Mireya woke to cold stone and iron weight.
Cuffs on her wrists. Chain to the wall. Damp air that tasted like dust and lye.
She didn't open her eyes.
Not yet.
First: breathe. Slow. Controlled. Like she was still in a corridor with velvet underfoot, not a hole under the palace.
Second: listen without looking like she was listening.
Water dripped somewhere—steady, patient. Rats scratched in the dark like they owned the place. Two sets of boots stood outside her door.
Bored rhythm.
Good. Bored guards didn't invent problems.
Mireya opened her eyes and sat up like she'd done this before.
The cell was small. One torch. One bucket. No bed. No window. The kind of room designed to make you forget time existed.
She tested the chain with a single tug.
Too thick to break. Too well-made to pick without tools.
Of course.
She checked herself fast.
Gloves: gone.
Knives: gone.
Hairpins: gone.
Gown: replaced with a rough shift that smelled like someone else's fear.
Treaty—
Her stomach tightened.
The thigh pocket wasn't there. The inner stitch she'd made herself. The flat seam meant to disappear under silk.
They'd changed her clothes.
If they'd found the treaty on her, she wouldn't be waking up. She'd be cooling.
So either someone missed it…
Or someone took it.
Neither option made her feel better.
Mireya rolled her shoulders once. Neck too. Quiet inventory. She didn't let herself linger on the garrote bruise from the jailer. That had been later. This was earlier. This was the first scramble.
She kept her face neutral and let her Silence settle close—tight to skin. Not a dome. Not a statement. Just enough that her breathing wouldn't betray her.
A key turned.
Metal scraped metal. The lock clicked open.
Two guards stepped in, spears angled down. Behind them: a man in a dark coat cut like court uniform without ornament.
He didn't stroll. He didn't posture. He crouched just out of reach, like he'd learned distance the hard way.
Eyes flat. No curiosity. Only duty.
"Name," he said.
Mireya smiled without warmth. "You first."
One guard shifted, offended. The interrogator didn't blink.
"Quiet Ministry asset," he said. "Seen leaving the treaty vault. Near the throne wing when the blast hit."
Mireya kept her face bored. "Your palace exploded. That doesn't make me responsible."
The interrogator tipped a small pouch and let a vial roll into his palm—weak tea-colored liquid.
Her ward-neutralizer.
Mireya didn't react. Her stomach still sank.
So they'd searched her.
Not thoroughly enough to find what mattered… or they'd found it and were playing a different game.
He asked, "Where is the Gilded Treaty?"
Mireya leaned back against stone like she had all night. "If I say I don't know, will you believe me?"
"No."
"Then you don't need my answer," she said.
His gaze sharpened. "The Crown Prince was nearly killed."
Mireya let the words hang. Let him own them. Let him feel important for saying them.
"That's what you want this to be about," she said lightly.
The interrogator's nostrils flared—small tell. Not anger. A narrative tightening into place. He'd already chosen his ending. Now he just needed a villain that fit.
He stood. "You will tell me where it is."
Mireya shrugged as much as the chain allowed. "Or you'll execute me before sunrise. Efficient."
One guard glanced at the other. The word execute always made people feel useful.
The interrogator turned to leave. "Keep her alive. I want her coherent."
Mireya called after him, voice calm. "Tell the Prince I'm honored he's thinking of me."
He paused—just long enough.
Then he left without a word.
Door shut. Keys. Footsteps fading.
Mireya waited until the corridor returned to bored breathing. She listened to the guards settle back into their rhythms. One shifted his weight. The other coughed once, then tried to pretend he hadn't.
Only when the boredom returned did Mireya let herself exhale.
Just once.
And her vision tilted.
Torchlight blurred.
Stone walls vanished.
She was looking up at a canopy of leaves—green and gold—moving against bright sky.
Mireya blinked hard.
Dungeon.
Blink.
Forest canopy.
Blink.
Dungeon.
Her throat went tight.
Not hallucination. Too crisp. Wrong angle. Wrong air. She could feel the difference—sun warmth on skin that wasn't hers, the faint bite of wind that didn't reach this cell.
Then pain bloomed in her shoulder—sharp, deep, like a tear in muscle.
Mireya froze.
Her shoulder was fine.
She rolled it once. No matching injury. No bruise. No stiffness.
But the pain remained.
Borrowed.
Mireya pressed her palm hard into her thigh to keep her body from reacting. She wouldn't gasp. She wouldn't give the guards a reason to come in and check if she was "coherent."
She closed her eyes again.
Forest.
Closer now. A different angle.
A broad shoulder moved into view—rough cloth, leather strap across a chest like a harness. A large hand lifted—scarred knuckles, dirt under nails. The hand flexed as if testing an injury.
And pain spiked in Mireya's shoulder again.
So that was the channel.
Sight and pain.
Not sound.
Good. Rules were leverage.
She forced herself to stay calm and observe.
If this was a trick, it was a bad one. Too strange. Too specific. Too costly to the mind.
She watched the hand. Watched the way it moved—efficient, practiced. Not court. Not noble.
A hunter's hand.
Her pulse stayed steady because she made it.
She shifted her focus past the hand, past the shoulder strap.
To the wrist.
There.
A brand burned into skin—precise, ugly, half-healed.
Mireya's breath stopped.
She'd seen that symbol before.
Not on flesh.
On paper.
A memory flashed—sharp and unwanted.
A Quiet Ministry ledger. Thick, gray parchment. A stamp pressed into ink: the same mark, clean and official. Categories written beside it in neat lines. Retrieved.Pending.Noncompliant. Names reduced to columns.
A clerk's voice in her head: "Assets are not people, Mireya. People are liabilities."
Mireya opened her eyes to the dungeon so fast the torchlight stung.
Iron cuffs. Torch hiss. Drip of water.
Her heart stayed steady because she forced it to.
But her mind had already moved.
Whoever that man was—
whoever she was seeing through—
he was connected to the Ministry whether he knew it or not.
Which meant the Ministry hadn't just lost her.
They'd planted hooks in other lives too.
Mireya stared at her cuffed hands and did the only thing she could do with rules: she tested them.
She let her eyelids lower, slow, like she was tired.
Forest.
She held it for a beat longer this time. Focused on the wrist brand, the angle of it, the way the skin around it looked irritated, like it had been burned not long ago.
Then she opened her eyes again.
Dungeon.
Her stomach rolled, nausea rising, but she swallowed it down. She'd been taught to swallow worse.
So the link was real.
Unstable, but real.
The question was why.
And who benefited.
A soft sound came from the corridor outside her door.
Not a shout.
Not a guard's bored cough.
A careful shift. A pause. Then—
Bootsteps.
Too quiet. Too deliberate. Not the lazy patrol pace.
Mireya didn't move. She didn't breathe louder.
She just listened.
The boots stopped at her door.
Not to guard her.
To check.
As if someone was making sure she hadn't slipped the chain… or died… or done something inconvenient.
A key ring brushed fabric. Quiet metal kiss.
Then the boots moved away.
Mireya stayed still until the sound fully faded.
Only then did she close her eyes again—one more time—just to confirm she could.
Forest canopy.
And that wrist brand, burned into a stranger's skin, waiting like a file she hadn't meant to open.