The Tower's walls breathe with wards. At night they sound like bees trapped in amber, a low, ceaseless hum that sets my teeth on edge. I last three more breaths, then I rise.
The corridor outside my chamber is empty but watchful. The sconces burn with smokeless witchlight; the shadows they cast try, feebly, to behave like ordinary darkness. Mine ignore them. They gather at my heels as I pass, a court in miniature.
At the gate, two Tower guards bristle, hands hovering at their hilts. One opens his mouth—orders, warnings, a script. I let my aura push like the tide: gentle, inevitable.
"I'll walk," I say.
They look at me, then at each other, then at the faint ring of frost blooming on the iron bars where my shadow licks the metal. They decide, wisely, that tonight is not the hill they want to die on. The portcullis lifts. The city exhales.
Bastion at night is a creature with a thousand eyes.
Lanterns swing above cobbled streets, painting warm ellipses on stone still holding the day's heat. Banners hang slack from upper windows. Perfume and woodsmoke twine with the sharper smells of tanneries and horse and hot oil. Stalls remain open along the lower market: skewers of glazed meat spitting fat into the flames, copper kettles steaming with spice-wine, a tray of candied orange peels glittering like amber shards. A fiddler saws out a fast tune for a cluster of children chalking circles on the pavement. Somewhere, a drunk laughs like a door creaking.
Whispers travel faster than feet.
"Her—"
"The Abyssal one—"
"Don't look, don't—"
"She swallowed the circle—gods preserve us—"
"No, fools, this is good—Bastion needs a monster of its own—"
They part as I walk, not dramatically, not like I am royalty and they peasants. They part the way birds part ahead of a stormfront. Some bow their heads without knowing why. A butcher with hands like hams crosses himself and tucks a charm into his apron. A woman selling candles holds my gaze for two steady heartbeats, then nods once: not fear, not worship—recognition. When I pass, her hands are shaking, but she lights an extra wick and sets it in the window.
I cross into the old quarter. Here the streets narrow and tilt; balconies crouch low over the lanes like eavesdropping old men. A river-scent threads the air—iron, wet stone, something green under the water. The lane opens onto a bridge of black stone arched like a cat's back. The river below moves slick and fast, a ribbon of ink stitched with torchlight.
I stop at the crown of the arch. The Tower looms behind me, a dark tooth cutting the moon. Ahead, Bastion sprawls: roofs like scales, alleys like veins, the night market a low constellation. The city is not beautiful. It is alive.
"You're not hiding very well."
The voice comes from the shadow under the bridge's nearest pillar. Male—warm, amused, not deferent. My shadows bristle. I turn.
He peels himself off the stone like he was always part of it: dark hair pushed back by the wind, that sort of handsome men get by choosing not to care about it. A knife rides his hip without announcing itself. His coat is road-beaten but clean, the cuffs patched by a careful hand. His eyes are a stormy gray that takes in everything and yields nothing. He folds his arms like a man who knows exactly how to move if he needs to.
"Most people," he says, stepping into the lantern's fringe, "spend the night after shattering a Tower trial behind three doors and a prayer. You," he gestures lazily to the city, "go for a stroll."
"Prayers don't interest me," I say.
"Mm. But devouring does."
He says it like a compliment and a threat at once. My shadows skirt his boots, curious. He doesn't flinch.
"If you wanted me dead," I say, "you'd be worse at announcing yourself."
He smiles at that—quick, reflexive, genuine. "Fair. Name's Cas. Short for things you don't need to know." He tips his head toward the Tower. "I watched your little exhibition. Half the city lit candles. The other half hid their knives. Which half are you feeding, Empress?"
The word lands between us with less sting than when Darius spoke it. Not reverent. Not mocking. Testing.
"That depends," I say, closing the last of the distance the night leaves between strangers. "Which half are you in?"
For a heartbeat we are an equation poised on the equals sign. There is no motion but the river and the candle in the window behind us guttering in the wind. Then he shifts—only a fraction—enough to set his weight, enough to tell me he knows how to fall and how to make someone else do it.
"The half that wants to see what you do next," he says, softer. "And the half that hates being bored."
A clatter snaps the night: a crate knocked over, a bottle breaking—small, wrong. Cas's head turns the same instant as mine. Three figures unstick from the mouth of an alley at the bridge's far end—hoods low, gauze masks, the soundless, predatory economy of men who mean to work in the dark. Their knives are neat, narrow, meant for going in quiet and coming out quick.
"Kael's dogs," Cas breathes without looking at me. "He works fast."
He does. Or someone wants me to think he does.
They fan wide, a shallow crescent: one up the rail, one middle, one low and fast along the parapet. My shadows lift like hackles. The first assassin's knife stutters in the lantern light—poison glints on the edge, a slick that swallows illumination.
"Walk," the middle one says, voice muffled. "Into the dark. Nice and easy."
I exhale. Their world narrows to the six feet in front of their faces. Mine expands.
