(Lyn's POV)
The envelope sat on her vanity like a dare.
Lyn hadn't seen it when she first stumbled back from the Council. She'd been busy pretending not to shake, busy pretending Michael's calm was contagious, busy pretending kale could shield you from a room full of wolves. But now—late afternoon light slanting gold across her room—there it was. Small. Unsealed. Waiting.
She glanced at the open balcony doors, at the curtains billowing like nervous lungs. The wind chime out there sounded nearly right today, not the wrong note that had haunted her nights. Nearly. Her fingers hovered over the envelope.
"Just paper," she told herself. "Not a landmine. Probably."
She slid the photo out and the world lurched.
Two kids. A fountain catching sunlight in a wide stone bowl. The girl—braid, stubborn chin, the exact curve of Lyn's mouth when she refused to cry. The boy—same eyes as Michael, only unarmored. His laugh was mid-flight, head tipped back, hands thrown wide like someone had dared him to catch the sky.
On the fountain's base, someone had scratched words into the stone with a key or a coin: First and last catastrophe.
The back of the photo was worse. Ink had bled in the rain and dried into ugly honesty: You asked for a promise. He gave you two.
She read it three times, as if new words might appear between the old ones if she stared hard enough. Then she set the photo down carefully, like it might shatter if she breathed too loud.
"First and last catastrophe," she whispered.
Something warm and painful pressed behind her sternum. Memory wasn't a flood; it was a drip. She could almost feel it: a summer day, shoes too small, the prickly joy of shouting without being shushed, the taste of coinmetal on her tongue after biting a key to see if it was real. A boy's hand in hers when she'd clambered up the fountain's rim and declared, with the shameless arrogance of children, that she wanted a catastrophe of her own so she'd never be bored again.
Had she really said that?
"Idiot," she told her younger self, and the mirror didn't argue.
The door clicked softly. Michael's reflection appeared behind her—suit loosened, tie tucked into his pocket like he'd remembered to be human again.
His gaze landed on the vanity. The envelope. The photo.
"Where did that come from?" she asked, too fast.
He didn't answer at once. He crossed the room, picked up the envelope, set it down again without opening it. The air went cold dumb with things unsaid.
"Security's tightening," he said finally, which was an answer to something else. "We'll adjust your routes."
"My routes," she echoed, smiling without humor. "Do I get a leash?"
"Don't," he said very calmly.
She swallowed. "Then tell me. What promise did I ask for?"
His jaw flexed, once. "Two," he said, repeating the back of the photograph like a man forced to quote scripture. "Protection. And… memory."
"Memory?"
"If you forgot, I would remind you."
She waited. "And?"
His eyes didn't flinch. "And I will."
"Future tense," she said. "Noted."
He didn't ask how the envelope got here. He didn't ask who had left it. Maybe he didn't need to. Maybe wolves could smell each other.
When he left, Lyn sat very still until the door's latch whispered shut. Then she reached for her phone.
The new message was already there, as if the sender had been watching her fingers hover.
IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH, MEET ME WHERE YOU LAST CHOSE TO BREATHE. MIDNIGHT.
Where she last chose to breathe.
The river.
Her stomach tightened. The last time she'd been there, choice hadn't entered into it. Gravity had. Hands had.
The clock ticked through the afternoon like it was trying not to be suspicious. Servants knocked with tea. Rosa appeared with a portfolio and three pointed reminders about the optics of running away. Ethan checked the windows and pronounced them acceptable. Kai stood in the doorway like furniture that might arrest you. Daren dropped off the pink glitter drone ("Sparkle Wing," he whispered with scandalous pride) and a bag of contraband snacks like a fairy godmother who had discovered vending machines.
By nine, Lyn had brushed her hair three times, argued with her locket, and told the basil plant Ethan had left on her desk that she respected its commitment to photosynthesis.
By ten, she had decided not to go to the river. She told herself this very seriously while studying maps on her phone.
By eleven, she had changed into a hoodie, leggings, and sneakers, tied her hair into a braid, and slid the photo into her pocket like a passport.
She could have asked Michael to come. She could have told him about the message. But the words Ask Michael kept flashing like a hazard light behind her eyes, and she hated that some part of her—the part that had learned to distrust laundry rooms and group chats and whispering crowds—looked at the one person who said I will not change and whispered back, But you already did, didn't you?
She left a note anyway, because she wasn't cruel. Back soon. Do not declare war on the moon if I'm late. She drew a basil leaf to soften the blow.
Then she opened the balcony doors and stepped into the night.
The wind chime gave one clean, perfect sound.
"Don't jinx me," she told it, and climbed over the balustrade.
The drop to the service path below wasn't far, but far enough that she reconsidered her life choices mid-swing. Her sneakers hit gravel. She crouched, listening. The estate breathed. A guard coughed somewhere near the east lawn. Daren, blessed disaster that he was, whispered, "Kai, the drone wants to fly."
