Dread settled in my stomach like a stone. “About?”
He took a long deep breath, letting his shoulders rise and fall as he said, “About the fact that I’m not sure Vitoria is innocent.”
The words, though anticipated, still broke my heart. “Calder?—”
“I don’t believe she’d do anything of her own free will,” he continued, his voice low and urgent. “She had to have been blackmailed or coerced or something. There’s more to this story than we’re seeing. But Syn—” He met my eyes. “Why else were these people killed? Why else would she lie about her entire past? Even to us?”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to defend her. But the evidence was stacking up like stones on a grave.
He continued. “She’d been acting strange for weeks. Not days. Weeks. Before any of this started.”
“People act strangely sometimes. It doesn’t mean?—”
“She’s the one who told us about the docks.” His voice was gentle but relentless. “Remember? She suggested it. And before she moved in, she asked me to leave with her. Had anxiety about wanting to get out of the city. I refused, but maybe she was running back then, too. Her mysterious client. Those disappearances every week. What if she wasn’t meeting a lover? What if she were meeting with smugglers? The hunters caught her, she escaped, and now Tiberius is using this whole thing as a ruse to force her back into the open.”
“That doesn’t explain the Oracle,” I said, ignoring the fact that she’d never once askedmeto run off with her without Calder. “The poisoning. The attack. After getting to know Aureth, I’m sure those things happened. Maybe it wasn’t Vitoria, but why accuse her then? Not just the Magistrate, but Aureth too?”
Calder’s jaw tightened. “Think about her behavior the night of the Nexus games. She kept looking toward the harbor. Toward the docks. Like she was waiting for something.”
“Or looking for an escape route.”
“Exactly. And the timing of her disappearance. She left before the Mortalis announcement. Before either of us knew she’d been accused. Which meant she knew it was coming.”
The logic was sound. Terrifyingly sound.
He took a step toward me, grabbing my shoulders as he forced me to look into his eyes. “I think she’s leaving the city. And these people who died, the Kirrs, this family, the other house, probably others we don’t know about, they were loose ends. Everything she told us about her past was a lie.”
My voice came out fiercer than I intended. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
Five years of friendship. Three years of living together, sharing rent and food and fears. Watching each other’s backs through dangers both mundane and magical. She’d been like a sister to us both.
There was genuine pain in Calder’s voice. “I’m not saying she’s a bad person. I’m saying there’s a lot we didn’t know about her. And whatever she was wrapped up in, I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘she was framed.’”
“She’s not the Phoenix. I know it, Calder.”
“You can’t know for sure.” His eyes held mine. “And if she is, then the safest thing for her would have been to never speak it aloud. Not even to us.”
The truth sat on my tongue like poison.I do know. Because I’m the Phoenix. Because I’m the one we’re actually hunting.
But I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t risk it. Not even with Calder, who’d been my family for so long I couldn’t imagine life without him.
The guilt tasted worse than the fear. If he ever learned the truth... he’d never forgive me.
“You’re right,” I said finally, the words like ash in my mouth. “She couldn’t tell anyone. Not if she wanted to survive.”
Calder studied my face for a long moment. Then nodded, accepting what he thought was agreement. “We should get back.”
The walk to Chancellery House felt heavier than it should have. Each step carried the weight of growing certainty that we were missing something crucial. Something that would make all of this make sense.
Calder had been quiet for three blocks, his hand drifting to his pocket every few minutes like he was checking to make sure something was still there. Finally, he pulled out a folded newspaper, the edges already soft from handling. “Before we go back, I need to show you something.”
I took the paper, unfolding it carefully. The headline screamed across the top in bold print: Rail Lines Suspended Indefinitely: Magistrate Cites Security Concerns
“I know we already knew this,” Calder said quietly, “but seeing it in print makes it official. And there’s more. Come on.”
He led me through back streets with the confidence of someone who’d memorized every escape in the city. We climbed higher, toward the northern edge, where old warehouses gave way to the massive stone wall that surrounded Grimora.
The wall had always been there, a constant presence that most people stopped noticing after a while. Fifty feet of gray stone marked the boundary between civilization and the Ash beyond. Between safety and the monsters that prowled the burned lands. A staple in every major city in the world.
