Frankie had never trusted celebrations.
Not because she didn't like noise—she did, sometimes—but because noise made people careless. Careless people talked too loudly, showed off too much, and forgot who was watching.
Novara Prime was still loud anyway.
Even a day after the angels had turned the sky into a ceiling of white-gold eyes, the city insisted on acting normal. Temple bells rang on schedule. Vendors hawked bread and watered wine like they hadn't spent the evening before gripping their children and staring upward. Couriers with Hermes marks leapt between roofs, showing off for anyone who looked up.
The city had decided the danger belonged outside the walls.
Frankie walked through the lower district with her hood down and her face set into something forgettable. She carried a small sack of grain in one hand, a wrapped bundle of salted fish in the other. Her steps were measured. Human. Ordinary.
That was the part she had to keep practicing.
If she let herself move the way her body wanted, the city would feel it. Not with eyes, maybe, but with instinct. People noticed what didn't fit. A girl who crossed an alley too quickly. A girl who never stumbled. A girl who turned corners like she could see through walls.
So Frankie forced herself to be slightly tired.
Slightly slow.
Slightly irritated that her arms ached.
When she reached the apartment building, the stairwell smelled like damp stone and cooking oil. Someone above was frying onions. Someone below was arguing in a hoarse voice about rent. A baby cried. Life, stacked on top of life, pretending it wasn't balanced on a knife.
Frankie climbed to the second floor and paused outside their door.
Inside she could hear Sofia laughing.
A real laugh.
It softened something in Frankie's chest before she could stop it.
She opened the door and stepped into the single-room apartment.
The "little gang" was already there, as if they'd never left.
Luca sat on the edge of the table with his new spear resting across his knees, the butt planted carefully on the floor so it didn't gouge the stone. Tomas was on the floor with his back against the wall, boots off, rubbing at the bandage on his ankle like it offended him personally. Yara leaned in the window alcove with her arms folded, watching the street below as if she could intimidate the city into behaving. Marco stood near the far corner like a quiet shadow, cane held loosely in one hand—more habit than need now—and his eyes tracking Sofia's movements with a calm that never fully left him.
Rafe, somehow, had taken Frankie's only decent chair.
Sofia was in the middle of them, wrapped in the oversized fortress jacket like it was a royal cloak, sitting cross-legged on the mattress with all the authority of a tiny queen.
When Frankie walked in, Sofia's head snapped up.
"You're late!" she accused, like Frankie had broken a sacred oath.
"I brought food," Frankie said, lifting the sack.
Sofia's eyes narrowed. "That doesn't excuse it."
Tomas laughed. "She's got you trained."
Frankie set the food down and bent to adjust the jacket around Sofia's shoulders. The sleeves still covered her hands. The collar still reached her chin. Sofia looked ridiculous and safe at the same time.
Frankie preferred safe.
Rafe leaned back in the chair and grinned at Luca. "Tell her again," he said. "Go on. Say it like you said it down at the yard."
Luca's mouth tightened. "I'm not saying it again."
"Coward," Rafe replied happily. "Fine. I'll say it. The God of War himself looked at our Luca and said—"
"Rafe," Yara warned.
Rafe lifted his hands in surrender but didn't stop smiling. "Alright. Alright. No blasphemy. No theatre. But I'm telling you, the whole district's already talking. They're calling him 'the spear boy.'"
"It's one spear," Luca muttered.
Sofia leaned forward, eyes bright. "Show me! Again!"
Luca glanced at Frankie instinctively, like he was asking permission to let Sofia get too close to something sacred.
Frankie didn't answer with words. She just nodded once.
Luca exhaled and lifted the spear slightly so Sofia could see it properly.
It wasn't like the cheap poles the auxiliary practiced with. This thing felt… older. Not in appearance—its metal was dark and clean, the shaft reinforced, the head shaped with vicious simplicity—but in weight. In presence. Like it belonged to a story people told around fires.
Sofia reached out carefully, as if it might bite. Her fingers brushed the shaft.
"It's cold," she whispered.
"It's a spear," Tomas said.
"It's a god spear," Sofia corrected, deadly serious.
Marco's mouth twitched faintly, almost a smile. "She's not wrong."
Rafe leaned forward. "And Luca's not just got a spear now. He's got a blessing. Proper one."
Frankie watched Luca's face at that.
The blessing had changed him, but not in the way most people hoped. It hadn't made him arrogant. It hadn't made him loud. It had made him… settled. Like something inside his bones had aligned.
It was still dangerous.
Power always was.
Sofia looked up at Frankie. "Did the angels come because of the games?"
Frankie's body went still before her mind could decide if it wanted to be.
Luca answered first, gentle. "No. They didn't attack. They just watched."
"Why?" Sofia demanded.
Tomas shrugged. "Because they're creeps."
