The glow from my laptop screen is the only thing keeping the dark from swallowing my suite whole. The balcony doors are shut; the warded glass hums faintly, a summer-night thrum that catches in my ribs. Somewhere under the estate, my little black coupe sits in the garage like a held breath. I haven’t moved since I got home.

I’m still in my school uniform. Jacket tossed somewhere near the vanity, skirt wrinkled from hours of tension. I didn’t even bother to change when I got home. Not after what happened on that bus. Not after Cassie Fairborn’s eyes met mine and saw right through me—literally.

The fabric clings wrong at my hips, static and sweat and museum dust. My fingers find the edge of the desk and press; the three-beat tap wants to start. Under my pillow, the baby bracelet waits, warm in my memory like a coal I keep pretending isn’t lit.

But that’s not why I’m still awake.

The screen flickers once, then settles.

Before Naomi’s face resolves, my phone buzzes on the desk, and my chest lifts too fast—stupid, hopeful—like it might be her. Of course it’s not. Of course it’s Naomi. The thought still smells like Cassie: frosted citrus and white camellia with that clean, chilled-vanilla tail I can’t shake out of my hair.

I like boys, I tell myself, a quick internal tap to reset the world.

Naomi appears first. Tight pixie cut flattened from the hood of her sweatshirt, gray hoodie zipped halfway up over a tank top that’s seen better days. There are faint purple bruises under her eyes like she hasn’t slept in three days.

Probably because she hasn’t.

“Hey,” she mutters, voice a notch above gravel. “You look like shit.”

“You always know just what to say,” I reply dryly.

A second window opens. Kess joins with a yawn and a head full of curls, her camera pointed slightly too low so her grin cuts halfway off-screen. That grin has the same dare built into it as Cassie’s when she’s about to call a play I’ll hate and still follow.

“Well, someone’s cranky. We doing this or what?”

“This”—I lean closer to the screen, narrowing my eyes—“better not be one of your ‘let’s test the new girl’ things.”

Kess smirks, that panther energy leaking through the pixels. “New? Mira, you’ve been floating around our orbit for months.”

“Floating,” I echo. “Not diving headfirst into classified Veil routes.”

Naomi snorts. “You volunteered.”

I did. I regret that now. And also don’t. And thinking both at once feels exactly like her.

“Okay,” Kess says, dragging out the word like a bartender stalling for time. Her grin tilts, half off-frame on my laptop. “Here’s the deal. There’s a back-alley bookstore in Ashmere—Silverlake Row side streets. Front’s all first editions and overpriced poetry. But the basement…” She wiggles her fingers. “That’s where they cage the good stuff.”

“Veilforged documents,” Naomi adds. Her voice comes through my tinny speakers steady as winter. The Firebrand Estate wards thrum faintly in my walls, like the whole suite is listening. “Smuggled out before the last crackdown.”

My thumb rubs the inside of my bracelet without permission. The metal is cool at first—then warms under my skin like it remembers me. On the vanity tray, my coupe keys catch the laptop’s glow. Waiting. Expectant. Don’t look at them.

“And we need them… why?” I ask, already hearing the answer shaped like a bruise.

“Because we’re building a case,” Kess says, the panther in her voice soft-purring, dangerous. “A real one. Receipts. Something undeniable. You know how the Shroud plays—purge the evidence, rewrite the story, pretend no one screamed.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “This is proof they can’t burn clean.”

The word Shroud curdles in my stomach. The Hollow taught me stories you can’t wash off. What they do to you if you’re useful. What they do to you if you’re not.

Kess props her chin on her fist. “Shop’s called Ashmere Rare & Antiquarian. We’ve had eyes on comings and goings. The upstairs is a stage set. The vault is below.”

My mouth goes dry. “You want me to steal something.”

Naomi’s gaze doesn’t flinch. “We want you to look. Get the layout. Confirm what’s there. You don’t grab anything unless it’s safe. Recon only.” She ticks the points on blunt fingers. “In, feel it out, out. We’ll have a tail watching from across the lane. If it goes bad, you bail.”

Recon only. In, feel it out, out. I repeat it like it could make me smaller, manageable. The bracelet heats one degree more until I shift my grip.

“You’re the only one who can do this quiet,” Naomi says.

Something in my ribs answers before I do—an ache like a door I won’t open. Cassie’s voice slides in, cool as frost over citrus: Sure you can. I can almost smell her—camellia and chilled vanilla musk ghosting the space by my cheek like she leaned in and dared me to disagree.

I straighten, annoyed at my own lungs. I like boys, I think, crisp and neat, a post-it slapped over a crack.

Kess catches my micro-flinch. Her smile softens a fraction. “New girl jitters are cute, Firebrand, but we both know you’ve been orbiting our mess long enough to call it home.”

