The crowd didn't part for Ethan so much as flinch away from him, which he supposed was its own kind of parting.
He crossed the square with the coal in his chest sitting straighter with every step, straining toward the girl on the pole the way iron strained toward a lodestone.
Up close, she was younger than he'd first thought.
Fifteen, maybe sixteen.
The green in her eyes wasn't the steady ember-glow his own carried.
It flickered.
Guttered.
Like something burning through too much fuel too quickly.
"Cut her down," Ethan said to the men holding the torches.
Nobody moved.
A man with a scar running through one eyebrow stepped forward instead, his torch lowered like a spear.
"You're one of them. Taken don't get a say."
"I got burned on that exact pole a week ago."
Ethan nodded toward it.
"And I'm still standing here talking to you, so maybe ask yourself if the pole is working the way you think it is."
That bought him half a second of doubt.
It was all he needed.
He hadn't said it expecting a change of heart.
He'd said it knowing exactly what it would buy him.
Hesitation.
Enough time for the people who actually mattered to close the distance.
Alistair's coat swept past Ethan's shoulder.
Marguerite was already moving toward the ropes.
Behind them, Idris approached the square at a pace that seemed impossible for a man his age.
His ink-stained sleeve was still wet.
Ethan frowned.
"When did you leave the Vault?"
"Before you did."
Idris didn't look at him.
His attention was fixed entirely on the girl.
Then he raised one hand.
The nearest ward-lamp flickered.
Another answered.
Then another.
A chain of green-gold light spread outward through the square, each lamp answering the next until the entire street seemed connected by a faint web of illumination.
Ethan hadn't noticed it before.
Perhaps because he'd never had reason to look.
The girl's head snapped upward.
Not toward the crowd.
Toward him.
The coal in his chest answered.
Kin.
This time it wasn't a whisper.
It wasn't even a word.
It was a formless part of himself straining against the cage of his ribs, reaching toward the girl as though something on the other side of her was pulling it forward.
"Ethan."
Alistair's voice was tight.
"Whatever it wants you to do right now, don't."
Ethan barely heard him.
The girl's mouth opened.
The voice that came out wasn't hers.
"Let us out."
It wasn't a request.
Not really words, either.
It was pressure behind the teeth.
Copper.
Rot.
Something ancient trying to force itself through a throat too small for it.
Ethan felt his own coal answer.
Recognition.
Hunger.
A surge that wasn't his hunger rose through his chest and up his spine, hot enough to make his hands tremble.
For one terrible moment, he thought the coal was going to force the door open by itself.
He clenched his jaw.
Then he did something he'd never done before.
He refused it.
Not the girl.
Not the thing inside her.
The door.
Whatever waited behind it.
Whatever wanted to cross through him.
He pushed inward and forced the connection shut.
The coal screamed.
Not audibly.
He felt it.
A wordless fury slammed against the inside of his ribs.
Once, twice. Again.
The girl arched against the ropes.
Her body went rigid.
The green in her eyes flared so brightly that Ethan had to look away.
Then something changed.
The pressure vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
The coal went suddenly, horribly still.
The girl's eyes lost their green.
Her body sagged against the ropes.
For one terrible second, Ethan thought he'd made the wrong choice.
That shutting the door had cost her whatever chance she'd had.
His stomach dropped.
Not because of strategy.
Not because of calculation.
Because he was afraid.
Afraid he'd just killed a girl he'd come here to save.
"Cut her down!"
Marguerite reached the pole.
She severed the ropes with a knife and caught the girl before she hit the ground.
The girl coughed.
Once. Twice.
Then drew a ragged breath.
Ordinary.
Human.
Alive.
Ethan stood frozen.
He stared at her eyes.
Brown. No green.
No ember-glow.
Nothing looking back through them.
Idris arrived beside Marguerite and examined the girl carefully.
His fingers hovered near her throat without touching it.
"She's alive."
Alistair stepped closer.
"What happened?"
Idris didn't answer immediately.
He looked at Ethan.
Then at the girl.
Then at the ward-lamps glowing around the square.
"I don't know."
The admission sounded heavier than certainty would have.
Ethan looked down at his hands.
They were shaking.
He hadn't realized how badly until that moment.
He slowly curled them into fists.
"Did I—"
He stopped.
He didn't know what question he was trying to ask.
Did I save her? Did I hurt her?
Did I kill the thing inside her?
Or had it simply gone somewhere else?
The coal gave no answer.
For the first time since the pyre, it felt completely silent.
Ethan looked at the girl again.
Whatever had been inside her was gone.
He knew that much.
But something about the silence inside his chest bothered him.
It didn't feel like victory.
It felt like an empty room after someone had left through a door Ethan hadn't known existed.
He swallowed.
"I didn't do anything to her."
Alistair's eyes narrowed.
"No."
Ethan looked at him.
Alistair's expression had gone very still.
"That's what worries me."
Ethan glanced back at the girl.
Then at his own chest.
The coal was quiet.
But he could still remember the moment it had reached toward her.
The recognition.
The hunger.
The desperate insistence that whatever lived behind that door belonged with him.
He lowered his voice.
"I did something to mine."
No one answered.
And somewhere far beyond the square, something that had been listening stopped.