Irrelevant.
“You will not be punished,” I say, turning just enough for the statement to carry beyond us, ensuring it is heard not as a private decision but as a public one. I pause just long enough for it to settle before continuing more clearly. “She is under my protection.”
The effect is immediate—not agreement, but acceptance, because to challenge it now would be to challenge everything that has just been established, and no one here is willing to risk that.
She stands very still, as though waiting for something to fracture.
It does not.
“Go,” I tell her, and when she hesitates, I add, “Now.”
She nods, turning and moving back into the gathering, her form dissolving once more into shadow and motion, though not entirely—not to me.
Maltos steps beside me, close enough that the proximity is deliberate. “Interesting,” he says.
“Efficient.”
“You spared her.”
A pause.
“She touched you.”
The words are soft, but precise.
“Yes.”
“And you allowed it.”
“I adapted.”
Silence stretches between us, filled with calculation rather than emptiness.
“You’re changing,” he says.
I turn just enough to meet his gaze. “No,” I reply. “I’m refining.”
He studies me for a moment longer. “We’ll see.”
He steps away, and the gathering resumes around us, the moment already being reshaped into something useful, something that will endure beyond tonight.
But my attention does not return to the politics of the room.
It follows her.
Through movement. Through shadow. Through the illusion she rebuilds around herself.
Because the expression she held when she stopped me does not fit any pattern I recognize, and until it does, I will not look away.
7
LYRIA
The gardens smell like wet stone and crushed leaves, like something trying very hard to remain alive under constant supervision, and I notice it immediately—not because the scent itself is unusual, since this place is always damp, always curated, always just slightly too perfect, but because I am noticing everything now with a kind of sharp, defensive clarity that wasn’t there before. The air presses differently against my skin, the sound of water trickling through the irrigation channels feels louder than it should, and even the faint hum of the estate’s shielding systems seems to vibrate closer to my bones, as though my senses have been forced into a heightened state I cannot turn off.
Alive. That’s the word that keeps circling in my head, unwanted and insistent, because I am alive, and I should not be.
My hands tremble slightly as I kneel in the soil, fingers pressing into the dark, rich earth at the base of a flowering vine that I have pruned a hundred times before, the leaves smooth beneath my fingertips, cool with residual moisture, releasing a faint green scent—clean, almost sweet—when I pinch away a dead tendril. This should feel normal. It doesn’t.