“Floating,” I say, automatic. “Not diving headfirst into litigation bait.”

“Who said anything about diving?” She leans closer to her camera until her curls blot half my screen. “Walk. Watch. Breathe.”

Naomi’s tone cools any burn left in me. “The contraband is Veilforged. Some of it carries signatures—trace, alarm, both. Don’t touch what hums wrong.” She pauses, lets the weight of that land. “You’ll feel it before you see it.”

I swallow. I will. That’s the problem.

Kess taps a file I can’t see. “Front clerk is human—name tag says Gary; thinks the wards are a fancy security system. The other one—rotates in, Day-Court vibes under a glamour, name tag Marielle—watches like you’re a lesson. Cameras disguised as ‘decor.’ Mirrors that aren’t. You’ll clock them.”

“Contacts?” I ask, because asking keeps me from looking at the keys again.

“Watcher across the street,” Naomi says. “No comm chatter unless you call it. If anything’s off, you leave. We can always go back. You don’t have to prove anything tonight.”

Kess’s voice drops, playful stripped away. “We already know what you are, Firebrand. You don’t have to bleed to belong.”

My hand goes still on the bracelet. The etched fire glyph presses into my palm like a heartbeat that isn’t mine. Under the mattress: the forbidden history. In the bottom drawer: the shard that hums when I’m not looking. On the bus: Cassie’s fingers brushing mine; my glamour slipping open like a secret begging to be seen; the way she looked at me and didn’t look away.

Sure you can.

“I want to do this,” I hear myself say. The words come out fast, like I’m outrunning something with teeth. “I need to.”

Naomi doesn’t smile. She nods once, approval quiet and real. “Then we plan it together.”

“Route,” Kess says, all business now. “Take the long way—Veilfractures will be thinner by the lake, but fewer eyes if you keep to service alleys. The streetlamp out front is glyph-etched. It likes to taste who lingers.”

“Cute,” I say. My knee starts to bounce under the vanity; I press a palm to it, then drag my fingers along my blouse cuff seam to reset the loop. Breathe. Breathe.

“Dress like a bored girl who reads sad poetry,” Kess adds. “No one bothers the tragic ones.”

Naomi ignores her. “Recon only,” she repeats, and I can feel the frost-edge of the word settle me. “No heroics. If your skin prickles, trust it. Report back from the checkpoint.”

“I’ll take the coupe,” I say. The keys glint again, smug. “Park three blocks out.”

Kess lifts two fingers in a lazy salute. “There’s our quiet. See? Not diving.”

Cassie’s laugh echoes where I keep the rules. Sure you can.

My bracelet cools under my thumb, like even the metal knows I’ve made the choice.

“Then it’s set,” Naomi says. “Ping when you’re in—I’ll be on the line.”

The laptop screen dims as if the estate itself wants the last word, ward-hum rising and fading like a tide. Kess winks just before her window pops closed. Naomi stays one heartbeat longer, violet eyes steady on mine like a tether I didn’t know I wanted.

“You’re not alone,” she says.

I nod, and the call dies.

The suite exhales. My blouse smells like linen and museum dust and the last whisper of rain in my hair. The imagined trace of Cassie-cool citrus finally recedes.

Recon only, I tell myself, rolling my cuff once, then smoothing the seam to calm the twitch. In, feel it out, out.

I like boys.

I stand. The bracelet rides the line of my pulse, warm as a promise I’m not ready to name.

I stare at the reflection for a breath too long. Not my real one—the glamoured one. Green-eyed, human enough, hair tamed to acceptable auburn and a face that looks like it follows rules.

The kind of girl no one stares too hard at.

Kess’s voice plays back: Dress like a bored girl who reads sad poetry. Fine.

I strip the school blouse, fold it once, set it on the chair like it might explode if I look away. Black climbs on instead: a ribbed knit sweater that swallows my hands, a slate skirt with laddered tights, scuffed ankle boots that make no sound if I don’t want them to. I line my eyes in kohl and smudge it with a fingertip until I look like I’ve stayed up reading terrible sonnets about death and rain. A cheap black ribbon at my throat. A dog-eared poetry paperback shoved into my satchel as a prop.

The glamour stays concealment—no fireworks, no new face—just a recalibration: dim the court-shine in my skin, mute the auburn to a duller shade, take the green of my eyes from gem to moss. Human enough to be overlooked. Human enough to be forgotten.

I check the satchel’s false bottom—still clean, still ready—and slide the strap over my head. The baby bracelet sits warm against my wrist as if it’s been waiting for the cue. The metal cools when I spin it, then heats under my thumb like a secret breathing.

The warded glass of the balcony hums low. Somewhere, a window is cracked for the night staff; rain scent slips in—wet stone, green leaves, the first breath after a storm. My own scent answers, rain rising, fire settling. Unhelpful. Her perfume ghosts my memory anyway: cold citrus, camellia, a hush of vanilla musk.

