"Renan."
"Renan." I roll it around. Taste it. "I'm going to do something stupid, Renan. I'm going to let you live. And then I'm going to take you with me, because I think you might be interesting, and I haven't found anything interesting in a very long time."
"Okay."
"You're not going to ask where we're going?"
"Does it matter?"
No. It doesn't. Nowhere is safe and everywhere is the same and the only thing that matters is the pull humming under my ribs, dragging me toward something I can't see yet.
I stand up. Hold out my hand.
He takes it. His fingers are cold and sticky with blood.
"I'm going to teach you things," I tell him. "How to fight. How to disappear. How to find the joke in catastrophe. And in exchange, you're going to keep me company while I figure out what I'm surviving for."
"That sounds like a bad deal for me."
"Probably." I start walking. He keeps pace. "But you'll get used to it."
Elyra's spine digs into my palm. The pull hums north.
I don't know what's waiting for me. Don't know why it matters. But I'm not alone anymore, and that's—
Something. It's something.
Sixty-four steps before I lose count again.
The merchant is lying about the silk. The guard was definitely drinking last night. A mother promises her child everything will be fine, and that one's so rotten I can almost smell it.
Their threads twist in the air—shadow-dark, pulsing wrong—and my skull aches from the noise of it all.
Renan walks beside me, matching my pace. He hasn't spoken in two blocks, which either means he's bored or he's cataloging which of these people would be easiest to kill. Probably both.
"This is a waste of time," I say.
"Everything's a waste of time." He sidesteps a cart without looking. "That's never stopped you before."
"It should."
"And yet." He gestures ahead at the Concord building, all that marble and self-importance rising against the skyline. "Here we are. Walking toward politics like idiots."
The crowd parts ahead of us. They don't know why they're moving—just that something in their gut tells them to get out of the way. I've stopped caring whether it's my reputation or my presence that does it. The result is the same: space where there wasn't any, and the particular quality of silence that follows Discord through Arkenhold.
"Coin's going to be insufferable today," Renan says. "I can feel it."
"Coin's always insufferable."
"More than usual. They've got something they want to show off." His mouth curves, dark and sharp. "Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll blow up in their face."
"Define lucky."
"Blood on marble. Preferably theirs."
I almost smile. Almost. "Now you're just trying to make me optimistic."
My wrists itch as we approach the steps. The scars there pulse faintly, reacting to proximity—to the slab beneath this building where they bound me millenia ago. The other Houses call it sacred ground. I call it what it is: a monument to their fear.
