Noah started counting.
He scratched small notches into the bone-lath beside the window, one for each sleep he could force out of his body. The false sun never moved, so he invented a night: shut the door, douse the lamp, lie still until the settlement's noise thinned and the anchor-lines in his head hummed a little lower. In the morning—his morning—he'd carve another mark. Seven marks sat there now, uneven as his breath.
The room smelled like resin and boiled cloth. The bone charm over the door clicked whenever the corridor exhaled. Abel had taken to oiling the spear in the same place at the same time; the ritual built a spine through the day Noah could lean against.
The anchor-lines—one to Abel, one to Linnea—sat at the base of Noah's skull like two steady cords he had to keep from tangling. Holding them cost more than he admitted. He dozed sitting up sometimes, eyes open, because letting the tension slip felt like dropping both buckets and flooding the floor.
Linnea came on the eighth mark.
She didn't knock. She ghosted in with a small twist of the charm and shut the door with two careful fingers. Incense clung to her clothes; tiredness clung to her eyes.
"Are you alone?" she asked, already seeing Abel by the window and answering herself. "Good. I'll be quick."
Noah straightened. "Please don't say 'good news.'"
"Not good," Linnea said. "Useful." She set a folded ribbon on the table—a habit with her, something for her hands. "He's calling a festival."
Noah's mouth tasted like old coins. "Of course he is."
"He wants you," she said. "Center of it. A 'showing.' He's bored. And…" She hesitated, the closest he'd seen her come to flinching. "I think he suspects about Cassian. Or at least that something slipped."
Abel's jaw set. "How soon?"
"Probably tomorrow from the looks of it, but I suspect he will sent guards to take you today," Linnea said dryly. "To make sure you stay and don't do anything stupid." She folded the ribbon again, smaller. "The Choir will process from the temple. Adults will be pulled to the square. The palace will be thin."
"The palace," Abel repeated. Not a question.
Linnea nodded. "If you want the basement, you will not get a cleaner window."
Noah sat back like the floor had tilted. "And the part where I'm center stage?"
"I can stall a little," she said. "Ceremony takes hands. Words take time. But not forever." Her eyes met his. "He intends to make a point of you."
"Eat me in front of a crowd," Noah said, very calmly, because panic needed something to sit on. "How festive."
"It's theater," Linnea said. "He thinks he needs an audience to make anything true."
"Good," Noah said, and meant it in the worst way. "Makes him slow."
They stood at the edge of the plan like men at the lip of cold water. Abel's attention moved over the room, the door, the window lattice, the spear. "I go," he said. "While he plays host."
"You go alone," Linnea said. "The inner halls are thin, but not empty."
"Kindled on the stairs," Noah added. He could see them in his head—bare feet, bone-dust faces, wrists emptily light where a red cord should have been. "We don't hurt them."
"We don't," Abel said.
"I can keep a distraction in the square," Linnea went on. "Enough to pull eyes. I'll try to draw the older children; the youngest will stay with the adults."
Noah rubbed at the notch-marks by the window until the skin of his finger went shiny. "Signal?"
"I'll change the lantern smoke," Linnea said. "Festival smoke is honey-gold. When you see blue in the air, he's on the move and I'm buying minutes. That's your start." She looked between them. "When the smoke goes white, I can't stall longer. By then Noah will be—" She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
"Busy," Noah supplied, too brightly. "Centerpiece." His heart beat once, hard enough to make the cords hum. "How long from blue to white?"
"As long as I can make a prayer last."
Noah nodded. He didn't ask for more. He didn't have more. "Alright," he said. "We split."
Abel's eyes found his. "If it's not clean, I abort."
"You don't abort," Noah said, and then made himself breathe and soften it. "You make the call. But if you have the stairs, take them. If you see the box, break it."
Abel's mouth tilted. "Elegant plan."
"Simple plans have fewer things to forget," Noah said.
Linnea tucked the ribbon away and stepped closer, lowering her voice until it was almost a rasp. "You need to plan for the worst case," she said. "I know you don't want to hurt the children—who in the hells would? But you can't forget what's been done to them. They're not just children anymore. They'll cut your throat with a smile if he asks them to. And if it comes to them or Abel, them or you…" Her eyes locked on Noah's. "You defend each other. No hesitation. Because saving one of them now, at the cost of you, means dooming every other soul still trapped here."
Noah swallowed. The cord at the base of his skull hummed, heavy with truth he didn't want to carry. He wanted to joke, to shove the words aside, but they rooted too deep.
