The message reached the Vigil at midnight.
It was carried by a boy too winded to speak clearly.
Another burning.
Three streets over.
Already underway.
Ethan was moving before Alistair finished reading the note.
"That's not your fight," Marguerite said, falling into step beside him anyway.
Which told Ethan she didn't believe her own sentence any more than he did.
"I was on that pole a week ago."
"Which is precisely why it isn't your fight."
Marguerite kept pace with him.
"You're not stable enough to—"
They rounded the corner.
The argument died in both their throats.
The pyre in the square wasn't burning yet.
A small mercy.
The crowd was still gathering wood, still shouting the same ugly words Ethan remembered from the other side of the flames.
But the girl tied to the pole wasn't screaming.
She wasn't struggling.
She wasn't doing anything at all.
She simply stared straight ahead.
Her eyes were the wrong shade of green.
Ethan stopped.
The coal in his chest shifted.
Not rage this time.
Recognition.
Kin.
The word arrived in that same wordless copper taste that was becoming almost a language between them.
Kin.
Again.
Kin.
The coal strained against whatever held it in place.
Let me out.
Ethan's breath caught.
"Ethan."
Alistair's hand closed around his shoulder.
His voice had lost every trace of dry performance.
No wit.
No amusement.
Just caution.
"Whatever you're thinking, think twice."
Ethan didn't look at him.
His eyes remained fixed on the girl.
The coal pulled harder.
"That thing inside her," Alistair said quietly. "If it's anything like yours, we don't know what happens if you interfere."
"We didn't know what would happen when I survived the pyre either."
Alistair's grip tightened.
"That's exactly why I'm telling you to be careful."
He looked toward the girl.
"Whatever is inside her may not want to be saved."
Ethan finally looked at him.
"Neither did mine."
Alistair said nothing.
The crowd surged closer to the pyre.
Someone threw another bundle of wood onto the pile.
A torch was raised.
Ethan felt something inside his chest reach toward the girl.
Not metaphorically.
Reach.
The sensation was unmistakable.
A pull.
A direction.
A thread between two things that should not have been able to sense each other.
Kin.
The word came again.
But this time Ethan understood something.
It wasn't calling him kin.
It was recognizing what was inside the girl.
Another Cthu.
Ethan's pulse quickened.
He didn't know what that meant.
He didn't know why the thing inside him recognized it.
But he knew what would happen if the crowd lit the pyre.
He started forward.
Marguerite caught his arm.
"Ethan."
He looked at her.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she released him.
"Whatever you're about to do," she said, "don't make me regret that."
Ethan stepped into the square.
The crowd noticed him.
A few voices died.
Others grew louder.
"Vigil!"
"Another one!"
"Burn it before it takes someone else!"
The girl still didn't move.
Ethan approached the pyre.
The coal inside him was almost burning now.
Not with heat.
With pressure.
With hunger.
He could feel the presence inside the girl.
It was faint.
Buried deep.
But there.
He reached toward it.
Nothing happened.
Ethan frowned.
He reached again.
The sensation changed.
For an instant, he felt something that wasn't his own.
Cold.
Distance.
A presence pressed against the inside of another person's soul.
And beneath it—
Fear.
Not the girl's.
The Cthu's.
Ethan froze.
It was afraid of him.
The realization sent a chill through him.
Then the thing inside his chest moved.
Not violently.
Purposefully.
The copper sensation spread through his body.
Ethan felt something inside the girl loosen.
The girl's back arched.
A sound escaped her throat.
Then the green in her eyes flickered.
The crowd recoiled.
"What did you do?" someone shouted.
Ethan couldn't answer.
He was too busy holding onto something he couldn't see.
The presence inside the girl resisted.
Ethan pulled.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
His knees nearly buckled.
The coal in his chest flared.
For one impossible second, Ethan felt as though he were dragging something enormous through a space far too small to contain it.
The girl screamed.
Ethan gritted his teeth.
"Come on."
He pulled again.
Something tore free.
Not flesh.
Not blood.
Something deeper.
A shape without a body.
A pressure without weight.
It rushed toward him.
Straight into the coal beneath his ribs.
Ethan staggered.
The world went white.
Then—
Silence.
The girl collapsed against the pole.
The green vanished from her eyes.
They became ordinary again.
Ethan dropped to one knee.
His hands shook violently.
Something moved inside his chest.
Not the coal.
Something else.
Something that had not been there before.
He swallowed.
The presence inside him was changing.
No.
Not changing.
Making room.
"Ethan."
Alistair's voice sounded very far away.
Ethan looked up.
Alistair was staring at him.
Marguerite stood beside him, one hand hovering near her weapon.
Neither of them looked at the girl.
They were looking at Ethan.
"What," Alistair said slowly, "did you just do?"
Ethan opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because for the first time since waking beneath the pyre, he didn't know.
The coal inside his chest gave a faint, satisfied pulse.
And somewhere beneath that pulse, something new whispered without words.
Kin.