Mireya drank the water like it was a favor she'd earned.
Her throat burned. Every swallow scraped. She kept her face calm anyway.
The guard held the cup with both hands, as if she might bite.
"You're going to be fine," he said, too fast.
Mireya looked at him over the rim. Blood had dried in a thin line along her neck. She hadn't wiped it. Let him see it. Let him remember.
"Are you trying to convince me," she asked softly, "or yourself?"
The guard flinched. His eyes flicked to the door.
Footsteps passed in the corridor. Loud ones. Angry ones.
Someone was shouting about a missing jailer.
Good.
Chaos made cracks.
The guard lowered the cup. "They'll… they'll move you."
"Where?" Mireya asked.
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't know, or because knowing made him complicit. Either way, it meant the same thing.
Mireya tilted her head, gentle as prayer. "You have keys."
The guard stiffened. "I—"
Mireya let her Silence tighten—not to smother the room, just to steal the small sounds that warned people they were about to do something stupid.
She spoke quietly. "If you leave me here, they'll blame you for the jailer. They'll say you let him in. They'll say you helped. You'll be punished for having a face that's easy to replace."
His throat bobbed.
Mireya watched his belt. Watched the keys hanging there.
"Give them to me," she said.
The guard's eyes widened. "No."
Mireya didn't argue. She didn't threaten. Threats were noisy.
She simply leaned forward and coughed.
Wet.
Ugly.
Real enough.
Blood dotted her lower lip. She let it sit there.
The guard took half a step back, horrified.
Mireya kept her tone flat. "If I die in this cell, they'll need someone to blame. You'll be close."
His breath sped up. Mireya loosened her Silence a fraction—one chosen sound—so she could hear it.
Fast. Shallow.
Perfect.
"Please," he whispered, and it sounded like he hated the word.
Mireya held his gaze.
Then she said, very calmly, "You're going to set the cup down. You're going to come closer. And you're going to pretend you're checking my shackles."
He stared.
Mireya smiled, small and sharp. "Or you can wait for the man who owns this dungeon to decide whose neck looks most like a rope."
The guard swallowed hard.
He set the cup down. Hands shaking.
He stepped in.
Mireya didn't move until his knee bumped the chain. Until his fingers reached for the cuff as if he meant to tighten it.
Then she moved.
Not fast. Not frantic.
Clean.
She hooked the cuff chain around his wrist and yanked—just enough to pull him off balance. His free hand shot out to catch himself on the wall.
Mireya's bound hands snapped up, chain going taut, and her fingers slid into his belt.
Keys.
Cold metal. Familiar weight.
She took the whole ring in one motion and let it fall into her lap as her chain pulled her back.
The guard froze.
For a beat, neither of them breathed.
Then Mireya whispered, "Good boy."
His face went red with shame and fear.
"You're—" he started.
Mireya tightened her Silence again, just enough to swallow his voice inside the cell.
Not cruelty.
Practical.
She couldn't afford sound.
She fitted a key into her cuff lock and turned.
Click.
No one outside would hear it.
The cuff opened.
Mireya's wrist screamed with fresh pain as blood rushed back into numb fingers. She didn't shake it out. She didn't waste time.
Second cuff. Second click.
The guard watched, helpless, lips moving soundlessly.
Mireya rose.
She leaned close enough that he could see the blood on her throat and the calm in her eyes.
She allowed her voice to exist for one half-second inside the Silence—just for him.
"You never saw me," she said.
Then she stole his hearing again and stepped past him.
Mireya slipped out of the cell as if she'd always owned the hallway.
Outside, the dungeon was louder—shouts, boots, the metallic jangle of panic. She didn't mute all of it. That would draw attention. Instead she kept her Silence tight to her body and used the chaos like cover.
She walked the edge of the corridor. Let others run through the middle.
A guard barreled past, swearing about the jailer. Another dragged a prisoner, chain clanking. Someone slammed a door.
Mireya moved between them like water.