I catch my reflection again in the dark of the dressing mirror and—there she is. Cassie. Not here, not real, just the posture my brain puts on her like a punishment. She’d tilt her head and say, You’re late.

“I like boys,” I whisper, crisp as a blade, like strapping on armor.

Keys off the tray—cool metal bite in my palm. I hook my pinky with my ring finger to still the three-beat tap, then glide a thumb along my sweater cuff seam until the urge bleeds out. Ritual: bracelet, satchel, keys, breath.

The suite door’s latch clicks soft as a secret. Hallway lights are banked low—Summer Court warmth gilding portraits that follow with painted eyes. I ghost the service corridor, past the pantry where the night steward hums to himself, past a wardstone that tastes my aura and grumbles its approval. The estate is a beast at rest, all muscle and hush.

Back stairs. The air cools the lower I go, trading perfume and polish for oil and ozone. The garage smells like rain-soaked concrete and old rubber. Security glyphs thrum along the ceiling, a steady heartbeat in metal.

She’s waiting for me where I left her: sleek, low, the little black coupe like a smile with teeth. Water beads on her hood from the damp that sneaks in when the outer doors cycle; the droplets look like mercury under the sodium lights.

I palm the fob. Blink—unlock. The dome light spills a small, forgiving circle. Leather seats chill through the tights as I slide in; the steering wheel is cool under my hands, then warmer as the bracelet heats and the car decides I’m me.

Satchel buckled into the passenger seat. Phone face-down. Poetry paperback visible at the top like I forgot to hide it. I smooth the cuff seam again. Breathe.

Recon only. In, feel it out, out.

I slot the key and the engine purrs alive, a satisfied cat under my ribs. Wipers test once; rain freckles the windscreen where the outer door angles open, the estate’s wards shedding water in sheets like silk.

“Sure you can,” Cassie’s voice says in the space I keep for things that make me reckless.

“I like boys,” I tell the empty car, and click the seatbelt home. The sound is a promise.

I ease the coupe toward the rising gate, the wardline kissing the roof with a soft shimmer as I pass. Outside, Dominveil exhales damp and electric. The city smells like rain and trouble.

I go.

Dominveil at night isn’t quiet. It just lowers its voice.

Rain frecks the windscreen; wipers sweep once, twice. The coupe glides through amber pools of streetlight where leaves have piled into copper-gold drifts along the gutters. Wardlines hum under the asphalt, a bass note I can feel through the steering column and somewhere behind my ribs.

I keep off the main fracture lanes and cut through the service grid—warehouse blocks, noodle windows steaming in the chill, a florist still misting dahlias beneath a glowing sigil against frost. A sentinel drone passes overhead with a soft click of lenses; the ward-plates on my windshield purr approval and let me be a nobody.

The radio fights for signal along the seams where magic chews the air. A glass-bell synth track slides in—Dominveil pop, sugar over knives. The singer’s voice is cold, clever, a dare. Then a bass-heavy idol group from Oricleaf District; the chorus hits like sprinting in the rain. Static stitches between stations, and in the fizz I hear her laugh—Cassie’s—a perfect, sharp little blade my brain insists on tucking into everything.

“Don’t,” I tell the empty car. My mouth almost shapes I like— but the breath stalls. I bite it back and turn the volume up one notch.

A perfume ad blooms across a holo-billboard at the next light: a model in a white blazer tilts her chin, eyes cool, a spray of camellias ghosting into frost above the bottle. My chest does the wrong thing. Cool citrus, white camellia, chilled vanilla musk—my imagination fills in the scent and puts it on her skin. Of course it does.

I change lanes. Don’t look.

Two blocks later, the city tilts. It’s subtle: a three-story building with shuttered windows where the air feels… neutral. No vendor spice, no exhaust, no human sweat. Just a trained absence. I don’t slow as I pass, but the hair at my nape lifts. Shroud street. The feeling clings for half a block like cobweb.

The closer I get to Silverlake Row, the thinner the air tastes—like walking onto stretched glass. Magic isn’t sound; it’s pressure. The coupe’s engine drops to a contented purr as I ease into a side street; the storefronts here wear their neon like smudged lipstick, and the maples along the curb drip red and rust under the rain.

I park three blocks out with the nose tucked between a delivery van and a rusted mail drop. Engine off. The sudden quiet rings. Damp leather breathes up from the seats. My bracelet is a steady thrum against my pulse until I touch it; it cools like it’s pretending innocence.

Keys into the satchel. Strap across my chest. I hook pinky to ring finger to stop the tap, then press the strap into my shoulder until the need to bounce my knee bleeds out. Never be too interesting. Walk like tragedy with a library card.

