CHAPTER 93: A KNOT LOOSENED

The streets of the Undercity were louder than I’d ever heard them.

Music poured from every alley—fiddles chasing drums, flutes threading bright as birdsong over the low, belly-deep thrum of a horn. Laughter rang against stone, ricocheting off carved walls and archways draped in velvet banners.

Stalls lined the avenues shoulder to shoulder, each lit by its own cluster of lanterns: round moons of frosted glass, long teardrops speckled with mica, delicate cages of wire hung with slivers of mirror.

Without a real sky, we had built one, strings of lights drawn in swooping constellations from balcony to balcony until the whole Central District glowed like a jeweled bowl.

People swirled beneath it, dressed in fine clothes (some barely had any fabric in their bodies) that made the world a riot of silk and glitter.

Masks flashed, feathered plumes and filigree curls, obsidian shards and paper cut into crescent moons.

Children, faces painted with silver dots and tiny stars, their laughter trailing ribbons of sound.

It felt, impossibly, like celebration had muscle and bone.

By the time we reached the heart of the Central District, the crowd had thickened into something festive and breathing.

Ares and Diaval slowed as a knot of men hailed them.

"Go," Raye told them, flicking her fingers.

Ares’s mouth twitched. "Try not to make a scene," he told Raye mildly.

"That’s hard. I’m a spectacle." She looped her arm through mine and tugged. "Come on, Vien."

Raye dragged me to a stall where the vendor spun sugar into thin, glimmering threads and wound them around warm almonds until each nut wore a coat of frost.

We burned our tongues and didn’t care.

At the next stall, a grandmother with arms like bread loaves pressed crescent-shaped buns into our hands—moon buns, stuffed with sweet black sesame and a seam of salted honey that made my eyes close on the first bite.

"Raye," I said thickly, mouth full. "Marry this bun."

"Already picking names for our children," she said.

We ate and wandered.

A troupe of children had claimed a square of open stone near the mirrored fountain and were attempting a dance that was part folk step, part chaos.

I laughed, helpless, and tilted my head back. A canopy of lanterns floated above us, the strings so fine they vanished against the dark, swaying like a slow tide.

In the mirrors that flanked the fountain, the lights doubled and trebled until it felt like we were standing inside a galaxy.

Leika stirred, a pleased rumble in the back of my mind. We made a sky after all.

"Hi, Jeron!" Raye sang out suddenly, waving.

I turned to see a man sidling up through the press of bodies. Jeron’s mask was simple and practical, no nonsense, and yet he still stood out among the crowd.

I still remembered how lovely his music was. I offered him a smile when he stopped in front of us.

"Don’t you look like trouble," he said to Raye, and then, with a polite dip of his head to me, "Hello, Vivien."

"Jeron," I greeted, trying not to have sugar on my teeth.

"You’ve made the Undercity shine," he said to us.

"Raye has magical hands," I said.

"I know," he chuckled. "If you’re interested, there’s spiced cider near the west, but the duck skewers are already gone."

"Tragedy," Raye declared.

We lingered by the fountain, sharing what was left of the moon buns and pointing out the most ridiculous masks—someone had constructed an entire wolf head out of folded paper; another wore a crown of spoon handles; a third was a lamp.

Ridiculous, Leika grumbled.

I laughed.

The band struck up a reel and the dancing tightened, couples swinging, skirts flaring, laughter higher now as the wine warmed the room of the city.

Then, as if someone had pressed a thumb to the pulse of the crowd, conversation shifted.

The turn of ten heads became twenty, became a subtle pull as faces angled toward the east.

A woman in emerald green was moving along the edge of the square, and the night moved with her.

Her gown was a waterfall of silk, the shade of new leaves after rain, neckline modest but cut to suggest secrets. Her hair was coiled high and fastened with a comb shaped like a serpent, and her mask—also emerald—swept up in two wings at the temples, tipped with the faintest brush of black feathers.

She did not hurry. She did not need to. People made space the way water does when a stone slips into it.

"Is that Jesmine?" someone whispered just behind me.

"Jesmine is back! Damn, she’s so pretty."

"She must be here to dance with the Alpha."

The murmurs rolled over each other, eddying around us as the woman in emerald came to a stop near the bandstand, a smile curved on her painted mouth.

"Jesmine?" I repeated under my breath, the unfamiliar name making my brows knit a little.

The way some women watched her like a mirror that might show them a bolder version of themselves, and some watched her like she was a knife no one had noticed they were already holding.

"Who is she?" I asked, soft enough to keep the question between Raye and me.

Raye’s gaze flew to the emerald woman, but her mouth curved in a way that told me her opinion didn’t match the crowd’s breathy awe.

"Daughter of someone from our council," she said. "She’s been staying in the Fifth district these past months with her father, overseeing some pack affairs."

"Ah," I said. "Seems she’s quite famous."

"Yes," Raye said, and her giggle had edges. "Famous for her shamelessness. Jesmine likes the Alpha very much, and she doesn’t hesitate with her advances even when he keeps rejecting her."

I blinked at that. The way the crowd talked about her, I’d assumed... she had some special relationship with Rion.

For reasons I did not inspect too closely, a knot I hadn’t noticed pulling tight in my chest loosened—just a little, like a hand unclenching.