Morning came in thin, gray light.
Not bright. Not kind.
It slipped through the cracks around Tess's trapdoor and painted the cellar shelves in stripes—jar glass, dust, the edge of a cracked barrel.
Mireya woke first.
Of course she did.
Sleep never held her the way it held other people. Not after the Ministry. Not after the dream that hadn't been a dream.
She lay still and listened.
Above: floorboards. A faint shuffle. Tess moving, quiet for once.
Beside the shelves: Stellan's breathing, slow, heavy, too steady for someone who'd bled the night before.
Mireya closed her eyes anyway.
Just for a beat.
The Concord tugged.
Not hard. Not like the dream-merge. This was… sly. A thread catching on skin.
Mireya opened her eyes.
Fine. Awake it is.
Stellan shifted, a low grunt catching in his throat. Mireya felt it in her ribs at the same time, mirrored pain, dull but present. He didn't have to move much for it to travel.
Mireya swallowed it down.
No reaction. No weakness.
Tess's voice drifted down through the trapdoor, muffled. "You two alive?"
Mireya didn't answer.
Stellan did, voice rough. "Yeah."
Tess popped the hatch and looked down at them like she was checking inventory. Her hair was messy. Her eyes were too bright for this hour.
"Good," she said. "Get out before the district wakes up hungry."
Stellan pushed himself upright. His side pulled. Mireya flinched without meaning to.
Stellan's head turned sharply. "You okay?"
Mireya's mouth tightened. "I'm not the one bleeding."
Stellan stared at her for half a second.
The bond flared.
Pressure behind Mireya's eyes.
Lie.
She hated that. Hated it like a bruise.
Tess climbed down the ladder with a cloth bundle and dropped it onto a crate. "Bread. Water. A mask each. Don't die in my alley."
Mireya stood, slow. The cellar swayed once, then steadied.
Stellan's gaze tracked her, careful.
Not pity. Not ownership.
Still annoying.
Tess pointed at Mireya's throat. "Cover that."
Mireya didn't argue. She wrapped a scarf high enough to hide the bruising and the fresh scab line.
Tess then tossed something at Stellan.
A small bar, wrapped in paper.
Stellan caught it. Sniffed it like it might be poison.
Tess rolled her eyes. "Soap."
Stellan blinked. "Soap."
"You smell like blood and wet dog," Tess said. "Even zealots can follow that."
Stellan's mouth tightened. "Thanks."
He shoved it into his coat pocket.
Mireya didn't care about soap.
She cared about getting out.
They climbed into the dressing room, then into the back alley behind the playhouse. The air outside was colder than the cellar. Damp. River-stink and smoke.
Mireya tightened her Silence close, filter, not blanket.
The city was waking. Wagons groaning. A vendor calling. A baby crying in an upstairs window.
She muted most of it.
She chose what she needed.
Footsteps behind them.
Nothing.
Good.
They moved along the river cut toward the outer lanes. Away from Vale's estate. Away from chapel seals and masked nobles.
A strip of pale light broke over the rooftops.
Sunrise.
Stellan slowed without meaning to.
Mireya felt it before she saw it, his attention shifting upward, a stillness settling into his shoulders like weight.
"You're doing it again," she muttered.
Stellan didn't look at her. "Doing what."
"Staring at the sky like it owes you money," Mireya said.
Stellan's mouth twitched once. Barely. Not humor. Something quieter.
He stepped onto a rise where the city dropped away into scrub and open land. The river widened, black and patient.
The sun edged up.
And the bond crossed a wire.
It hit Mireya through her nose first.
Pine.
Not the orchard. Not the city.
Pine soap, clean, sharp, the kind used in huts where money didn't reach.
The scent wasn't in the air.
Stellan hadn't even unwrapped the bar.
But Mireya smelled it anyway, sudden and vivid, like someone had pressed it under her nose.
Then the memory came with it.
Not hers.
A boy's hands scrubbing blood off knuckles in a river at dawn. Water so cold it hurt. A man's voice behind him—rough, tired.
"You did what you had to."
The boy shaking his head, jaw clenched.
"I didn't want to."
The man's hand, heavy on the boy's shoulder.
"Want doesn't matter. You live. That's the job."
Mireya's throat tightened.
Grief punched through her chest like it belonged there.
Not sadness.
Loss with teeth.
A sunrise that meant someone is gone.
Mireya stumbled.
Her boot caught on nothing and she still nearly went down.
Stellan turned fast. "Mireya—"
She shoved a hand into the wall of her own ribs, like she could hold the feeling in place. "Stop."
Stellan's brow furrowed. "What's wrong."
Mireya tried to speak. Her mouth opened.
No sound came out at first, not because of Silence. Because her throat had locked.
She swallowed hard.
"Your grief," she rasped.
Stellan went still.
The sunrise light touched his cheek, and for a second he looked younger. Exhausted. Hollow.