The rain is a fine mist that clings to kohl and breath. Autumn lives in the air—wet bark, crushed leaves, the faint iron of the city’s old bones. I pass a silver luxury sedan idling at a loading zone, windows fogged from heater breath. Not hers. Wrong make. My body prepares for Cassie anyway and then, embarrassed, stands down.

A shop window throws back a warped version of me: black ribbon at my throat, sleeves swallowing my hands, hair dulled to something forgettable. For a heartbeat the glass thinks it’s her—head tipped, mouth edged with a dare. I blink and the lie dissolves. Just me again, a girl who can’t stop seeing the wrong face in reflective surfaces.

“Focus,” I whisper. The word smokes.

The hum deepens as I turn onto the right block. Not louder—closer. The streetlamp ahead wears its etchings like rust if you don’t know what to look for. The pressure under my boots gets familiar, the way heat warns just before a spark catches.

Ashmere Rare & Antiquarian sits where Kess said it would—between a fortune-teller’s studio and a boarded glass shop, rain making halos of the dim amber glow leaking from under the door.

First editions and overpriced poetry. Sure.

But the magic here isn’t sleeping.

It’s pacing.

I pause under the awning, rain ticking a soft rhythm against black wool. Sleeves swallow my hands; the ribbon at my throat sits like a sentence. In the glass, my reflection holds: dulled auburn hair, moss-green eyes, human-enough edges. Tragic girl with a library card. Forgettable on purpose.

Left, then right. Nothing obvious. But Dominveil never runs on obvious.

The streetlamp above me buzzes—old wrought iron with an art-deco twist—and the base wears Veil glyphs so faint they’d read as rust to anyone else. I let my glamour breathe just enough to sample the current. It hums against my ribs.

Ward. Detection. Directional.

Filed.

The front window warps at the edges like oil on water—low-grade glamour meant to blur the interior, not block surveillance, just make you doubt your eyes for a step or two. Paper and sage thread the rain. There’s a bare tang of ozone that catches on the back of my tongue.

I push the door.

The bell above it doesn’t ring.

Of course it doesn’t.

Inside, the world compresses. Air temperature drops a notch; my skin registers it before my brain. The scent hits first—old ink and leather bindings, beeswax polish, pressed lavender—and something sharper underneath, like burnt citrus that someone tried to sweeten and failed. Ward anchors, or a spell that’s been leaking too long.

Shelves rise like cathedral columns, narrow aisles as naves. The ceiling curves into painted constellations—some I know, some I definitely don’t. Amber sconces fake candlelight without the fire. Floorboards murmur under my boots—one groan where another should’ve been silent.

Cassie would hate this smell, my brain offers, traitor light. She’d wrinkle her nose and call it “dust theatre,” then read every spine out of spite. I can hear her laugh in my head from the pep rally last week: amused, cutting, bright as glass.

“I like boys,” I whisper into my sleeve, a private reset. The words land, then slide.

At the counter, a man leans on one elbow over a ledger. He looks up when I enter. The expression stops just shy of cruel—more… dissecting. Not curious. Not suspicious. The kind of look that decides what you are before you open your mouth. His nametag says GARY. Of course it does.

My glamour prickles along my hairline, a quiet tug at my ear tips and the halo of my eyes, like the room wants to true me up. I press my thumb to the bracelet under my sleeve; the metal warms, a heartbeat that isn’t mine, and the itch settles. Not today. Not here. (But if the wards sing louder downstairs, I’m going to feel it.)

I give Gary a bored half-smile—the kind girls in sad poetry sweaters use when clerks ask if they need help—and drift toward Fiction. Nothing risky. Poetry paperback visible at the top of my satchel like I forgot to hide it.

Ink dust lives on the air; I can taste it when I inhale too deep. A classic novel hides a spellbook’s spine like a guilty secret. A lamp near the endcap dims as I pass, then brightens when I’m gone. Overhead, the glyph lines whisper—low hum, steady pulse. Harmless to humans. A nudge for anything that isn’t.

Floorboard. Creak that shouldn’t be there. A mirror dome tucked high at an aisle cross—cobwebbed, but too clean at its center. I clock angles, sightlines, corners that invite loitering and corners that report loitering.

A sound from the counter—Gary’s huff of a laugh at whatever he’s pretending to read—and my traitor brain overlays her laugh on top of it, blue eyes gone wicked, mouth tilted into that dare. She’d make fun of this place’s old book smell just to see if I’d defend it.

I don’t look back.

I keep walking.

The scent gets stronger in the back-left corner, near a hallway marked STAFF ONLY. It’s too clean, too neutral—like someone scrubbed arcane residue a little too well and left the antiseptic hum behind. A faint, colder draft slips from that corridor and brushes my knees. Not human airflow. Ward-breeze.

That’ll be my exit plan.

