The masquerade kept laughing behind them.
Music. Glass. Perfume.
Mireya left it all like she was shedding a skin.
She and Stellan slipped into a service corridor with their masks still on and their nerves bare. The air cooled fast. Candle smoke replaced perfume. Footsteps changed—lighter, quicker, purposeful.
Servant space.
Mireya tightened her Silence close. Not a dome. A sheath.
The corridor hush didn't erase everything. It just made the world easier to sort.
Stellan leaned in, barely moving his lips. "Private wing's north."
Mireya didn't ask how he knew. He'd been reading the house since they walked in. Beats, charms, wards. The kinds of things that didn't show up in gossip.
"Then lead," she mouthed.
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered up. His eyes sharpened.
He nodded once and started walking like he belonged here too.
They passed a pantry door. A maid stepped out carrying a tray, head down.
Mireya flattened herself against the wall and let the maid pass without seeing them. No panic. No sudden moves.
The maid paused anyway.
Stellan went still.
The maid's head tilted, like she'd sensed a change in the air. Not sound. Something else.
Mireya held her breath and hated that Stellan heard the change through her ears like a betrayal.
Then the maid shrugged and kept going.
Stellan let out a silent exhale.
Mireya's eyes narrowed. Why did she almost notice?
They reached a stairwell guarded by two men in dark livery. Not palace guards. Vale guards.
Their stance was wrong for bored duty. Too balanced. Too ready.
Mireya watched their hands.
No spears. Short blades at the hip. Gloves fitted tight. Rings on their fingers—small, dull metal bands that looked like jewelry until you watched them pulse faintly in the candlelight.
Stellan's voice came low. "Ear charms."
Mireya's mouth tightened. "So?"
"So they don't rely on sound," he said. "They rely on… feedback."
Mireya hated that he sounded certain without sounding smug. "Meaning they can still track us in Silence."
Stellan's gaze stayed on the guards. "Meaning they trained for you."
Mireya felt cold settle behind her ribs.
Good. Let it sharpen her.
She glanced down the corridor.
A side passage. A linen cart parked half in shadow. One servant dozing on a stool, head tipped back, mouth open.
Mireya lifted two fingers and pointed.
Stellan nodded once.
They moved.
Mireya slid behind the linen cart and crept up on the dozing servant. Close. Quiet.
She loosened her Silence for one chosen sound.
His breathing.
Deep. Slow. Safe.
Mireya tapped his shoulder lightly.
He jerked awake, confused.
Mireya leaned close, voice a whisper only he could hear. "Keys."
His eyes widened.
Mireya smiled behind the crack-painted mask. "Good boy."
The servant swallowed hard, hands shaking as he fumbled at his belt. He offered a ring of keys like it might explode.
Mireya took it. Her fingers brushed metal cold with sweat.
"Go back to sleep," she whispered.
She stole sound again. His gasp vanished. His fear didn't.
He slumped back onto the stool like his body was too tired to argue with terror.
Stellan watched, face blank.
Mireya didn't look at him. "Don't start."
Stellan's voice stayed low. "I wasn't."
Mireya didn't believe him. She moved anyway.
They doubled back and climbed the side stairs, avoiding the guarded landing. The air grew warmer as they rose—heat from chandeliers, bodies, wealth.
At the top, a hallway opened out with polished wood and heavy tapestries.
Private wing.
The carpet underfoot was thick enough to swallow footsteps. Convenient.
Mireya tightened her Silence anyway.
She didn't trust convenience.
Stellan paused at the corner, Pulse-sight flaring. His eyes flicked over the hallway.
Mireya watched his face, waiting for the tell.
His jaw tightened. "Wards."
Mireya's fingers curled around the stolen keys. "Where."
Stellan pointed with two fingers, precise. "Door frames. The brass trim. It's seeded."
Mireya leaned in and studied the trim.
Tiny runes, worked into the metal like decoration. Pretty enough to ignore. Dangerous enough to kill you.
"Trip ward?" Mireya mouthed.
Stellan nodded. "And… something else."
Mireya hated "something else."
She eased a key into the nearest lock anyway. Turned it slowly.
No click. No scrape.
She stole the sound as it happened.
The door opened into a small sitting room lined with books and a decanter of amber liquor.
Too clean. Too staged.
Mireya stepped in first. Stellan followed.
The bond tugged hard in the enclosed space—close walls, close bodies. Mireya's stomach dipped. She swallowed it.
Stellan's breath hitched once.
Mireya's eyes flicked to him. "Try."
Stellan's mouth tightened. "I am."
They crossed the room fast, scanning.
Desk. Cabinet. Fire grate. Nothing obvious.
Mireya went to the cabinet and tested the latch.
Locked.
Of course.
She knelt, pulled a thin wire from her sleeve, and slid it into the seam.
A tiny metal kiss.
She swallowed the sound before it lived.
The lock gave.
Mireya opened the cabinet.
Glass vials. Wax-sealed packets. A small stack of letters bound with ribbon.
Stellan leaned in, Pulse-sight tightening.
Mireya hissed, "No peeking."
Stellan didn't argue. He kept his gaze on the room.
Mireya flipped the top letter open.
Wax seal. Sunburst around a crown.