"The drone does not want anything," Kai said. "It is a tool."
"It longs for the sky," Daren insisted.
"Ground it."
Lyn grinned despite the knot in her stomach and slipped into the hedges.
Two minutes later, she was through the side gate, through the line of trees, and skimming along the service road that led toward the river. She kept to the darkest edges, stopping twice to lose the fear crawling up her spine. Every shadow was a hood; every gust of wind a hand.
At the third corner, she heard footsteps. Not hurried. Not stealthy. Measured. Like math.
"Stop," Michael said.
She did.
He didn't touch her when he caught up. He stood at her side like a line drawn where maps end. In the streetlamp's bruised light, his face looked cut from something the night couldn't file down.
"You left a note," he said.
"I did," she said. "I'm polite like that."
He exhaled, not quite a laugh. "It asked me not to declare war on the moon."
"Reasonable boundary," she said, heart punching against her ribs. "Are you here to stop me?"
"Yes," he said—then added, very softly, "and to walk you, if I fail."
Her throat hurt suddenly. "You won't fail," she said, fierce with the kind of faith you only deploy when you have to believe it to keep breathing.
His gaze dipped to her hands. "You're shaking."
"I'm very cold," she lied.
"You're wearing two hoodies."
"I'm very dramatic," she corrected, and he almost smiled.
They walked. Side by side. The city changed around them from quiet wealth to the bones of old industrial edges where the river made the air colder and the concrete slick. Lyn knew the path too well—past the corner store that sold noodles and mercy; past the bench whose slats had a splinter that loved elbows; past the puddle that never dried.
The river's voice gathered as they neared it. Water kept talking even when no one listened. Lights shimmered on the surface like coins thrown by people who didn't realize wishes had exchange rates.
On the path by the railing, the place where she had been pushed looked exactly the same.
Lyn stopped a few steps away. Her shoes felt far from her feet. Breathing was arithmetic. In. Out. Count. Again.
"You don't have to—" Michael began.
"I do," she said, because she could hear her other self talking from the past—stubborn chin, fountain laughter, catastrophes. "I need to remember, even if it hurts."
A shape peeled itself from the darker dark near the far lamppost and became a person.
The hood.
Every muscle in Lyn's body bristled, then went liquid.
Michael moved in front of her before instinct could finish forming. "Stop," he said to the figure, and it wasn't a word so much as a boundary stamped into the air.
The hooded figure stopped. Their hands were visible, gloved, open. Their voice, when it came, was clean as water over stone.
"She came," they said. "Good."
"State your name," Michael said.
"State the second promise," the figure replied.
Lyn stepped out from behind Michael before either man could block her again. Her legs felt like bridge cables in a storm; they held anyway.
"Talk to me," she said to the hood. "No riddles. No chimes. Use your face."
The figure hesitated, then lifted their hands to the edge of the hood.
They didn't pull it back.
Instead, they slid something out from inside the jacket—another photograph. Smaller than the fountain photo. More recent. Lyn, in her first world, behind a cafe counter, hair tucked under a cap, eyes tired and stubborn. A little smear of whipped cream on her wrist. The hooded figure held it between two fingers, almost tender.
"You were mine to protect once," they said. "Not by promise. By choice."
Lyn's mouth went dry. "Who are you?"
"You called me friend," they said. "On the days you remembered to call anyone anything at all."
Her heart lurched sideways. Arun? No—the shape wasn't right. Mr. Jamil? No—the voice too young. Mei Ling? She almost laughed. No. This voice had kindness corroded into edges; Mei Ling had never had the source. Lyn's mind shuffled through faces—the boy who hoarded the corner table in the university library, the night-bus seatmate who never asked questions, the coder who used to leave anonymous comments on her repositories pointing out one bug and three brilliances.
Memory didn't flood. It tilted.
"Why push me?" she asked, and heard the split in her voice—this world's girl and that world's orphan overlapping like badly printed pages. "Why the river?"
Michael's hand found the small of her back without her asking. She didn't move.
The hooded figure's smile—she knew it even with the lower half of the face hidden. She knew that crookedness. It had always been mistaken for cruelty, even when it only meant I know something you won't like and I'm going to say it anyway.
"I didn't push you," they said quietly. "I watched it happen."
Lyn staggered. Michael steadied her; she shrugged him off only because the ground needed to hurt for the moment to be real.
"You watched?" she whispered.
"I got there wrong," the figure said. "Late by almost enough. I thought I could grab the back of your hoodie. I misjudged. The river took you."
"You smiled," Lyn said, the image like a burn. "You smiled when I fell."
"I smiled when you breathed again," the figure said, and the words were a stone in a jar of lies, heavy enough to be heard. "You didn't, for a second. Then you did. And then you were gone to a world that could afford you."
