What They Offer
The offer arrived sealed in silk.
Not parchment. Not wax. Silk—dark, fine-spun, soft enough to feel indulgent between Iria's fingers. It was delivered to her door just before the night bells, by a courier who did not give his name and did not linger.
She didn't need to open it to feel the want.
It pressed against her senses like a held note, careful and composed. Not desperation. Not hope.
Confidence.
Iria sat at the small table in her rooms, the fabric pooled before her like spilled shadow. For a long moment, she only stared.
"They're good," Kael said from the doorway.
She hadn't heard him arrive. That alone told her how tightly wound she'd become.
"They shouldn't know where I live," she said.
"They know where everyone lives," he replied. "That's part of the offer."
She snorted softly. "Of course it is."
Blake had insisted on the room being checked twice before Kael was allowed inside. Lumi had insisted Iria not read the letter alone. In the end, they compromised—Blake waited in the hall, Lumi across the room, silent but attentive.
Iria broke the seal.
Inside was a single page, the ink pale and deliberate.
We recognize the burden of awareness.
We offer relief.
Her stomach tightened.
The words did not shout. They did not beg. They simply existed, assured of their own reasonableness.
The letter continued:
Your insight is rare. Valuable. We propose a position within the Resource Council—advisory only. No authority. No obligation beyond consultation.
You would not be asked to decide. Only to inform.
Iria's hands shook.
The want bloomed around the words—subtle, persuasive. A promise of quiet. Of distance. Of laying the weight down without abandoning it entirely.
She felt Lumi's gaze on her.
"They're offering you shelter," Lumi said softly. "Not safety."
Kael leaned against the wall, jaw tight. "They're offering to absorb your discomfort so you'll stop disrupting theirs."
Iria read the final line.
You need not stand alone anymore.
The room felt smaller.
"I don't want to," Iria said, voice barely audible. "I don't want to be special. I don't want to hear this forever."
Lumi crossed the room and knelt beside her chair. "Of course you don't."
Blake spoke from the doorway. "That's why they chose you."
Silence fell, heavy and intimate.
Iria folded the silk letter carefully. "If I say yes," she said, "the want would soften."
"Probably," Lumi admitted.
"And if I say no?"
"It will get louder," Kael said. "They'll frame it as stubbornness. Ingratitude."
Iria laughed weakly. "They're very polite tyrants."
"They don't see themselves that way," Lumi said. "That's what makes them dangerous."
Iria stood abruptly, pacing. The room felt too full—of eyes, of expectation, of futures being quietly arranged without her consent.
"What if I take it," she said suddenly. "Not to help them. To watch them."
Kael straightened. "You'd be inside."
"Yes," she said. "Close enough to hear what they really want."
Blake frowned. "And what would it cost you?"
Iria stopped pacing. She looked at the silk in her hands, at how easy it would be to accept a role that asked so little and promised so much relief.
"I don't know yet," she said honestly. "But doing nothing costs us everything."
Lumi rose slowly. Her expression was unreadable—not approval, not warning.
"Then if you go," she said, "you go with your eyes open. And you do not let them turn your listening into obedience."
Iria nodded, throat tight.
Outside, the city hummed with new agreements, new comforts, new dependencies forming quietly in the open night.
Iria folded the silk and slid it back into its envelope.
"They want me to stop standing in the way," she said.
Kael met her gaze. "And will you?"
Iria's answer came without hesitation.
"No," she said. "I'll stand closer."