The rafters shuddered with Seraphine's pursuit. The fog outside the open warehouse door gulped Rook down like a curtain closing. His laughter slithered through the mist, mocking and bright, and then it was gone. The blue knots above the dockhands pulsed tighter. Their lips fluttered uselessly, their eyes bulging with the effort of breathing debts they had never signed willingly.
I was not built for battle. I was built for ink, for counting, for the quiet arithmetic of trade and law. Yet the Ledger scalded against my palm, its pages flicking like tongues of fire, as if to say: you are built for this now.
It offered me a word.
Suggested Rite: The Small Candle. Cost: One truth spoken aloud.
The page glowed faintly. The knot in the rafters tugged harder. A dockhand went limp beside a crate of hemp, his thread dimming like a taper guttering in wind.
I licked lips dry as dust. A Rite? Already? Seraphine had warned me not to accept one without her. She was not here to stop me now.
The Ledger waited, patient as debt.
"What truth?" I whispered.
Any truth, the script replied across my skin. But not one you wished to tell.
I closed my eyes. Memory swam up uninvited—the hours spent copying letters Aurelius had never answered, the sermons in which his voice had filled every corner of me while mine had gone unheard, the envy that had soured into something darker. My stomach roiled.
The knot above pulsed again. Another dockhand's chest convulsed.
I bent my head and let the truth fall like a coin into a coffer.
"I wanted Father Aurelius to die," I said. My throat caught on it. "Not because of his faith. Because he ignored me."
The warehouse went still for a heartbeat, as though the air itself bowed to witness. The Ledger seared a mark into my palm: a single candle etched in fine lines, wax dripping three strokes. Pain bright, clean, irrevocable.
Light blossomed.
A tiny flame hovered above my hand, no larger than a taper, yet it cut the shadows like a knife. The blue threads blazed into clarity. The knot above the rafters hissed as if scalded. I raised the candle high, and its glow spread through the threads, loosening them, burning them away strand by strand.
The dockhands gasped. The sound was ragged, desperate, but it was air. Permission returned. One by one they convulsed into breath, tears streaming from red-rimmed eyes.
I staggered, the candle still burning in my palm. The cost sat heavy in my chest. I had spoken it aloud, the thing I had never meant anyone to hear. My voice still shook with the weight of it.
The warehouse echoed with coughing, with sobbing, with Watchmen rushing in to haul bodies toward fresher air. The ledger's flame guttered but held. I closed my hand around it, and it sank into my skin, leaving only the sigil of wax and wick burned faintly in my palm.
Seraphine dropped from the rafters, boots striking the boards with a report like a judge's gavel. Her hair clung damp against her cheek, her coat torn at one sleeve. The iron arm hissed, its pistons sighing as she steadied herself.
"You took a Rite," she said flatly.
"I did," I admitted.
"What truth did you pay?"
The question lanced. My tongue tried to retreat behind silence. My face must have betrayed me, because her gaze narrowed.
"Never mind," she said at last. "If you paid, you paid. The candle's yours now. Guard it. Feed it only when the dark demands."
She surveyed the coughing dockhands, then the rafters where Rook had vanished. Her jaw set hard. "The Thespian won't stop. Masks never do. He'll strike again."
"And the Ledger?" I asked.
The book stirred, pages twitching, as though insulted not to answer itself. A line wrote in quick, efficient hand:
New Rite Acquired: The Small Candle.
Cost Paid: Truth revealed.
Warning: Further truths may destabilize clerk.
Seraphine saw my face pale. "What does it say?"
"That I should ration honesty," I said.
For the first time since I'd met her, Seraphine gave a small, humorless laugh. "If that's the price, you'll bankrupt yourself before long."
She strode toward the open door, the fog curling like smoke around her silhouette. "Come. We'll have questions for the Maskmaker."
The Watch Captain shouted something about reports and signatures. Seraphine ignored him. I followed, the Ledger heavy against my ribs, the faint warmth of the candle sigil still searing my palm.
Ebonbridge's fog swallowed us whole. Somewhere beyond, Casimir Rook laughed again—high, mocking, delighted. A curtain rising on a play only he knew the script of.
And my candle flickered inside me, its flame small, stubborn, ready to burn secrets for light.
—End of Chapter 3—