They didn't go back into the city.
Not after the clerk's body. Not after the wax seal.
Mireya led them out through the graveyard's far gate, where the old wards still hummed underfoot and the lanterns burned low like they were tired of watching people die.
Stellan followed with his cloak pulled tight and his jaw clenched.
He didn't look back.
Mireya didn't either.
They walked until the graves thinned into scrub and the road turned to packed dirt. The capital's glow fell behind them. The air got colder. Cleaner.
It didn't make the bond feel any cleaner.
Mireya's throat kept scraping when she swallowed. Every few minutes, Stellan tasted it—blood and copper—and his mouth tightened like he was biting back words.
Neither of them said sorry.
They didn't have that kind of relationship.
A stand of pines rose ahead. Mireya cut into it without hesitation, choosing cover over speed.
Stellan matched her pace. Quiet feet. No wasted movement. Like he'd done this a thousand times.
Mireya hated that she found it… reassuring.
They stopped near a fallen log, the forest thick enough that the road noise faded into nothing.
Mireya turned and faced him.
Up close, the bond anchored harder.
Her stomach dipped. Vertigo. A brief double exposure—his angle overlaid on hers—then it settled.
Barely.
Stellan swallowed and looked past her shoulder, like he could out-stare the nausea.
Mireya folded her arms. "Ground rules."
Stellan exhaled. "Yeah."
"No looking without asking," Mireya said.
Stellan's mouth tightened. "You keep saying that like I'm doing it on purpose."
"You are," Mireya replied. "Sometimes."
His eyes flicked to her throat. To the dried blood line she hadn't bothered to clean properly.
Then away.
"Fine," he said. "No peeking unless we say it."
Mireya nodded once. "And no weaponizing senses."
Stellan's brow creased. "Meaning?"
"Meaning you don't repeat what you hear when I'm—" Mireya cut herself off before the word afraid could slip out clean. "When it's private."
Stellan's gaze held hers. Steady. Blunt. "I'm not your handler."
Mireya's smile was thin. "Prove it."
Stellan's jaw flexed, but he didn't snap back. He just said, "Try."
Mireya hated that word and kept going anyway.
"You also don't use the bond to humiliate me," she said.
Stellan blinked once. "I don't care enough to humiliate you."
Mireya scoffed. "Liar."
Stellan's shoulders stiffened.
The bond flared.
Not the nausea this time. Something sharper. A pressure in Mireya's skull, like her own Silence was being pulled too tight.
Stellan's eyes narrowed at the same time.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "There. That."
Mireya's throat went dry. "What?"
"The hitch," he said. "In your breath."
Mireya went still.
She hadn't made a sound. She'd stolen her own breathing the moment she got nervous.
But he still heard the change.
Because he wasn't hearing sound alone.
He was hearing her. Her body. Her intent.
Mireya lifted her chin. "Don't listen that hard."
Stellan's mouth twitched without humor. "Then don't lie."
Mireya stared at him. "You think I'm lying?"
"You said you don't care," he pointed out. "But you do."
Mireya opened her mouth to cut him down.
Then she saw it.
Not through the bond.
With her own eyes.
The hesitation behind his.
A tiny pause before he looked at her again—like he'd decided, in that heartbeat, not to say something that would hurt.
It made her stomach flip worse than the nausea.
Mireya's voice came out colder than she meant. "We're not doing feelings."
Stellan's gaze held hers. "We're already doing them."
Mireya's jaw tightened. "No."
Stellan didn't raise his voice. He never did. "You can call it whatever you want. The bond doesn't care."
Mireya's fingers curled into her sleeves. "Then we control what we can."
Stellan nodded once. "Agreed."
A moment of quiet.
Real quiet.
Then Mireya said, "One more rule."
Stellan waited.
"If you taste something from me—poison, blood, fear—you tell me," Mireya said. "Immediately."