She felt her pulse spike. She hated that Stellan tasted it through her like iron.
The letter wasn't poetic. It was orders.
Field terms. Transfer dates. Names written like inventory.
Mireya's throat went tight.
Stellan's voice came rough. "What is it."
Mireya didn't answer with words.
She held the letter out so he could see without asking for her eyes.
Stellan read fast.
His jaw clenched. "These are—"
Footsteps.
Soft.
Not servant-soft. Trained-soft.
Stellan went still. Pulse-sight flared.
Mireya snapped the letter shut and tucked it inside her bodice.
She didn't breathe louder. She didn't move faster.
She just shifted her weight and listened.
One chosen sound.
A ring brushing fabric.
Then another.
Two men outside the door. Vale guards.
Mireya's lips barely moved. "Back."
Stellan shook his head once. "Ward on the frame."
Mireya swallowed a curse.
The guards didn't rush.
They paused, as if giving the room time to confess.
A voice murmured outside, calm and close. "Check."
The handle turned.
The door opened.
Two guards stepped in.
They didn't look around like they were searching.
They looked straight at Mireya and Stellan, like they already knew where to aim.
Mireya tightened her Silence—hard, fast—crushing the room into dead quiet.
No breath. No candle crackle. No footfall.
She expected the guards to blink. To hesitate.
They didn't.
One of them lifted his hand and tapped two fingers against the ring on his index finger.
A faint vibration ran through the air. Mireya felt it in her teeth.
The guard smiled.
In Silence, his lips moved soundlessly.
Got you.
Mireya's stomach dropped.
They weren't listening.
They were feeling.
The guards moved in sync. One angling toward Stellan, blade half-drawn. The other toward Mireya, hand low, ready.
Mireya flicked her wrist and threw her Silence outward—wider, heavier—trying to disrupt their coordination.
The guards didn't miss a step.
They watched each other's shoulders. They read vibrations through the floor. Their rings pulsed faintly, answering each shift.
Stellan moved.
Not noble now. Hunter.
He stepped into the first guard's path and caught the man's wrist before the blade cleared the sheath. A clean twist.
The guard didn't grunt—Silence stole it—but his body bucked.
Stellan shoved him into a chair. Wood cracked under weight.
The second guard lunged for Mireya.
Mireya pivoted and drove her elbow into his throat.
He didn't make a sound.
But he didn't go down either.
His ring pulsed. His eyes stayed cold.
He slashed.
Mireya twisted back, blade grazing her sleeve instead of her skin. Close.
Too close.
Stellan grabbed the first guard's knife and kicked it away. It skittered across the carpet—soundless, but Mireya felt the vibration.
The second guard used that vibration like a signal.
He snapped his head toward Stellan and moved like he'd been trained to hunt by tremor.
Mireya's Silence didn't help.
Not here.
Not against this.
"Stellan," she mouthed.
He didn't look at her. He couldn't.
The first guard surged up from the chair, a short blade suddenly in his other hand.
Hidden.
He drove it toward Stellan's side.
Stellan tried to turn.
He was half a beat late.
The blade kissed flesh.
Stellan's body jerked.
Mireya went down.
The mirrored pain hit her like a hammer to the ribs—white-hot, blinding. She dropped to her knees so hard the carpet burned them.
Her breath tore out of her—loud in her skull even though no sound existed in the room.
Stellan staggered, one hand clamping his side.
Mireya felt his blood warmth through the bond like a spill. She tasted it in the back of her mouth—iron, copper, wrong.
The guards advanced, calm.
One of them tilted his head as if assessing Mireya's collapse.
Stellan stepped between them anyway, blade up now, eyes flat.
Mireya forced her vision steady through the pain.
She reached for the only thing she still controlled.
Her Silence.
Not wide. Not heavy.
A needle.
She loosened one chosen sound inside the dead quiet.
Stellan's breathing.
She let him hear it. Let him anchor.
Then she opened a second thread—
The guard's ring hum.
Tiny. Constant. A cue.
Mireya grabbed that sound and crushed it.
The ring's vibration faltered. Just for a moment.
The second guard's timing broke.
Stellan used the moment.
He lunged, drove the stolen blade into the guard's thigh, and shoved him into the wall.
The guard's knees buckled.
Mireya's ribs screamed with Stellan's movement, but she stayed upright.
Barely.
The first guard hesitated—then backed toward the door like he'd been trained to retreat and report.
Mireya's hand shook as she reached for her own knife.
Stellan's voice came rough, low. "Don't chase."
Mireya bared her teeth. "I wasn't—"
The bond flared.
Pressure behind her eyes.
Lie.
She shut her mouth.
The door behind the retreating guard closed.
Not slammed. Not panicked.
Closed gently, like a man entering his own room.
Mireya's stomach iced over.
Stellan went still, Pulse-sight tightening so hard his pupils looked wrong.
The door opened again.
Lord Orrin Vale stepped in.
No mask now.
His face was handsome in the way polished things were handsome. Controlled. Smooth. Unbothered by violence in his sitting room.
He looked at the blood on Stellan's hand with mild interest.
Then at Mireya on her knees.
Then at the cabinet she'd opened.
His smile spread slowly—almost delighted.
"My proof arrives," Orrin said.
And the room felt suddenly, horribly small.