The ball was a disaster.
Three missing sugar golems, four broken swan sculptures, and a nobleman loudly proclaiming someone had stolen his left shoe and the wine from his goblet.
But Officer Elias—no, Inspector Elias now (not that anyone ever called him that)—had only one thought:
Her.
She'd looked back.
For the briefest of moments, beneath the golden arch of candied roses, their eyes had collided. And something ancient and rusted creaked open behind his ribs.
It wasn't her face. No. Her face was leaner now, harder, marked by hunger, shadowed by something that wasn't there before. She wasn't in silks, armor, or matching shoes. She wasn't who she once was. She was somebody else altogether.
But those eyes—
Those eyes he knew. He had seen them a thousand times, in places and ways that didn't make sense.
In paintings no one could remember painting.
In dreams where he'd awoken, clutching the sheets, a name on his lips that he could never speak.
When she turned to flee, part of him had wanted to cry out, Don't.
But he hadn't.
He'd let her escape. Again.
The brass buttons of his coat clicked as he turned into the alleyway behind the gala grounds. Nobles swarmed past him, draped in perfume, oblivious to the chaos that had unfolded.
No one had seen the girl the way he had.
No one else's memory pricked with recognition, sharp and unrelenting.
Elias dropped to his knees where she had hesitated. His fingers brushed the grass, and something small, sharp, and glittering caught the light.
A hairpin.
Ruby-encrusted, shaped like a flaming cake. Horrible. Costly.
Familiar.
His hand closed around it, then—
A flash.
A memory that wasn't his.
A library of mirrors. A swan. A girl standing in flames, wings lost. Whipped cream and sorrow swirling in the air. And a name.
Mochi.
He gasped, his breath catching in his throat, chest tight.
His knees sank into the dirt.
And then, in that terrible, overwhelming moment, everything returned.
Not all at once. But enough.
The princess in the cake vault. The swan in the cloak. The girl who died.
The girl who kept dying.
Unless…
Unless he found her again.
Unless he could save her this time.
He stood, the hairpin still gripped in his fist, like a promise.
Inspector Elias of the Crown Guard, by all rights, had a report to file. No doubt about it.
But Elias—the boy who once walked with her through storms, sword battles, and magical dessert tournaments?
He had a thief to catch.
And this time, he wouldn't let her go.