Gary is still watching me from the ledger. I let him. Let him think I’m a bored tragic girl in a black sweater with sleeves that eat her hands; someone with ink under her nails and a dog-eared poetry book in her bag. The kind of girl who won’t bite.

He turns a page. Doesn’t blink.

I pick up a book from the nearest display: Flames of Silver: Unseelie Court Poems. Fitting. The linen weave of the dust jacket drags softly under my fingertips; ink-and-dust air grits the back of my throat. I pretend to read.

The words blur—not from magic. From my own stupid brain. Too many lights. Too many smells. Too many watching

eyes. My sleeve’s hem is right there; I rub the seam once, then again, and hold still.

Mask, Mira. Move like the girl they all expect to see.

Like you’re not fire in a room full of dry paper.

A romance spine catches the corner of my eye—soft pink with gilt script. I can see her in my head already, Cassie tipping it up with two fingers and a surgical little grin. She’d read the cheesiest line out loud and wait for me to roll my eyes. The laugh that would follow—clean, bright, wicked—lands in my ribs and makes me hate breathing.

I like boys, I think, and it lands with less conviction than last time. It doesn’t stick.

I slide along the central aisle, trailing my fingers on the wood edge (not the spines), letting the grain guide me. The store keeps redrawing itself as a set: shelves positioned to cast pockets of shadow; warm light that lulls but never quite comforts; “dead” corners perfect for lingering—and for logging you while you do. A mirrored dome sits tucked high at the cross-aisle—cobweb-dusted, center too clean. Not human tech. Fae-forged reflection, tuned to catch movement across glamours.

I pass a narrow gilt mirror and catch my own altered face—smudged kohl, dulled auburn, moss eyes—and for a heartbeat my brain gives me her instead. Cassie’s cheer flip of hair, the easy confidence of her posture. Reflexively, I adjust a strand like it might lie better if I were someone else.

A glass case anchors the aisle end: a slim, leather-bound volume on a velvet block. The placard says Private Collection in a tasteful lie. The air hums one hair louder around it; Veilforged book, locked behind sigil-latched brass. I note the pattern—dull copper wardscript at the corners, hair-fine frost-blue threads braided through the latch (motion-trace), and a shadow of iron-gray etched under the base (root-trace). Do not touch unless you want someone to know you did. Filed.

A breath from the counter makes me glance up.

Gary is gone.

No, not gone—replaced. The woman behind the register stands very still, tall and exact in tailored black trousers and a cream blouse under a bookstore apron. MARIELLE, the nametag reads. Sleek black bob, not a hair out of place. Day-Court sheen under the glamour if you know how to look. Her eyes track me without blinking.

She doesn’t speak.

She just waits.

Shit.

I grab a not-suspicious-at-all paperback from a mid-shelf and step toward the counter like I mean it. Keep the pace steady. Keep the mouth soft.

She tilts her head by a degree. “Can I help you find something?”

Every instinct says yes, get out, lie, run.

The mask slides on like silk. “Yes,” I say, breath even. “I’m looking for something published by Fireblossom Press. My… teacher’s obsessed. Said I needed to get ‘a firsthand feel for Veil-adjacent curation.’” I make lazy air quotes and roll my eyes. “Whatever that means.”

Marielle hums. That’s all. Then gestures—a precise little line—toward the poetry wall behind me. “If we had anything of theirs left, it would’ve been over there. Popular with collectors.”

Her smile doesn’t touch her eyes.

Court smile. Predator smile.

I give her my best human-girl nod. “Thanks.”

Turn away before the pressure under my ribs shows on my face.

I circle back toward the rear—but not directly. I drift, letting the store believe it’s guiding me. This pass is for entrances and tells. Behind the register: a beaded curtain, not illusioned, just physical—but it buzzes faintly, ward braided into the thread. To the right: the STAFF ONLY hall—letters painted in a hand that knew exactly what it was hiding. Along the baseboards, dull copper wardscript runs like molding; hair-fine frost-blue threads cross it every three feet. Motion-linked, directional. The boards under my boots shift magic—Veilroot—meant to track, maybe to alert.

Someone invested serious resources to keep someone else out.

I catalog it all.

And I don’t touch the chain at my throat—the thin grounding charm Naomi gave me, tucked under my sweater—because the urge to reach for it means the glamour is already straining, and we are not downstairs yet.

The store keeps guiding my feet until something stalls me cold.

A book sits where it shouldn’t. Not tucked away. Not hidden. Just… placed.

Infernalight Myths and Rituals. First edition. Wrong section.

Too pristine. Too easy.

I hover my fingers above the spine. The leather looks supple, but the seam reads newer than the boards around it, like someone re-glued the binding yesterday. There’s a sharper scent here—old paper riding a chemical tang—and beneath that, the baritone hum of something set to notice.

