POV: Mara
I hear the tour before I see it—polite voices, boots in step, Seris’s laugh like a bell dipped in sugar. I’m stringing shells with Pia when the group sweeps past the chime garden gate.
The shells click softly against each other, a small, honest sound trying to stand its ground against the careful conversation drifting in. The air smells like wet stone, salt, and the faint floral oil Silvie uses on the cords so they don’t fray. My fingers move automatically: loop, knot, slide. The rest of me tilts toward the gate, like my bones are nosy even when I try not to be.
Cael walks at the front with two Shields. Seris glides to his side and loops her arm through his like she’s buying the right to breathe his air. He doesn’t shake her off. Politics sits on his shoulders like a heavy cloak. I hate the cloak. I hate that I understand it.
The Shields behind them keep their faces blank, eyes sweeping, hands hovering near hilts in that relaxed, ready way they have. Cael’s profile is carved—calm, composed, a little too still. Seris looks like she stepped out of a painting: pearls bright, lips soft, smile sharp. Her hand on his arm is light, but it feels heavy from here.
Pia nudges me. “Do not bite the pearls,” she whispers.
I can feel my jaw clench at the mental image anyway—my teeth snapping down on each neat round lie around her throat. “I’m not looking,” I say, while absolutely looking.
My gaze snags where I said it wouldn’t: on her hand curled around his sleeve, on the way his shoulder tightens just a breath when she leans in. Aster huffs inside me, annoyed and simmering. We should be above this, she mutters. We are not.
Seris’s eyes slide over the shells, over me, then away, slow enough to sting. “The chimes,” she says to Cael, loud enough for us to hear, “so quaint. Does the city sleep with lullabies?”
“We sleep because we’re tired,” he answers. Dry. He does not look at me. His jaw is tighter than the knots on the arch. I can feel it from here.
Her laugh is soft and false, like a cushion hiding a knife. I focus on the line of cord in my hands, yanking it a bit too hard so the shells clack sharply. The garden seems to hold its breath. A breeze moves through, brushing the chimes just enough to make them murmur, as if they want to answer her themselves.
Jax breaks off to check a hinge. He catches my eye and blinks once: breathe. I try. It tastes like metal.
My lungs obey in short, shallow fits. The air feels thick, crowded with perfume and protocol and things unsaid. I drag it in anyway, counting—one, two, three—and let it out slow. The metallic tang in my mouth won’t leave; maybe I bit my tongue; maybe it’s just the taste of watching something you shouldn’t want to watch.
The tour moves on—lantern rails, ridge walk, hibiscus hall. I string shells with hands that won’t stop buzzing.
My fingers keep missing knots. Twice I thread the wrong shell in the wrong place and have to undo it, the cord burning my skin as it slides back. Pia hums some nonsense love song under her breath, deliberately off-key, trying to drag me back into the smallness of our work and away from the bigness of them.
“Tea?” Pia offers.
“If I drink, I’ll shake the cup apart.”
“Okay. I’ll drink for you.” She slurps loudly and makes a face until I snort and stop vibrating.
Her eyes light up with victory when I snort. She crosses them and lets a bit of shell dust sit on her upper lip like a mustache, wiggling it until I wheeze. The buzzing in my hands drops from a swarm to a soft hum. Aster’s grip on my ribs eases, just a little.
That night I lie flat and stare at the ceiling. The room is quiet. My thoughts are not. Aster strokes my ribs from inside.
The ceiling is uneven, patched where leaks once were, cracks decorated by Pia with chalk stars months ago. In the half-dark, they look like constellations that never made it into proper stories.
“Breathe, little tide.”
“I’m breathing,” I whisper.
“Again.”
I do. It helps for three breaths. Then my mind runs back to the tour: her arm, his patience, the way his shoulder said no while his face said duty. I replay the moment his gaze didn’t brush mine, the choice in that not-looking. It’s worse than if he’d stared.
I press the heel of my hand to my chest until the ache blurs.
Part of me wants to be above it all. To shrug and say heir, politics, nothing to do with us. Another part feels like someone reached in and twisted. It’s stupid and selfish and human. Aster doesn’t scold me for it. She just stays close, humming in that low, steady way that keeps me from falling apart.
Footsteps pound the corridor. Jax’s voice, low and hard: “Inside. Now.” Doors shut. Mine opens. He stands there with rain on his lashes and a map tube under his arm.
The lantern in the hall throws light over one half of his face, leaving the other in shadow. His cloak drips small puddles on the floor; his hair is plastered to his forehead. He looks like trouble followed him up the stairs and he outran it by one step.
“What happened?” I ask, already cold.
“Runner,” he says. “We intercepted him near the west parapet. Drift colors, bad knife, worse shoes.” He taps the tube. “Map on him. Not of the citadel. Of the chime garden. Access points highlighted.”
My hands curl into fists. “For what?”
I already know it won’t be anything small. Nobody draws maps of quiet places for kind reasons.
“Practice,” he says. “Testing fences.” He looks at the shells above my door like they’ll answer. “Sleep if you can. We’ll double posts.”
The word practice lands like a stone in my stomach. Not attack. Not yet. Just rehearsal. Just rehearsal with me and Pia and Silvie and everyone who works here as the set pieces.
“I won’t sleep,” I say.
“I know,” he says softly, and leaves.
The door closes with more care than his first knock used. His footsteps fade down the corridor.