Percy came because that was what Percy did. Where I went, he followed. A loyalty forged in the kind of history that made two men brothers without sharing parents.
But for now, Veyndral and the council could wait. All of it could wait except the woman in that room who didn’t remember she was the only thing that had made me feel alive in centuries.
“You’re overthinking.” Percy’s voice cut through my spiral. “I can hear you brooding from here.”
“Shut up, Percival. Go get some rest,” I told him. “Both of you. I’ll take first watch.”
“You’ve been standing here for four hours already,” Percy said.
“Then I’ll take the next four too.”
Solomon and Percy exchanged a look. The kind that said they were going to argue, then thought better of it. Percy clapped meon the shoulder as he passed, and Solomon just nodded, that single gesture carrying more understanding than most people’s entire vocabularies.
They disappeared into the shadows, and I was alone again.
In her window, a light turned on.
I straightened, every sense alerting. Through the thin curtain, I could see her silhouette moving. She crossed to the window and stopped, and then her hand came up and pressed flat against the glass.
She couldn’t see me. I knew she couldn’t. The shadows were too deep, the street too dark. But she stood there anyway, palm against the window, staring out into the night.
My hand lifted without my permission. Mirrored the gesture. My palm pressed against nothing, against the twenty feet of distance that separated us.
Then the light went out.
Mira’s silhouette disappeared.
And I stood there in the dark, hand still raised toward a window that had gone black, alone with the ghost of a week she didn’t remember.
3
— • —
Mira
My hand checked my left eye before I was fully awake.
Habit. The first thing I did every morning for six months, making sure the brown contact was still in place, that I was still invisible. But this time, my fingers came back empty.
My stomach bottomed out. The lens was gone. Probably lost during the chaos last night, or maybe it had finally given up after being irritated by smoke and tears and whatever else I’d put it through.
Either way, six months of careful anonymity had just walked out the door.
I pushed out of the thin inn bed, Solomon’s jacket still wrapped around my shoulders, and padded to the bathroom. The disaster in the mirror was worse than I’d feared.
One brown eye and another ocean blue. Heterochromia. The feature that made me memorable when my entire survival strategy depended on being forgettable.
And my hair,God, my hair.It was so much more than a bad hair day.
The dark dye I reapplied religiously every three weeks had faded overnight, courtesy of maybe the inn’s shampoo and whatever stress did to hair follicles. Copper-red roots crept down in streaks of rust, bleeding through the dark brown until I looked patchy and half-finished.
Hudson always said my coloring made me easy to spot.
“You’re built to be found, Mira.”
I gripped the sink until my knuckles ached.
The disguise was gone and same went for my quiet life. The shop, the apartment, the savings I’d hidden in a coffee can because I was apparently an idiot who didn’t trust banks.