In my head, Cassie arches one perfect brow. Bait, Firebrand. She’d tip it up with two fingers and make me admit it.

The breath I take is shallow. I like boys, I tell myself, small and clipped, a label slapped over a live wire. It doesn’t stick.

My hand trembles anyway. Not fear. Not magic. It’s my body refusing to play along.

I retract. Casual pivot. Skim a different spine one shelf over like I was never interested at all. The floorboard under my boot carries a faint pulse—Veilroot, directional—logging me in the order someone prefers to learn I was here.

A soft page-turn from the counter. I don’t look.

I drift, sleeves swallowing my hands, book open in a way that means nothing. The rear corridor breathes its colder draft across my knees—ward-breeze, clean and precise. The painted STAFF ONLY letters wear their braided script like a seam you only see if you squint: motion-linked, designed to know, not stop. The baseboard wardscript is dull copper; hair-fine frost-blue threads cross it at neat intervals.

I catalog the rhythm. The hum. The distance to the first camera dome’s cone. The exact creak my left heel will make if I land too hard.

Then I wait.

One second. Two.

Light as breath.

Fast as hunger.

I slip into the hallway. The air folds tighter around me, and something in the skin between my shoulder blades says: different room, different rules.

There’s no alarm. No sound. Just the immediate awareness that I’ve left the bookstore and entered something else.

The hallway is different here—quieter. Too clean. The walls are stone painted to look like wood. The light is colder, more neutral, like the Veil thins here and refuses to lie. My glamour itches along my hairline and at the soft points of my ears; I press my thumb to the bracelet under my sleeve and the itch eases by a degree.

There’s a door at the end. Metal, old, sealed with a lock that hums faintly when I get close.

I crouch. Fingers hover.

Three glyphs. Stacked. Masked. A trinity ward—someone who knows how to keep courtborn out built this.

Top sigil: Obfuscation—smoked-violet, light-eating. Glamour-cancel; strips illusions and muddies sightlines.

Middle: Sigil-trace—hair-fine frost-blue lattice. Tastes unfamiliar auras and whispers to the wrong ears.

Bottom: Fire-burn—ember-red with ash-gray teeth. Veil-triggered punishment; bites heat and doesn’t let go.

Recon only, Naomi said. In, feel it out, out.

And then—like she’s leaning over my shoulder—I hear Cassie’s voice in the space behind my ear: Sure you can. Pride and fear light the same fuse in my ribs.

I roll my cuffs back past my wrists. Black knit swallows my hands; the leather strap creaks as I flex. The bracelet is warm already—always warm where it touches skin—but here it answers the door’s hum, a low resonance like two notes searching for harmony. That’s… new.

“Okay,” I whisper to the metal. “Help me.”

I angle the bracelet so the fire glyph etched on its underside kisses the seam near the top sigil. Not the punishment lock yet—start where it’s safest.

Three strokes to break an Obfuscation weave. My fingertip traces the pattern in the air, close enough to wake it, not close enough to feed it.

Stroke one. The glyph’s edge purls, a thin crackle like sugar on a skillet. Burnt ozone threads the air.

Stroke two. The smoked-violet dulls to bruise-gray; light bleeds back into the lines like the room’s been holding its breath. My bracelet heats, a steady thrum against bone.

Stroke three. My hand wants to shake. I anchor it with the band in my palm and keep the movement clean.

The Obfuscation sigil sighs—one brittle pop, then a faint unwinding hiss. I don’t smile. Not yet.

The frost-blue lattice underneath perks up like it noticed its older sibling died.

“Not you yet,” I murmur. Pride tries to rise; fear steps on its throat. If Cassie were here, she’d arch a brow that says brag later.

I shift lower. The lock’s hum changes key. The bracelet’s resonance answers again—stronger now, a bone-deep vibration uncomfortably like the shard in my drawer when a storm rolls in. I file that where I keep problems I can’t solve yet.

Sigil-trace is finesse, not force. I slide the bracelet a hair to the left, find the seam where the frost-threads knot, and press until heat blooms under the metal. A thin crackle dances across my skin—static nipping my knuckles.

Lightest touch. Lift. Re-seat. Lift.

The ozone smell sharpens; the lattice starts to sing—a high, glassy note that sits behind my eyes.

“Shh,” I tell it, because I’m stupid, and because the room feels like it might actually listen.

The bottom glyph—the red one with teeth—waits, patient and hungry. I do not touch it.

Not yet.

I breathe. Count. Let the middle sigil’s song peak and thin. My bracelet’s thrum settles into its rhythm like a heartbeat learning a new cadence.

One more pass.

And then I’ll move.

The frost-blue lattice sings itself thin—high, glassy, then thinner still. I keep the bracelet braced in my palm and breathe with it, easing heat into the knot until the threads loosen like a braid unpicked.

