POV: Mara
Hearthworks declares a Hearthfire because you can’t run on adrenaline and soup alone. We drag a brazier into the chime garden and feed it dry kindling, then the kitchen’s tired spoons—broken handles, dented backs—because Silvie says every tool deserves one last warm job.
“Sing, you liars,” Pia tells the chimes. They do. Fog stayed away today; the stars consider showing up.
We eat dumplings from a shared bowl, too hot and perfect, sing badly on purpose, and trade gossip like cards. “Did you hear,” Tor says, “that the Lantern Guild’s dye master used to date Lorre and now he codes messages into the gold glaze?”
“He codes temper,” Pia says. “If a panel hums too sharp, it’s because she forgot dinner.”
Silvie smacks Pia’s shoulder with a dish towel. “Stop telling true lies.”
I almost forget the pantry note. Almost. It sits in my bones like a splinter that refuses to show a head. When the bowl comes to me again, I take two dumplings out of turn. “Forgive me,” I say.
“Always,” Pia answers, as if it’s the easiest word.
Jax appears at the garden edge holding a sack like Santa if Santa had seen too much war. “Surplus,” he says, dropping it beside Silvie. Apples thump out—small, winter-hard, green.
“Spies,” Silvie accuses.
“Quartermaster is in love with me,” Jax says solemnly.
“Who isn’t,” Pia chirps.
He actually startles, then recovers with elegance. “One day, you’ll run a city with compliments.”
“I already do,” she says, biting an apple.
Jax leans a shoulder against the garden wall and lets the sound of people happen to him. It makes him look younger until he remembers not to.
“You could sit,” I offer. He glances at the only empty place—beside me. His mouth says no, his body says I cannot. He chooses a stool, compromise carved into the shape of a man.
We pass the apples. Tor tells a story about a cadet who tried to bribe the ovens into baking faster with a poem. Silvie demonstrates the proper way to threaten a pot. Pia invents a verse for the shells and makes them blush with clatter.
When laughter finds me, it shocks everyone most of all me. It breaks out of my chest in one clean sound. Heads turn. Pia’s eyes shine like she’s won a medal. Jax’s mouth does something dangerous and fleeting.
I feel weird. In a good way.
Back in Moonfell, laughter was something forbidden. Laughter was only allowed for people of high rank—or Warden's favorites. Seris, for example. She could laugh her lungs out and no one would bat an eye. Me, though? If I dared let out a snort, Kade wouldn't let it slide.
My hands used to shake at the reminder. They almost don't anymore.
“Good,” Silvie says, brisk, rescuing me from gratitude. “You sound like your lungs work.”
“They’re considering it,” I say.
We sit until the brazier coal glows like a quiet heart. The ribbons on my dress are warm, my braid smells like smoke, and the city feels, for ten breaths, like somewhere you could choose.
A shiver runs through the shells that does not belong to wind. I look up and the hair on my arms does the thing hair does when old stories walk by.
No lightning. Then a low, rolling growl pretends to be thunder anyway.
Jax lifts his head. “No storm in the forecast,” he says.
“Forecasts are aspirational,” Silvie replies, stacking bowls. Her hands are a little too neat.
Pia forces a grin. “Maybe the moon sneezed.”
Aster tightens around my ribs, listening. Pressure, she hums. Change.
We douse the brazier carefully and carry the warm spoons inside like small animals. In the kitchen doorway, Jax pauses. “Guards on your route tonight,” he says toward me, like a man commenting on the price of onions.
“Because of the pantry note,” I say. He doesn’t answer, which is yes.
I nod once. “I won’t wander.”
“Do, if you have to,” he says. “But not alone.”
When the last cup is washed and the last song admitted it didn’t know its own words, I lie in my cot and feel the pressure in the air like the ache before rain. The moon is too bright for the clouds we have. I close my eyes and think of the panels humming under careful feet, of the boy’s shaking hands around an egg, of Cael’s voice at the span like a spine for sound to cling to.
Cael's voice.
It clings to my memory in a way that irritates me and makes me shift my weight at the same time.
I can't, I think. I don't have the right to even think about him.
I should stop. I have to.
But I can't.
Cael catches my attention and my breath at the same time. Still, I don't dare even look in his direction for too long. He's the Warden of Lysanth. A Warden is like a king here, except even better. Higher by rank. More… glorified.
Besides, I barely escaped Kade. I won't step into a new trap.
Aster runs a palm along my heart to calm me, not to quiet me. Breathe, she says.
I do, and the air tastes like thunder that has forgotten what to strike.