"Go home," I say. "Tell whoever holds your leash to teach you the difference between fear and suicide."
They choose poorly.
The one on the parapet darts in, aiming for my ribs, quick and low, counting on the surprise of the angle. I pivot. Steel scrapes a button from my coat. My knee meets his wrist with a hop of cartilage. The knife jumps from his hand and spins once before my shadow catches it mid-fall. The dark lifts it like a hand offering back a toy.
He blinks at the impossibility. I give his knife back point-first.
It kisses the stone between his boots hard enough to stick quivering and pins the cuff of his trousers to the parapet. He yanks; the blade holds. His breath makes a frightened animal sound. He looks up and finds my eyes. He stops pulling.
Cas is already moving. The man on the rail drops down and meets him in a flash of steel. Their knives kiss—one, two, three—bright sparks in the dark. Cas fights like he speaks: a half-smile and no wasted words. He lets the other man commit, then steals the space, then punishes him for it. A quick twist, a shoulder check, an elbow to the jaw. The assassin staggers, teeth clicking together. Cas steps inside his reach and lays the flat of his blade under the man's chin—gentle, promising.
"Think how tired you'll be at the bottom of the river," he says conversationally. The assassin freezes.
The middle man sees, realizes his crescent is broken, and makes the only play left to someone paid more than he's worth: he lunges straight for me, a fast figure-eight feint at my throat, the true stroke for the seam under my ribs. Clever. On someone else.
I step into him. My left hand snaps to his wrist—not hard, not yet, just enough to ask the bones an honest question. My right lifts, palm out.
A curtain of shadow pours from my fingers. Not a wave, not the deep; a veil—thin, precise, cold. His blade meets it and slows as if the air had turned to honey. He has enough time for his eyes to widen. I flick my wrist, and the veil turns to wire.
His knife parts in the middle with a sound like ice cracking on a lake. The severed point clinks to the stone, then scoots toward the drain as if eager to leave. He makes the mistake of staring at it. I make use of the mistake—step through the dead space and tap him in the solar plexus with two fingers carrying more gravity than fingers should. He folds—gently, politely—onto his knees and forgets about breathing for a while.
The pinned one wrenches hard and tears his trouser cuff free, leaving the knife in the stone. He scrambles backward along the parapet, glancing left and right like alleys might sprout wings to save him. My shadow follows—no chase, just a reminder. He stops. His knife hand trembles.
Cas disarms his man with the sort of ease that makes enemies reconsider friendship. He kicks the fallen blade neatly into the river. The splash is a small applause.
We stand with three defeated men arranged by poor choices. My pulse is steady. The veil has already thinned back into honest night. The river goes about its business. A woman on the far bank has watched the whole thing while shelling peas on her stoop. Now she goes back to her bowl, dropping peas with a thoughtful rhythm.
"Run," I tell the assassins. My voice doesn't rise. "Tell your master what you saw. Use the right words."
"What words?" gasps the middle one, finding the memory of his lungs.
I lean in until they can count the faint red fissures under my skin.
"Not monster," I say. "Not witch. Empress."
The pinned man nods too fast. The one under Cas's blade swallows and tries not to nick himself. Cas glances at me, amused, then flicks the flat of his knife from the man's chin. "Go," he says. "Mind the current."
They go—staggering, limping, tripping over one another's urgency, bleeding pride in a thread behind them. When they vanish, the bridge remembers being a bridge.
Cas resheathes his blade. He leans his hip against the pillar again like the night is back to being pleasant.
"Efficient," he says. "Darius will hate that you let them live."
"Good," I say. "I wanted him to hear me with their lungs."
He huffs a laugh. "You're going to make a beautiful mess of this city."
The wind tugs at a loose strand of hair; I push it behind my ear. The gesture feels absurdly, annoyingly human. His eyes follow the motion and then flick to my mouth and away as if he hasn't done it. Heat pools—faint, not abyssal, not consuming—just an ember soaking up oxygen.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"A man who knows alleys you haven't learned yet," he says. "And names people don't write down. Also a man who's decided not to sell those names tonight." He tips his head, deciding something. "There's a place two streets over. Tea strong enough to wake the dead. Fried dough dusted in sugar. You look like you haven't eaten since you swallowed a thunderstorm."
"I'm not in the habit of accepting invitations from men who step out of pillars."
"I'm not in the habit of making them." He grins, small and real. "Consider it a professional courtesy. Your rival will set snares. I'd rather point you at the ones with teeth than watch you step on every string in the city."
I weigh him. The river repeats itself below, indifferent. The Tower is a dark fact at my back. The goddess's whisper still echoes in my bones: Fear is a seed. Feed it. Fear feeds on stories. Stories are told at tables.
"Tea," I say. "Show me."
He pushes off the pillar and falls into step beside me without quite walking at my shoulder—close enough to speak, far enough not to presume. We cross the bridge. My shadow stretches long across the stones and briefly swallows his. He feels it and doesn't shy. Points for that.
