POV: Cael
Midday at the Lantern Guild is chaos rehearsing competence. Vats steam; apprentices jostle; someone is always singing off-key. I stand above the floor on the catwalk, checking safety straps and pretending I came for this and only this.
Below, Mara works the First Aid table with linen and that surgeon’s calm that makes boys stop shaking. Two apprentices—Caro and the one with too much confidence and not enough ankles—lean in when she teases them about bandaging their pride. She laughs, cheeks flushed from heat and joy, and the room moves with her the way tide moves around pilings.
It is innocent. It is ordinary. It makes something barbaric in me wake and pace.
“Down boy,” Jax murmurs, appearing at my shoulder like a conscience with boots. “You can’t glower at adolescence, my lord. It feeds on disapproval.”
“I’m not glowering,” I lie. Rhun is. He bares his teeth at children because their eyes are light and their fingers are touching. I want to scrub the want out of my bones with cold water and bad decisions.
“She’s laughing,” Jax says. “File that under city stability and unclench.”
“She laughs at horrors too,” I mutter.
“Then you two have something in common.”
Below, the overconfident one dares a wink and then hisses because he shifted wrong and reminded his ankle he’s mortal. Mara’s sympathy is swift and unromantic. “Idiot,” she says, affectionate as a slap. “Sit.”
Caro glances up—at me, because boys sniff power even when they can’t spell it. I make my face polite. He flushes. Jax smothers a laugh with his fist and mutters, “Terrifying.”
Mara looks up at the same time. Maybe she followed the heat like a scent; maybe fear is its own magnet. Our eyes catch. Neither of us looks away first. It isn’t a contest. It feels like one anyway.
We don’t smile. Smiling would be permission. We blink at the same time—which is ridiculous—and the tension drops half an inch, then pulls back taut as a bow.
“Lord,” Lorre calls from the far end, saving me from myself. “We found scratches near the west parapet. Not cats.” She hands me a slate with a chalk rubbing. Four lines, long, deep, wrong.
“Drift,” Jax says.
“Or someone who wants us to think Drift,” I say. “Height?”
“Hip to chest,” Lorre says. “A tall woman or a short monster.”
“Seris’s nails,” Jax suggests, entirely without respect. Lorre grins. I don’t.
“We’ll stage sandbags along that parapet tonight,” I order. “No announcements. Quiet teeth.”
“Quiet teeth is my band name,” Lorre says, strolling away.
I should leave. Instead I linger long enough to see Mara finish a wrap, press a pear into a girl’s hand, and wipe a spill with brisk affection. She does not belong to me. The fact burns and soothes at once.
“Walk,” Jax orders, this time like a friend. “Before you invent an excuse to pick a fight with a teenager.”
We go. The corridor is cool and unromantic. It helps until it doesn’t.