POV: Cael
Debriefs always taste like metal. The room is small, windowless, carved from old fortress stone—every scrape in the walls a reminder of battles we won because losing was not an option. We sit around a scarred table that has survived more wars than most people alive. Jax slumps into a chair like a wolf pretending to nap. Lorre sharpens a pencil she doesn’t need. Two lieutenants lean over the map, quiet as held breath.
Outside, Crownward pretends to breathe normal again. Vendors shout half-heartedly. Lanterns sway in a wind that knows too much. Somewhere a child laughs at the wrong moment because children don’t care about borders or drift scouts or politics dressed as war. The city wants to be calm. It isn’t.
“Two smoke pots,” Jax says, flicking his pencil at the map. “West chimes, dye stalls. Timed. Coordinated.”
“Three lifters,” Lorre adds. “We bagged two. Third ghosted.”
My jaw tightens. “Which way?”
“Up,” she says. “Took a rope we didn’t see. Cut it behind him. Vanished like a rat who trained for it.”
Jax pushes a pouch across the table. It hits the wood with a soft, cruel sound. I untie it. Coins. Perfume-smelling, knife-smelling coins. Red wax residue on one. Moonfell’s little signature.
“Seris’s coin,” he says. “Smells like silk pretending it’s not poison.”
I rub my thumb and forefinger together, like I could erase her from the air. All it does is make my fingertips itch. “Tighten the lanes. More plain-clothes. Pull anyone who smells like money and lies.”
“Already on it,” Jax murmurs.
The lieutenants file out. Lorre follows. Jax lingers, then leaves when he realizes I need to be alone with the part of myself that won’t quiet down.
The room empties. Silence crawls high up the walls. My head throbs where worry makes a home. Rhun paces inside my ribs—furious, restless, wanting. “Hide her. Keep her. Lock the world out.” His voice shakes the cage of my bones.
“No cages,” I tell him.
He snarls because he knows I’m lying to myself. Protecting isn’t caging, I tell him. He doesn’t buy it. Neither do I.
Footsteps. Her footsteps. Even the stone knows them now. Mara stands in the doorway, hair smelling faintly of smoke and tea, eyes bright with something sharp that is not fear.
“Tell me the truth,” she says. No greeting. No bow. Just a command carved from exhaustion and fire.
I push my chair back, stand slow. “You’re targeted,” I say. “That’s the truth.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because you matter,” I say.
“Why?!” The word cracks. I flinch.
My tongue aches with the words I can’t give her here—lineage, White-Gold, Vein, prophecy—truths wrapped in knives. If I say them in the wrong place, even the walls will gossip.
“Because Seris wants leverage,” I say instead. “Because Kade wants a story he can sell.”
Her jaw flexes. “You’re hiding the meat and handing me broth. Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear the bell,” I answer, voice tight. “If I say too much in the wrong place, it rings louder.”
She steps closer, palms on the table, leaning in like challenge incarnate. “Hiding truth is its own kind of cage, Cael.”
That hits harder than any Drift blade. My breath stumbles. “I am trying to keep you safe,” I say. It comes out raw, exposed.
“I am trying to live,” she fires back. “I can’t do that blind.”
Rhun surges—Tell her. Claim her. I slam him down so hard my ribs ache. Claiming is not the same as caring. And she deserves the truth on her terms, not mine.
“I will tell you more,” I say. “But not here. Not now.”
“When?” she presses.
“After council.” It’s half a promise. It tastes like ash in my mouth.
She laughs once—hurt, thin. “You pick the doors and the clocks. You always do.”
“That’s not fair,” I say.
“It is,” she says quietly, and somehow the quiet hurts more than any shout. “And you know it.”
We stand in silence. Breathing each other in. Wearing the ache like armor. I want to reach for her face. I don’t. She wants to shove me. She doesn’t.
Jax appears in the doorway, reads the air, disappears like a sane man.
“I’m not porcelain,” she says—softer, but sharper.
“I know,” I whisper. “That’s what scares me.”
She steps back. “Then be brave.”
“I am,” I say. It sounds small. Pathetic.
She leaves first. The hall swallows her. My knees sit me down before I choose to.
Near dawn, Lorre drags me to the chime garden. “You should see this,” she says.
The stones at the base of the frame gleam damp. Fresh marks carved into them—hooked Drift lines, three rows. The bottom row curls into a flower mangled into claws, like someone tried to draw beauty and ended with a threat.
It pretends to be a joke. It isn’t.
“Kade?” I ask.
“Or someone who wants to smell like him,” Lorre says.
Rhun pushes against my ribs with a fury that scrapes bone. I let him growl. It doesn’t fix the stone. It doesn’t fix anything.
But it means I’m awake.
And tomorrow, we fight smarter.