Yara's gaze stayed on the window. "Because they wanted to remind the city it isn't untouchable."
Sofia frowned as if the idea offended her personally. "But Ares was there."
Rafe chuckled. "Ares was there, Dolus was there, half the priests were shaking in their boots and still the angels didn't care. That's what's got everyone sweating."
Sofia leaned closer to Frankie. "Did you feel scared?"
Frankie looked down at her sister's face.
Those wide eyes.
That stubborn mouth.
This was why Frankie didn't allow herself softness.
Because Sofia made her want it.
"I felt…" Frankie chose the safest truth. "…angry."
Sofia blinked. "Why?"
"Because they looked at us like we weren't worth fighting," Frankie said quietly.
Marco's fingers tightened on his cane for a heartbeat, then loosened.
Luca's jaw set.
Even Rafe stopped smiling for half a second.
Sofia nodded like she understood something too big for her age. Then she asked, "Do you think they'll come back?"
Frankie didn't answer.
Because she didn't want to lie to Sofia.
And the truth sat in Frankie's chest like a stone.
They will.
Tomas cleared his throat, trying to break the mood. "So. Since we're all sitting here like respectable citizens, I'm gonna ask the question."
Rafe immediately perked up. "Finally."
Tomas pointed between Frankie, Luca, and Marco. "Are we going back out or what? Because my coin purse is crying."
"Not yet," Frankie said.
Rafe scoffed. "Not yet? The city's jittery, yeah, but that's exactly when the markets pay more. Fear makes people pay."
"And fear makes people sloppy," Frankie replied.
Rafe tilted his head. "You've been sloppy lately?"
Frankie didn't rise to it. She just looked at him until the grin on his face thinned slightly.
Luca spoke up, calm but firm. "We wait. Until the gods leave. Until the Academy stops watching everyone like livestock. Until the patrols settle."
Rafe threw his hands up. "Great. So we starve politely."
"We're not starving," Yara said, flat.
Rafe pointed at Tomas. "He's emotionally starving."
Tomas huffed. "I'm starving for a bed that doesn't smell like feet."
Sofia giggled.
The sound cut through the tension like a knife through rope.
Frankie breathed again.
Marco moved closer to the mattress without anyone noticing him do it. He sat on the floor near Sofia's feet, as if positioning himself between her and anything bad that might come through the door.
Sofia reached out and patted his hair like he was a loyal dog.
"Uncle Marco," she declared.
Marco went very still.
Frankie's heart gave a strange, tight beat.
Marco looked up at Frankie, something like confusion in his eyes. Not fear. Not shame.
Just… not knowing what to do with being named.
Frankie held his gaze a moment longer than necessary, then looked away first.
"We'll do classes," she said, more to herself than anyone. "We'll let the noise die down."
Rafe leaned forward. "Noise doesn't die down in this city. It just changes its mouth."
Frankie almost smiled at that.
Almost.
Outside the thin window, the lower district carried on. People shouted. Doors slammed. A cart rattled over uneven stone. Somewhere nearby, a drunk man sang a hymn to Athena wildly off-key.
Normal.
And yet…
Frankie's attention drifted to the corner of the room where the wall met the floor.
A small crack in the stone.
Nothing special.
But she found herself listening anyway.
Not for rats.
Not for thieves.
For the absence between noises.
For the spaces where sound should have been and wasn't.
She told herself it was nothing.
Just nerves after the sky.
Just a city settling back into its habits.
Still, when Sofia yawned and curled into the jacket again, Frankie went to the door and checked the lock twice.
Rafe noticed.
"Paranoid?" he teased.
Frankie didn't look at him. "Alive."
Luca stood, adjusting his grip on the spear like it was now part of his body. "We'll go," he said quietly to Frankie. "Let her sleep."
Frankie nodded. "Tomorrow."
Tomas stretched and groaned dramatically. "Tomorrow we pretend we're students and not idiots who keep walking into death zones."
Yara slipped past Frankie with a soft touch to her elbow—barely there, but real. "Goodnight," she said.
Rafe lingered at the doorway, eyes flicking once more to Sofia, then to Frankie. "You know where to find me when you change your mind," he said. Then, softer, almost sincere: "And… good work, by the way. Keeping your head."
Frankie watched him leave without replying.
When the door shut, the apartment felt smaller and quieter, like the city had finally released its grip on them for a moment.
Sofia was already asleep.
Frankie sat on the floor beside the mattress, back against the wall, and let her eyes close halfway.
Calm before the storm.
That was what people called it.
Frankie had never liked that phrase.
Storms didn't announce themselves.
They leaked in.
One drop at a time.
And somewhere in the lower district, out past the laughter and the temple bells and the forced normality, Frankie could feel the city holding its breath—waiting to see what it could get away with not noticing.
She didn't know it yet.
But the first missing name had already been spoken on the street.
And nobody had cared.