"You're saying," he said finally, softer than he meant to, "that the only way to save them… might be to fight them."
Linnea's mouth tightened. "I'm saying don't let mercy blind you when the knives are already in their hands."
Abel shifted, silent but solid at Noah's side, and Noah let out a sharp breath, trying to ease the weight. "Great. Nothing like a pep talk about stabbing kids to get me motivated."
But the knot in his chest said he'd heard her.
She squeezed his fingers once and stepped back. "I'll start the preparations. Be where you're expected, Noah. If you run, he'll rip the settlement apart to make a different show."
"I'll be there," Noah said, and hated that it was the right answer.
When she'd gone, the room seemed to exhale, then hold its breath.
"Say you'll be careful," Abel said.
"No," Noah said. Then, quieter: "I'll be as careful as I can be while being bait."
Abel came to him, took his face in both hands for a beat, and kissed his forehead like a blessing. "Then we keep our word. We leave together."
"Or not at all," Noah said. "I remember."
He crossed to the chest under the window and pulled out the book he hated, and loved for what it offered. The cover was cracked, the spine tired; the pages smelled like dust, old oil, and a sweet note he hadn't found in the world outside the Womb. Fate magic didn't read like a list of instructions. It read like a person describing a road they were half-sure they'd taken.
Noah sat on the floor and opened to a place that had started to feel heavy when he brushed past it. The script sloped like it wanted to run. He dragged a knuckle under a line; the letters warmed and didn't quite move, the way a muscle flexed under skin.
Abel didn't hover. He checked knots. He made up two cloth bundles that didn't look like weapons. He sat, after, and watched the door with the ease of a man who could stay still and be useful.
Noah read, lips pressed together, eyes going back over the same three lines until they understood him and not the other way around. A thread lifted in his mind, thin as hair, bright as a fishbone. He tried to hold it between two thoughts without crushing it. It stung, then steadied. His nose prickled; he wiped at it and came away with the faintest smear of red.
"Don't overdo it," Abel said without looking over.
"I'm underdoing it," Noah said, voice thick. "I'm going to underdo it so hard I pass out."
A small smile ghosted over Abel's mouth. "Good."
Noah turned a page. Another. The book's weight pressed his knees. The hum of the anchors threaded the edges of his attention, steady as a pulse. In his mind's palm, the new thing brightened, took a shape he could keep without looking, then dimmed like it had learned his hand and decided not to bite. He didn't think the word that named it. He let it be a feeling, and let that be enough.
"When?" Abel asked, after a long quiet.
"When she paints the air blue," Noah said. "Until then, I smile, I stall, I pretend I'm easy to cut." He shut the book. The silence rang for a breath. "I'm scared."
"I know," Abel said.
"What if he already knows?" Noah asked. "What if he pulls me onstage and smiles and says, 'Tell them about your little stories, Noah,' and I open my mouth and nothing comes out but his voice?"
"Then I come," Abel said. "Or Linnea pulls the square apart. Or Cassian remembers at the worst possible time like he always does, and it's enough to knock a hand off a knife." He caught Noah's gaze. "We're not banking on miracles. I'm saying we're not alone."
Noah blew out a breath that shook a little. "Fine. I'll take 'not alone.'"
"You always do," Abel said.
They packed the book away. They put the spear where it belonged and the knife where it couldn't be seen and the blue threads at their wrists where no one would look for them. Noah ran a thumbnail across the seven marks and added a small eighth at the edge. It looked like a mouth.
The settlement outside was already changing its sound. A low practice chant rolled down the corridor—children finding the note that made them one voice. Someone dragged benches across stone. Someone argued, softly, about ribbons.
Noah stood and smoothed his robe. His hands wanted to shake; he stuffed them into his sleeves so they'd have somewhere to be. "Blue smoke," he said.
"Blue smoke," Abel echoed.
Noah reached up, almost without thinking, and touched the side of Abel's throat where the pulse lived. It jumped under his fingers. Abel covered his hand for a second, pressed it there, then let go.
"See you at the end of this," Noah said.
"At the end," Abel said.
Noah stepped to the door and paused, head tilted, listening to the new shape of the day. Linnea's voice would be steady; the Choir would be perfect; the Saint would be smiling the way a knife smiles when someone compliments its shine.
He lifted the latch.
The charm clicked once, precise as a metronome.
"Alright," Noah said under his breath. "Let's give him a show."