"My… what," he said, but his voice wasn't convincing. Like he already knew.
Mireya's eyes narrowed. "This isn't mine."
Stellan's jaw tightened. He stared at the horizon as if he could stare through time.
Then he said, low, "It's the day he died."
Mireya didn't ask who.
She didn't need to. The bond carried enough.
The ache in her chest deepened, an echo of his mourning, braided into her ribs.
Mireya's hands curled.
"Great," she snapped, too sharp. "So now I'm your funeral too."
Stellan looked at her. "I didn't—"
"I know," Mireya cut in, breathing through the burn. "That's the problem."
Tess's rule in her head: The bond should get worse before it gets better.
Congratulations. It's worse.
Mireya forced her shoulders back. Forced her face flat. "Move."
Stellan hesitated. Mireya saw the pull behind his eyes, wanting to stay in the sunrise a moment longer, wanting to keep grieving because it was honest.
Then he nodded once. "Yeah."
They kept walking.
The open road didn't stay open for long. It funneled them back toward the edge markets, stalls, carts, people stacked too close, voices bouncing off wood and stone.
Mireya's Silence tightened instinctively.
She filtered the noise down to manageable threads.
Still, bodies pressed close. Shoulders bumped. Someone laughed too loud. Someone argued about coin.
Crowds.
Mireya kept her chin down and moved like water through gaps.
Stellan didn't.
He moved like a wall that had learned to walk.
People avoided him without knowing why.
Mireya felt his hearing locked through hers, every shout, every hawker, every scrape of cartwheels.
He shouldn't have been able to handle that.
He should've been fine.
But the bond crossed another wire.
It started as a taste.
Metal.
Not poison this time.
Old metal. Old fear.
Then a sound—too loud, too close—hit Mireya's ears, and Stellan flinched like he'd been struck.
Not from pain.
From panic.
Mireya's panic.
A crowd pressing in. Hands grabbing. A hood pulled over her head. Breath trapped. The world turned into fabric and sweat and a voice saying, calm as prayer—
"Don't fight. You'll break your own ribs."
Mireya's vision blurred.
Stellan's knees softened.
He stopped moving.
In the middle of the market lane.
A cart rattled toward them.
Mireya grabbed Stellan's sleeve. "Move."
He didn't.
His eyes were open, but his focus wasn't here. His chest rose too fast. Too shallow.
He was drowning in a memory that wasn't his.
"Mireya," he said, hoarse, like he couldn't find air. "I—can't—"
The cart driver shouted, muffled by Mireya's filter, but the vibration of the shout still hit her teeth.
Mireya yanked Stellan hard, dragging him sideways into a narrow gap between stalls.
He stumbled, nearly fell.
Mireya's own lungs burned now. Her heart slammed against her ribs. The bond fed it right back into him.
A loop.
A spiral.
"Look at me," Mireya hissed.
Stellan blinked, slow. His jaw trembled once.
Mireya hated that she could see it. Hated that he couldn't hide.
She lowered her voice, sharp and controlled. "This isn't the palace. This isn't your hunt. Breathe."
Stellan swallowed. Tried. Failed.
Mireya pressed her hand to his forearm, brief contact, just enough pressure to anchor him.
The bond surged.
Heat. Nausea. A taste of his want-to-live mixed with her need-not-to-be-owned.
Mireya pulled her hand back immediately.
Too much.
But it worked.
Stellan's breath hitched, then slowed.
One. Two.
His eyes focused.
He stared at her, jaw tight. "That was you."
Mireya didn't answer.
He didn't need words. His face said he understood now: crowds weren't "uncomfortable" for her. Crowds were a cage.
Stellan's voice came quiet. "They took you."
Mireya's mouth went hard. "Don't."
The bond flared.
Pressure behind her eyes.
Not lie.
Just refusal.
Stellan nodded once, like he'd accept the boundary because he had to.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
A moment passed. Market noise pressed at Mireya's Silence like waves at a wall.
Stellan flexed his fingers. "We need to get out of here."
Mireya nodded once. "We're already late."
Stellan frowned. "Late for what."
Mireya didn't answer.
Because she felt it.
A change in the air. A wrong stillness. Like the world had stopped pretending.
She closed her eyes for one beat, just to check.
Not dream.
Not memory.
Pulse-sight.
Stellan's sight.
A ridge above the market road, where scrub turned to rock.
And there—
A figure stood watching.
Not a man.
Not fully.
A Hollowbeast.
Tall, motionless, posture too calm to be wild.
And on its face—
A courtier's mask.
Porcelain-white. Painted smile.
The same kind worn at Lord Vale's ball.
The Hollowbeast didn't move.
It just watched them like it recognized its work.
Mireya opened her eyes back to her own view.
Her throat went dry.
Because if the monsters were wearing masks now...
Someone wasn't just hunting them.
Someone was playing.