At the stairwell, she paused and loosened her grip—one chosen sound.
A conversation above. Harsh. Urgent.
"…orders from the interrogator. Move the traitor now—"
Mireya tightened the Silence and kept climbing.
Not up. Sideways.
Service stairs. Old passages. The palace had veins for servants and rats and spies. Mireya had used them before. She'd just never used them to escape.
A door at the end of a narrow corridor stood half open. Light spilled from it—torchlight and smoke-haze. The palace still tasted burned.
Mireya pressed her palm to the doorframe and listened again—one chosen sound.
A single heartbeat nearby. Bored.
A lone guard.
Perfect.
She slid through the door into a storage room stacked with linen and broken furniture. A guard sat on a crate, spear across his knees, staring at nothing.
Mireya crossed behind him, close enough to take the spear if she needed. She didn't.
She passed him like a shadow.
When she reached the far door, she stopped and turned her head slightly.
She allowed one sound to exist—her whisper, shaped tight.
"Lockdown's ending," she murmured.
The guard blinked, confused, turning his head toward the wrong corner.
Mireya walked out while he was still trying to understand why he'd heard a voice in an empty room.
Stellan tasted blood again as Mireya ran.
It hit his tongue without warning—metallic, hot, and wrong because it wasn't his.
He gripped the edge of his table until the wood creaked.
Mave looked up from her bag. "Again?"
Stellan swallowed hard. "She's moving."
"You can tell?" Mave demanded.
Stellan didn't like how exposed the truth sounded, so he kept it blunt. "Yes."
Mave cursed under her breath. "So the palace is still in you."
Stellan didn't answer. He was listening through Mireya's ears now and catching what she let through by accident: distant shouts, boots on stone, a door slamming somewhere deep.
Escape sounds.
His ribs ached when he breathed too deep. He ignored that too.
He grabbed charcoal and the plank.
If she was running, she needed a destination.
If she didn't choose it, someone else would.
Stellan stared at the ash until his mind stopped spinning.
Then he wrote, big and plain:
WHERE MEET.
He waited.
One beat.
Two.
Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap.
The rhythm landed inside his skull like a knock.
Different pattern this time. Faster. Urgent. Not panicked.
He grabbed the charcoal again.
Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap… Tap.
Another beat.
Stellan didn't know Ministry cipher, but he didn't need to. He knew when someone was spelling something on purpose.
He watched the air like watching would help.
Then his vision flickered—Mireya's side, briefly—stone corridor, smoke, a flash of carved mausoleum crest on a passing banner.
And the word formed in his mind anyway, pulled from instinct and repetition.
City.
Dead.
He blinked, stunned.
Mave narrowed her eyes. "What?"
Stellan wrote the first guess, grim:
CITY OF DEAD?
The tapping stopped.
Then came a single, sharp pattern.
Yes.
Stellan's jaw tightened.
That wasn't a safe choice.
Which meant it was a smart one.
Old wards. Old graves. Old magic that didn't answer to the crown's new rules.
A place where trackers got lost.
Stellan grabbed his cloak.
Mave stepped in front of him. "No."
Stellan didn't slow. "I'm going."
"You're injured."
"I'll survive," he said.
"You'll survive," Mave echoed, vicious. "And I'll sit here and pray you don't come back hollow."
Stellan held her gaze.
Under her anger, fear pulsed. Bright. Real. Familiar.
He reached out and squeezed her shoulder once—quick, grounding.
"Pack," he said.
Mave's eyes widened. "You're taking me?"
Stellan shook his head. "Not to the graveyard."
Mave bristled. "Then where—"
"Somewhere safer than a hut with a court-trained watcher in the trees," Stellan cut in.
Mave's mouth snapped shut.
Stellan didn't waste the opening. He moved.
He stepped out into the yard and pulled his Pulse-sight up.
The world changed.
Not colors. Not beauty.
Beats.
Mave's heartbeat sharp with anger. Rabbits in the brush. A fox in the treeline. Farther out—two human pulses, moving slow, not quite aligned with the path.
