did not come to unbind. She did not cry over Violet's bruised cheek. Instead she spoke words that felt like the fall of a hammer.
"Who the fuck are you calling mother?" she said, cold and precise. "You cursed blood."
The light snapped. The guard's boots receded. The door slammed.
Darkness closed in like a hand.