I turned around.
It took me longer without Hakan — I didn't know these streets the way he did, and I took two wrong turns before I found the narrow building squeezed between the tanner and the dye house. But I found it. Stubbornness had always been a more reliable compass than sense.
I could feel Hakan before I could see him — that pull through the bond, that particular weight of his presence, which had always felt like standing near a low fire and now felt like standing nearsomething larger and less contained. The shadows were there too, just beneath it, breathing.
I climbed the stairs with Melo at my heels. She hadn't spoken again since the clearing — had simply padded beside me through the dark streets in silence, as though the act of speaking had cost her something she wasn't ready to spend again. But she stayed close. Closer than she'd ever walked before, her flank brushing my leg with every step, and I understood without needing words that something had changed between us. Something that couldn't be unchanged.
I pushed the door open without knocking.
Hakan was on his feet before the door finished moving. His face was wrecked — blood still streaked across his jaw, eyes red-rimmed, the wound on his shoulder rebound with a fresh strip of cloth that wasn't the one I'd tied in the clearing. Behind him, Elif stood at the small kitchen counter, kettle in hand, her face drawn and exhausted. She'd been making tea. Of course she had. Some women prayed in a crisis. Elif boiled water.
For one second Hakan's expression cracked open — relief so raw it looked like pain.
Then his jaw set.
"You were supposed to go to the palace." He crossed the room in three strides, stopping just short of me, his hands clenching at his sides. "That was the plan. That was what we agreed. You go to your father, you tell him what happened, you send word so I know you're safe. Instead you're here. In the border district. In the dark."
"I went halfway. I couldn't —"
"Halfway." The word came out like he was chewing glass. "You went halfway to the only person in this realm who can protect you, and then you turned around and walked back through streets where twelve men just tried to drag you into the dark."
Melo growled. Low, deliberate. Hakan's eyes dropped to her.
"She was with me," Melo said. "As she has been every day of her life."
Hakan stared at the fox. The speaking thing was clearly still not something his brain had caught up with.
"I couldn't face my father without understanding what happened first," I said. "He's going to ask questions I don't have answers to. I needed to know what you know."
"So you risked your life for context."
"I risked a walk through streets I've navigated before with a guardian who just proved she can kill anything that comes near me." I held his gaze. "I'm not stupid, Hakan. I made a choice."
From the kitchen, the sound of cups being set on the table. Elif moved between us with the quiet habit of a woman who had survived enough terrible nights to know that tea was the only thing she could control.
"Both of you sit down," she said. Not a suggestion. She poured three cups without waiting for an answer. "Hakan, she's here. She's safe. You can shout about it tomorrow."
Melo padded past us to the window. She looked at Elif, then at me, then jumped up onto the sill and turned her back on the room — facing outward, ears swiveling, turquoise eyes scanning the dark street below. Standing watch. Giving us the room without leaving it.
Hakan didn't sit. He stood in the middle of the room with his fists at his sides, the shadows at his feet restless and churning.
"At dawn," he said. His voice had gone quiet, which was worse than the shouting. "You go back. First light. No detours."
"At dawn," I agreed.
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then something in his shoulders released — not all the tension, not even most of it, but enough that he pulled out a chair and sat and wrapped his hands around the cup Elif had placed in front of him. He didn't drink. Just held it.
Elif sat across from us. Her own hands wrapped around her cup — not drinking either. Anchoring herself.
"Tell me," I said to Hakan. "Whatever you learned tonight."
He stared into the tea. His jaw worked. I watched him try to find the beginning and fail twice before he spoke.
"Milan isn't my father." He said it flat. Stripped of everything. "He never was. My mother lied. They both lied, for two hundred years."
I waited.
"My real father is Erlik Han. God of the Underworld. Lord of Kara Cehennem."