Gone.
To a world that could afford her.
Lyn's breath turned into something that cut from the inside.
"Why the messages," Michael asked, voice clinical as a scalpel. "Why the letters. Why A.M."
The figure tipped their head. "To make you say it out loud."
"Say what," Michael said, like a man volunteering to be damned.
"The second promise," the figure replied. "Say it to her. Out loud."
"No," Michael said, soft as a shut door.
"Then I will," the figure said, and their voice gentled, aimed at Lyn. "He promised to protect you. He also promised that if you forgot—if you ever slipped between worlds or days or names—he would remind you… and let you go if you asked."
Lyn's heart hammered. "Let me go?"
"Not keep you by force," the figure said. "Not chain you to a life that wasn't yours. Not hold on until you bruised. He promised that if you didn't want him—if the you who woke up one day didn't remember wanting him—he would love you enough to step back."
Silence.
The river said shhhh like a very old librarian.
Lyn turned slowly to Michael.
He looked like rope pulled tight over a jaw. "I will not release you into danger," he said. "Not after what I've seen."
"That wasn't the promise," the figure said.
"The world changed."
"The promise didn't."
"I changed," Michael said, and Lyn flinched at the rawness in it.
"Exactly," the figure murmured.
Lyn's breath went wrong. Half rage, half something like grief. "You promised—what did you promise me, Michael?"
He didn't look away. He never did. "To protect you. To remind you who you were. And to obey your choice."
"And if I choose to leave?" The words came before she decided to say them. They hung there, unclaimed, shocking even to her. "If I choose to not love you? If I choose… not this?"
The night constricted.
Michael's hand lifted from her back like it had been burned.
"I would let you go," he said. Each word was a blade he'd agreed to swallow. "And I would still make the world safe for you from wherever I was allowed to stand."
Allowed. The word knocked the air out of Lyn's lungs. Because the truth was, she didn't want to leave. She didn't want to be told what to do by fear or by a shadow who loved riddles. She wanted a choice that belonged to her, not to curses, not to men with knives or money, not to a hooded guardian who arrived late and a tycoon who arrived with an army.
"Who are you?" she asked the figure again, because names weren't everything, but they were something you could hold.
"Someone who won't be allowed into the room where you choose," they said. A smile. Small. Hurt. "That's correct."
Michael took one step forward. The air cooled five degrees. "You will not contact her again without my permission."
The figure's laugh was soft and almost kind. "Your permission is not the currency here."
"It is, while she is under my protection."
"Wrong," Lyn said, surprising herself; surprising both of them. Her voice rang in the wind like a coin hitting a bell. "My permission is the currency."
Silence.
The figure bowed—properly this time, no mockery in the angle of it. "Then I ask yours."
"To do what?"
"To finish reminding," they said. "And then to stop."
Lyn's throat tightened. "Show me your face."
That startled them. A tiny shift. They recovered. "Not tonight."
"Then I don't give permission," Lyn said, because fear liked to wear her mouth but she wasn't lending it tonight. "If you want it, come as a person, not a chime."
The river applauded in quiet ripples.
For a moment, Lyn thought the figure would leave without another word. Instead, they stepped closer—not close enough to be a threat, close enough to be a truth—and held out a small metal charm on a thin chain. The charm was the same shape as the fountain's basin, a laugh of metal curved to catch light.
"You dropped this years ago," they said. "I kept it. To give back when you remembered your hands."
Lyn didn't move. "Set it on the bench."
They obeyed. The chain made a small, brave sound against the wood.
"Midnight is over," the figure said, and Lyn realized—astonished—that it was. Somewhere during the argument, the day had rolled over and begun again.
They stepped back into shadow.
And were gone.
Michael didn't move for a long time. Neither did Lyn. The charm glinted like a second moon in a smaller sky.
Finally, Lyn sat on the bench and picked it up. It was warm, as if it had been held for too long, and dented in a way that meant lived.
"I don't want to leave," she said into the hush, because the things that frightened you most loved silence. "I don't want to be left, either. I want to choose."
Michael sank onto the bench beside her. He didn't touch her. He didn't tell her which choice was clever. He didn't bribe the future with impossible promises.
"I know," he said, which was the most dangerous and most gentle thing he could have chosen.
They walked back when the sky had started turning grey. Kai met them with a face like a collapsed star. Daren hovered, holding a pastry as if sugar could do triage.
In the car, Lyn turned the charm over and over until the dent matched her thumb. The photo in her pocket pressed a rectangle into her thigh—the shape of proof. The locket at her throat felt heavier than before, like metal clouded with weather.
Back in her room, she set the charm beside the basil plant, which seemed perversely cheerful about surviving the night.
Then she lay on her bed and let morning take her eyes shut.
Somewhere in the house, the wind chime finally found the right note.
And held it.