One last kiss of warmth. The song frays.

Silence.

Middle sigil done.

What’s left waits at the bottom of the plate: ember-red, ash-gray teeth set into the seam like a smile that wants blood. I’ve seen a sketch of this bite-mark glyph in the margins of the forbidden history under my mattress—same imperfect curve on the right prong, like the scribe’s hand cramped on the third stroke. Not shop magic. Old.

The lock hum lowers, heavy enough to make the air feel syrup-thick in my lungs.

Behind me, in my head, Cassie leans in the doorway I haven’t opened yet, arms folded, chin tipped. What’s the worst that could happen?

My mouth almost answers with the wrong prayer. I press my pinky against my ring finger—still the tap—and smooth the sweater cuff seam once. Twice. The bracelet’s thrum steadies under my thumb.

“Okay,” I whisper, to the metal or to myself, I’m not sure.

I slide the band down until the fire glyph etched on its underside touches the edge of the red sigil. Not on the tooth—on the gum. Ask, don’t bite.

Heat lifts through my skin in a slow bloom. The hall’s light doesn’t change, but the air does—denser, like a storm pressing its hand over the building. A metallic taste blooms at the back of my tongue, copper and old penny. The baby bracelet answers the lock’s hum again, stronger now, two notes trying to find a shared key.

“Easy,” I murmur.

A thin crackle skates across my knuckles. Ozone threads the colder draft coming from under the door. Every tiny hair along my forearms lifts; my scalp prickles where glamour meets skin, a warning itch along the soft points of my ears. Hold. Do not slip.

The red sigil warms from ember to cherry, then to a color I don’t have a human word for—heat turning thoughtful. The ash teeth retract a hair’s breadth, curious instead of hungry. I angle the bracelet a fraction, letting the glyph on my wrist kiss the old mark like a remembered greeting.

The lock… breathes.

Then the pressure shifts all at once—an exhale I feel more than hear. Air drops a degree. The metallic taste spikes and snaps clean. My hair lifts with static, then settles.

Pop.

Not loud. More like the building’s jaw unhinging.

The seam releases. The old metal gives beneath my palm with a tired kindness. I ease the door, and it swings inward on hinges that should squeal but don’t.

Cold air slides up from the dark like an animal’s breath. Stone, worked and worn, rises to meet me—catacomb scent and the slate-salt tang of deep Veil. Even before the light reaches my shoes, space tilts sideways in that particular way: the geometry behind the threshold isn’t the geometry in front of it. Bigger on the inside, not bragging about it.

I listen. Nothing but the quiet tick of cooling metal and the distant hum of wards below, steady as a pulse.

Cassie’s imagined shape is still there in the doorway of my mind, smirking like she expected me to manage it. I don’t say anything to her. I don’t say anything at all.

I-LIKE–BOYSSS I tell myself again understanding it’s futile but trying to keep my head on straight while I complete this mission.

The stairs curl twice and then spit me onto a landing that can’t fit beneath the footprint of the shop above.

Space opens like a held breath finally let go.

Stone unfurls in every direction—aisles and alcoves and vaulted ribs that have no business existing under a bookseller’s lease. The floor is cold through my boots; a fine powder of age sleeps in the grout and wakes under my weight. Light hangs without source—dim amber-gold that reads like candlefire but isn’t. No flame, no fixtures. Just a patient radiance that makes edges feel older than they want to admit.

The air is wrong in a way my bones recognize: ink and dust, yes—but underneath, a briny thread like saltwater dragged through slate. The Veil’s tide, stubborn and faint. My glamour tightens along my hairline, tugging at the soft points of my ears like the room is sniffing for the truth of me. I thumb the bracelet under my sleeve; it warms, a human heartbeat I can borrow.

I realize I’ve stopped moving.

I wish I could show her this.

Cassie steps into the thought without asking—chin tipped, cool eyes running the map faster than mine. Would she call it beautiful or dangerous? Would she call me both? Her scent ghosts in on memory—frosted citrus over white camellia, a hush of vanilla musk—and the ache it leaves is ridiculous.

“I like boys,” I mouth, silent, precise, like I know I’m fighting a losing battle.

I move again.

Shelving rises in low stone runs, intercut with file drawers and glass-front relic cases that hum at the edges like sleeping hives. Some aisles are narrow, meant to funnel; others flare into little chapels where a single pedestal waits under that sourceless glow. Shadows pool in ways too tidy to be accidents. Illusion-craft in the bones, not the paint—storefront theatre upstairs, cathedral below. (The Shroud would salivate. They build vaults like this when they think no one is counting.)