Two streets on, the market thins into a triangle of stalls, most shuttered, one still burning a stubborn lantern. The sign above it is an iron teapot with its spout dented and its handle taped. A woman with arms like oaks and a smile that could crack walnuts minds the brazier. She looks up when we approach, takes me in, takes Cas in, takes the night in.
"You're late," she says to him, as if this were an appointment. To me, without blinking: "You caused the bells."
"Briefly," I say.
She nods like she approves of causing bells and snags a clay cup with one hand, ladles black tea with the other. The steam smells of cardamom and something bitter that has opinions about the future. She drops a spiraled strip of fried dough onto a paper square and buries it in sugar so thoroughly it looks like a small winter.
"Eat," she orders. "And don't drip shadow on my brazier. It clogs the vents."
Cas leans his elbows on the counter, entirely at home. "Sera runs the only place in Bastion that doesn't pretend to be surprised," he says. "Also the only place the Tower won't raid for gossip because she scares them."
Sera snorts. "Tower's welcome to try if they bring cream." Her gaze returns to me, weighty but not unkind. "You're loud, girl. Not your mouth. Your being. That will buy you loyalty and knives. Choose which you want more, or you'll get the wrong one."
The tea is hot enough to teach patience. I sip anyway and feel it hit an emptiness I didn't admit was there. The fried dough fractures under my fingers; the sugar dusts my knuckles like frost. My shadows rise to lick a stray grain and, chastened by Sera's look, retreat.
"If I want both?" I ask.
Sera's smile shows a tooth missing from a long-ago unwise day. "Then you'd better make each afraid of disappointing you."
Cas watches me over his own cup, gray eyes amused, assessing. The wind nudges a strand of hair against my cheek again; this time he reaches—careful, telegraphed—and tucks it back, his knuckle glancing my skin. The touch is light. Electricity goes through me anyway. The shadows bristle, then settle, as if approving the tidiness.
"Better," he says softly. "You should be seen as you intend to be remembered."
There it is again—the quiet understanding of narratives, the way power lives not only in muscles and magic but in the eyes that carry your shape away. I file it beside other weapons.
I drain the cup. The tea leaves a scorch that isn't pain.
"Darius will send better men," Cas says, business returning. "Not tonight, maybe not even tomorrow. But he'll test your edges, then he'll send someone to cut along them. Houses will take sides. Some will kneel because they want to live under the biggest shadow. Some will smile while they count your steps, waiting to sell the last one."
"Good," I say. "Let them come. Let them count."
He smiles with half his mouth. "You're going to be terrible fun."
Sera flicks sugar at him. "Bring her back with the same number of holes she leaves with."
We leave the lantern's island and head back into the lanes. The night has shifted subtly: word spreads in ways you cannot measure by sound alone. The city looks at me with new eyes and remembers my name with new teeth.
At the bridge, I pause. The river talks to the stones in its old voice. The Tower glowers. Cas stops with me, hands in his coat pockets, gaze on the water like he's listening to a tune I can't hear.
"Why help me?" I ask.
He considers, then is honest. "Because watching you turn Bastion upside down from a safe distance would be entertaining, but standing where I can point to the first brick you throw will be a better story to tell." A beat. "And because I don't like the Kaels."
"Personal?"
"Professional." His smile is sharp. "Personal is ineffable, and you strike me as someone who collects ineffable things."
I let the silence be an answer, then start back toward the Tower. At the gate, the guards pretend they haven't been sweating about my return. One makes the sign against evil, discreetly. I catch his eye and hold it till he forgets what his hands are doing.
Cas stops outside the wardline. "No farther," he says. "I try not to set old spells gnawing at my ankles."
I nod. He turns to go. On impulse, I say, "Cas."
He glances back.
"When they ask you tomorrow whose leash you're on," I say, "tell them you're near the hand that holds it."
His grin is quick and feral. "As you say, Empress."
He slips into the night like a rumor.
Inside, the wards hum louder, offended by how easily I left and returned. My chamber is as I left it: a narrow bed, a table tattooed with knife scars from some previous occupant, the candle stub now a puddle of wax. I sit. The tea warms my stomach. The sugar clings to my fingers; my shadows lift it dutifully, leaving my skin clean.
I press my palm to my sternum. The hum answers, deep and content. The goddess's earlier whisper coils in me like a sleeping cat: Fear is a seed. Feed it, and it grows into worship… or war.
Tonight I fed both.
I lie back on the narrow bed and let the city breathe around me. The Tower wards try to sing me to sleep; my shadows compose a different lullaby. It smells like iron and rain and a bridge where the river keeps its counsel. When I close my eyes, my last thought is not of the Council, or even of Darius Kael.
It is of a hand tucking an errant strand of hair behind my ear, and the way the dark did not mind.
Tomorrow, they will come with better knives.
Tomorrow, I will show them better shadow.