The ledgers sit heavy in the hidden room beneath Stonefold's bones.
Lira flips through them by candlelight, her fingers careful, her face unreadable.
"You did well," she says without looking up.
It should feel like victory.
It doesn't.
---
I sit on the cracked stone bench, mask resting in my lap.
The gold has faded a little, the black scratched where blades found nothing else to bite.
I ran through them like a knife through silk.
Quick. Efficient.
But even now, in the safety of the Threadless halls, I can still feel it.
The way the man's wrist snapped like dry wood under my hands.
The way the last one stumbled away, blood in his eyes, begging without words.
The silence that followed me home—thick and accusing.
---
"You pulled the thread," Lira says, snapping a ledger shut. Dust blooms into the air between us.
"The House of Genn will feel this wound for months. Maybe years."
Her voice is approval shaped like a knife.
"But..." she says, and this time she looks up at me, eyes sharp enough to carve bone,
"...you hesitated."
---
I don't answer. Not because I don't have words.
But because all the words I could offer would sound like excuses.
I didn't hesitate when the blades came for me.
I hesitated after.
When the ledgers sat in my hands and I realized—
every name written there was tied to blood.
If I wanted to end the Genns, really end them, it wouldn't be enough to expose their lies.
I'd have to burn them out of Stonefold root and branch.
Men. Women. Families. Their bloodline. Their legacy.
All of it.
---
"You think you're different from them," Lira says quietly, reading the war behind my silence.
"You think you can fight a monster without getting its teeth in you."
She closes the last ledger. The candle guttered low.
"You can't."
---
Later, when I leave the Threadless hollow and step back into the living city, I carry two weights:
The ledgers.
And the question.
How far am I willing to go?
To burn a lie.
To kill a kingdom.
To lose myself for the chance to save what's left of others.
---
The mask feels heavier when I slide it back over my face.
Not protection.
Not a shield.
A promise.
One I don't know if I can keep.