Watching.
Court-trained.
Stellan's jaw clenched.
"Go," he told Mave. "Now."
Mave hesitated—then nodded once, hard. "Don't die."
Stellan didn't promise. Promises were for people who controlled outcomes.
He started toward the city.
Toward the dead.
Mireya reached the City of the Dead before the moon climbed high enough to look like an accusation.
It sat on a rise outside the capital's oldest wall—stone gates blackened by time, ironwork shaped into vines and bones. Lanterns burned low along the path, their flames guttering as if the air here didn't like being disturbed.
A wind moved through the graves and made soft sounds she didn't trust.
Mireya kept her Silence tight, but she didn't erase everything. In this place, too much quiet felt like a beacon.
Old wards threaded the ground. She could feel them with the backs of her teeth—the faint hum of magic older than court politics. It crawled over her skin like dust.
Good.
Let the palace's trackers choke on it.
Mireya slipped through the gate and into the maze.
Mausoleums rose like small stone houses. Names carved deep. Statues worn down until faces blurred. Some graves had offerings: coins, ribbon, a child's wooden toy left too carefully.
Mireya moved past them without looking down.
She didn't like the dead. The dead didn't bargain.
She chose a meeting point that gave her sightlines: an angel statue missing its head, perched above a wide stairway that led into catacombs.
There were ward marks cut into the stair stones—old script, not the crown's clean runes. They made the air feel thick.
Perfect.
She crouched behind the statue's base and loosened her Silence—one chosen sound.
Nothing close.
Far off: a crow. A faint bell from the city. Wind through iron.
No boots.
Mireya tightened the Silence and waited.
Her shoulder pulsed—borrowed pain, faint and steady. Stellan's ribs, still angry. It told her he was moving. It told her he was alive.
It also told her something else.
The bond was… tugging.
Not like sight flickers. Not like pain spikes.
A constant pull, like a hook set under her skin.
Mireya's stomach turned.
Proximity.
He was getting close.
She hated how her body knew before her eyes did.
She stayed low and forced herself to breathe.
Then vertigo hit like a shove.
Mireya's vision doubled. The graveyard blurred. For a second she was seeing the cemetery and—over it—a road edge, frost on grass, Stellan's boots moving fast.
She swallowed bile.
Not now.
Not here.
The bond anchored harder as he approached, as if distance had been the only thin wall keeping their senses from spilling.
Mireya pressed her fingers to the stone and clenched them until her knuckles whitened.
A sound reached her—real sound, not borrowed.
Footsteps on gravel.
Controlled. Heavy. Not hurried.
Mireya slid her hand toward the small knife she'd stolen from a kitchen on the way out. Cheap steel. Better than empty hands.
The footsteps stopped.
A shape moved between mausoleums.
Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark cloak. Hood up.
Stellan.
Mireya didn't rise. She didn't step into the open like a romantic fool. She stayed behind the statue and watched him cross into the warded space.
He paused at the top of the catacomb stairs.
His head turned slightly, as if he could feel her looking.
Mireya felt her stomach flip again—because as he turned, her own hearing changed.
Not louder.
Sharper.
She could hear his breath now. Close. Real.
And somewhere in the back of her tongue, a faint taste appeared—blood and smoke.
Not hers.
His.
Unwanted intimacy slamming into place.
Mireya cursed silently.
Stellan's gaze lifted—toward the angel statue.
He spoke, voice low, grounded.
"Mireya."
Hearing his voice in the air—actual air—made the bond tighten like a knot.
Mireya stood.
The vertigo hit harder. The world swayed.
She saw him with her own eyes…
and at the same time she saw herself through his—blood on her throat, hair disheveled, eyes too sharp to be "rescued."
Her mouth went dry.
Stellan took one step forward, then stopped, like he'd hit an invisible line.
"You feel that?" he asked.
Mireya's laugh came out thin. "I feel like vomiting."