Stellan's eyes sharpened. "And if you feel my pain—"
"I don't need you to tell me that," Mireya cut in.
Stellan's mouth tightened. "You do. You keep pushing through it like it's yours to spend."
Mireya stared. "Is this you lecturing?"
"It's me surviving," Stellan said, blunt. "If you drop, I drop."
That landed harder than she expected.
Mireya's Silence flickered around her throat—an instinctive flare that stole a few seconds of forest sound.
No birds. No wind.
Just their breathing—hers controlled, his rougher.
Stellan blinked, and she felt his discomfort through the bond like a shadow passing over skin. Hearing her Silence had always hurt him.
Mireya released it at once. "Fine. You get a rule too."
Stellan's gaze stayed steady. "Don't pull Silence like that without warning."
Mireya's mouth tightened. "Noted."
They stood there, two strangers negotiating boundaries like they were signing a treaty.
Mireya hated the thought.
The Treaty.
The wax seal.
The dead clerk.
Stellan's hand flexed near his blade. "That seal… it's proof."
"It's bait," Mireya corrected.
Stellan frowned. "Bait for what?"
Mireya glanced around the forest, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. Old habit. Useful habit.
"Power," she said. "Legal power."
Stellan's brow furrowed. "A seal on a dead man gives legal power?"
"Not the seal," Mireya said. "The paper it seals."
Stellan stared at her. "The Treaty."
Mireya nodded once.
Stellan's mouth tightened. "What does it do?"
Mireya could have dodged. She could have kept it close like everything else.
But the bond punished lies.
And she needed him aligned.
So she gave him the cleanest truth she could.
"It grants immunity," Mireya said. "For certain 'field trials.'"
Stellan's eyes went flat. "Field trials."
Mireya's voice stayed calm. "Experiments. Outside oversight. Outside prosecution. Signed by people who don't bleed for the consequences."
Stellan's Pulse-sight flared reflexively, like his body wanted to check the world for wrong beats.
He swallowed. "So the crown can do this to people… and no one can touch them."
Mireya's smile was sharp. "Now you understand why they're willing to blow up their own palace."
Stellan's jaw clenched. "And why they wanted that Treaty stolen."
Mireya tilted her head. "Or returned. Depends who ordered the job."
Stellan held her gaze, and Mireya saw it again—hesitation. Not fear.
Guilt.
Like he was thinking about all the times he'd hunted monsters without asking what they used to be.
The bond flared again, softer. Not nausea. Something like pressure behind Mireya's eyes.
Stellan blinked hard. "Okay. So we expose the blast-maker. We expose the program. We get out."
Mireya's laugh came out quiet. "You're still thinking like a man who believes exposure fixes things."
Stellan's eyes sharpened. "And you're thinking like someone who believes nothing does."
Mireya didn't deny it.
A twig snapped somewhere deeper in the pines.
Both of them turned.
Stellan's hand slid to his blade.
Mireya tightened her Silence—small, tight, close. A sheath.
She opened one chosen sound.
Footsteps.
Not close. Not yet.
But human.
Moving along the road.
A passerby. A courier. A hunter.
Stellan didn't relax. Neither did Mireya.
The bond tugged—proximity, tension, suspicion.
The footsteps drew nearer. Then paused.
A voice drifted through the trees—too casual, too practiced.
"Quiet night," the passerby said to no one in particular.
Mireya didn't answer. She didn't move.
Stellan held his breath.
Then the passerby spoke again, softer, like it was an aside.
A phrase.
Short. Ordinary words arranged wrong.
Mireya's ears caught it clearly.
Stellan caught it clearer.
Because he was hearing through her.
And he knew that cadence.
Not palace. Not Warden.
Ministry cant.
His skin went cold as the meaning clicked into place.
Asset retrieval.
Stellan's gaze snapped to Mireya.
She hadn't reacted—yet.
But the bond flared anyway, tasting like metal and threat.
Because someone out there had just announced, in code, that she was being collected.