Hakan was waiting at the eastern gate. He looked me over once — a quick sweep that was half assessment, half something hungrier — and his mouth twitched.
"Convincing. Keep your head down and don't speak unless you have to. Your accent would give you away."
"I can manage."
"Can you?" But he was smiling, and when I fell into step beside him, his hand found mine beneath our cloaks. His fingers were warm. Steady. The same hands that had been between my thighs two hours ago in the music room, now guiding me through the streets like we were any ordinary couple heading home for dinner. The absurdity of my life had stopped surprising me, but then we got to the border district and the transition was shocking.
Not the poverty — I'd glimpsed enough of that through palace windows, in the servants' quarters, in the careful way Hakan never talked about where he came from. I thought I understood what it looked like.
I didn't understand anything.
The streets were narrow and winding, the buildings leaning against each other as though too exhausted to stand alone. The air was thick — forge smoke, tanning chemicals, something sour underneath that I didn't want to identify. Every surface was stained with the kind of grime that spoke of years, of generations, of a place the Light Court's golden maintenance crews never reached because nobody important lived here.
But it was the people that stopped me.
I had never seen so many walking with their eyes cast down. Not from respect — from fear. They moved quickly, shoulders hunched, flinching when white-robed Purity Inspectors passed. Near a butcher's stall, I watched two Inspectors examine a young woman's papers while she shook so badly she could barely hold them out.
"How long since your last cleansing?" one asked, his voice pleasant.
"Three months, sir."
"That's quite a while. Perhaps we should schedule another assessment. Your taint levels might have risen."
"Please, sir, I can't afford —"
"The Light Court provides for those who demonstrate proper loyalty."
The woman's face crumpled. She had children — I could see it in the way her hand moved instinctively to her belly, protective, even as the rest of her caved inward. Children who would now be examined and measured and found wanting, because in the Light Court, shadow-taint was inherited like eye color. A curse passed down through blood, never to be escaped.
I started toward her. My light was already gathering beneath my skin — I could feel it, hot and righteous, the fury of Gün Ata's daughter confronted with the machine her father had built.
Hakan's grip tightened on my hand. "Don't."
"She's terrified —"
"She's alive. If you interfere, if anyone recognizes you, you make it worse. For her and everyone she knows."
I hated that he was right. Hated standing three feet from a woman whose life was being dismantled and doing nothing, because nothing was all I could safely do.
This was my father's realm. These were my father's laws.
I'd sat through Yara's purification. I'd watched Selim drag that girl to the front of his class and pour light into her until shadow rose beneath her skin like smoke. I'd stood at my window and listened to a man scream while the crowd cheered.
But those had been ceremonies. Spectacles. Things I could almost convince myself were exceptions — extreme measures taken in extreme circumstances, not the everyday machinery of a system designed to grind people into dust.
This was the machinery. This was what it looked like when nobody was watching.
"This way," Hakan said quietly, and I followed him down a side alley with the woman's face burning in my memory.
Hakan's mother lived in a narrow, crooked building squeezed between a tanner's workshop and what smelled like a dye house. The stairs creaked beneath us, and Hakan knocked in a pattern — two quick, one slow, two quick — that spoke of a childhood spent behind locked doors.
An amber eye examined us through the gap. Then the door swung wide.
Elif was stunning. Not pretty — stunning, in the way of ancient queens and women who'd survived things that would have broken lesser people. High cheekbones, full lips, thick dark hairstreaked with silver that somehow made her look more striking rather than less. Something in how she held herself spoke of ages survived.
I understood immediately why Hakan had never tried to describe her. How could words capture this?
"You must be Ada." Her voice was low, touched with an accent I couldn't place. Her eyes swept over me — the servant's clothes, the ash-dulled cheeks, the way I clung to her son's hand — and whatever she saw made her expression tighten. "You look... different than I expected."