Stellan's mouth twitched once. Not amusement. Recognition.
"Same," he said.
They stood in the warded space, two strangers tied together by a curse that refused to act like a metaphor.
Mireya lifted her chin. "Rules."
Stellan's eyes stayed steady. "Agreed."
"No looking without asking," Mireya said.
Stellan's jaw tightened. "You can't always control it."
"Try," Mireya snapped.
Stellan didn't rise to it. "And you—don't pull in court noise unless you have to. I heard banquets. Toasts. It was—"
Mireya cut him off. "I was being hunted."
"So was I," he said, blunt.
That hit.
Mireya's eyes narrowed. "They followed you?"
Stellan's gaze flicked toward the trees beyond the cemetery gate. "Someone watched my hut."
Court-trained. Mireya felt the words like a bruise.
She stepped closer without meaning to.
The bond punished her for it immediately—nausea rolling, sight sharpening, her skin prickling as if his body heat had reached her through the air.
Stellan stiffened too, breath catching.
Mireya tasted something—iron and warmth.
His blood, faint, lingering.
Her throat tightened.
"You're injured," she said.
Stellan's voice stayed flat. "So are you."
Mireya's hand rose to her throat, instinctive. Her fingers came away damp. She hadn't realized it was still bleeding.
Stellan's eyes flicked to it.
Then away.
Consent. Effort. Good.
Mireya forced herself to focus on the point of this meeting.
"Someone is cleaning up," she said. "A jailer came with a wire. He was paid."
Stellan's shoulders went taut. "I heard it."
"And you—" Mireya stopped. She didn't like gratitude. It tasted like debt. "That reflex… saved me."
Stellan exhaled once. "It wasn't planned."
"It worked," Mireya said.
Stellan looked at her, expression unreadable.
Then he lifted his hand slowly, palm open—showing he wasn't reaching for a weapon.
"Show me," he said.
Mireya frowned. "Show you what?"
"The mark you saw," Stellan said, voice low. "On my wrist."
Mireya's stomach sank.
So he knew.
Stellan rolled his sleeve back.
There it was—burned into skin, ugly and precise.
Mireya kept her face still. Inside, her mind ran.
Quiet Ministry classification. A file stamp turned into flesh.
"You're in our records," she said.
Stellan's eyes hardened. "I've never worked for your Ministry."
"I know," Mireya said. "That's the point."
Stellan let his sleeve fall. His hand clenched once, controlled anger.
Then he did what Wardens did when fear tried to crawl up the spine.
He pulsed.
It wasn't a visible flash. Not fireworks.
Just Stellan's Pulse-sight pulling up and outward, reading the cemetery like a map of heartbeats and wrong rhythms.
Mireya watched his face change—attention sharpening, breath slowing, focus narrowing.
Then his eyes went still.
Too still.
"What," Mireya said.
Stellan didn't answer right away. His head turned, tracking something Mireya couldn't see.
"The wards here…" he murmured. "They're scrambling it. That's why you chose this place."
"Yes," Mireya said, impatient.
Stellan's voice dropped another notch. "Something's moving anyway."
Mireya's skin went cold. "Guards?"
Stellan shook his head once.
"No."
His gaze fixed between two mausoleums, where shadows lay too thick.
His Pulse-sight was reading something that didn't want to be read.
Stellan swallowed.
"Two beats," he said, quiet. "In one presence."
Mireya's throat tightened. "Grafted."
Stellan's eyes stayed locked on the darkness. "Worse."
Mireya lifted her stolen knife.
Stellan's hand went to his own blade.
Their bodies moved like they'd practiced together for years, which was obscene considering they'd just met.
Stellan's voice came out tight.
"It's braided," he said. "Human and Hollowbeast."
Mireya took one step back, angling for the stairs, the wards, the choke point.
Stellan pulsed again—stronger.
His face went pale.
"It's coming," he said.
And in Mireya's bones, borrowed pain flared in warning—like the curse itself had braced for impact.