My footsteps echo once, then vanish mid-aisle, swallowed by a ward that doesn’t want sound to travel. I mark it. I mark the cold seam of air snaking across my shins from the far-left quadrant—vents disguised as stone relief. I mark the soft bass note living under the light, steady as a pulse, too even to be anything but a power spine.

Bigger on the inside, yes. Not bragging—hiding.

I breathe through my mouth—taste salt and paper—let my shoulders drop a fraction so the room will keep underestimating me.

Then I start to map.

I move like shadow and let the room introduce itself one relic at a time.

A long case of tide-maps chiseled on slate—sea-lines etched so fine they look wet. The glass is cold enough that a breath would cloud it; a faint ring of condensation halos each ward anchor where heat bleeds into chill.

A waist-high drawer wall of court seals—silver impressions nested on black velvet, some Seelie-bright, some Unseelie dark, a few so old the metal has taken on the color of bone. When I lean near, the bass of the Veil hum presses against my sternum like a second pulse.

A cluster of amber reliquaries with gnats and threadlike glyphs trapped inside—light caught in honey, wrong in a beautiful way.

Cassie would call this creepy gorgeous, says the part of me that wants to hand her the world just to see what face she makes. The thought lands hot and stupid. My shoulders tighten.

I like boys, I remind myself—defensive, dull-edged, the verbal version of stuffing papers in a drawer and slamming it shut.

I keep moving.

Glass domes punctuate the space like low moons. Under one: a rusted veil-compass with a hair-thin needle that won’t settle. Under another: a scrip of vellum burned to the margin in a way that looks deliberate, not damaged. Each has its own weather—tiny heat/cold differentials that fog and clear the glass in slow breaths.

Then the room decides to show me the thing it was hiding.

Center pedestal.

Small dome.

A folded parchment, edges softened by forever-hands, sealed with tri-glyph wax.

The closer I get, the metallic tang sharpens—old copper at the back of my tongue. The dome’s interior is a fraction warmer than the air around it; a dew-fine condensation kisses the glass just above the seal where the ward’s heat collects.

The wax carries three marks in the pre-Veil style—ruthless clarity, no flourish. One glyph I know in my bones: fire. The second is the tight curve of identity—binds a name to a truth. The third is silence—not absence-of-sound so much as enforced stillness. The geometry of the fire mark—there, on the right prong—kinks the exact same way as the marginalia that rides the forbidden tome under my mattress. My breath catches. So it’s not shop magic. It’s old.

The Veil’s bass roll thickens just under my skin. My bracelet warms harder, answering something it recognizes, and that scares me more than the lock upstairs did.

Would Cassie be impressed or terrified? I can hear her voice bent into a smirk: Say it—creepy gorgeous. And then the softer thing she doesn’t say out loud, the one that lives behind her cool: Are you about to do something reckless?

Memory slices in without permission: her hand brushing mine in the library stacks last week when I turned a page for her—barely touching, static nicking our fingers. My mouth goes dry.

I like boys. This time it comes out like a flinch.

I set my palms on the edge of the pedestal to stop the tremor in my fingers and count the seconds it takes for the condensation ring to clear and reform. Two and a half. Good to know. The dome’s brass latch is etched with that same dull copper script I’ve been following—signal, not block. A whisper to anyone who listens.

I don’t touch. Not yet.

Instead I map the weather of the ward, the seam of the glass, the angle I’ll need if I decide I’m someone who opens this. The hum under my skin doesn’t let up.

History, not contraband.

And someone decided it should belong to no one.

The dome fogs and clears in its two-and-a-half–second rhythm. I time my breath to it until my pulse climbs to match the bracelet’s thrum.

What would she say if she saw me do this?

Cassie’s smirk steps neatly into the thought—half dare, half diagnosis. You’re going to anyway, aren’t you?

“I don’t like girls,” I mouth—thin, papery. The bracelet’s pulse swallows the tail end like it never existed.

I hover my hand over the glass. The ward’s temperature halo brushes my knuckles—barely warmer than the room, a whisper of heat against the cold stone air. My bracelet answers with a small, eager rise in warmth, metal learning a heartbeat.

“Okay.” The word is for my fingers.

Two fingertips find the brass latch; the etched script bites in hair-fine grooves, a prayer said too often. The latch gives a polite click. The dome exhales a ribbon of warmer air and lifts with a dry kiss of seal to glass.

The tri-glyph wax waits: fire, identity, silence—pre-Veil sharpness, no flourish. Up close the metallic tang is stronger, old copper on the back of my tongue.

I tilt my wrist. The underside of the baby bracelet catches the lamplight-that-isn’t and the fire glyph there glows—soft, then brighter when I angle it toward the seal. Resonance climbs through bone; my heartbeat locks to it without asking.

I don’t press hard. Just a kiss of metal to wax.

Heat spikes up my palm—clean, bright. The seal warms from ember to cherry, then to that thoughtful color my human words don’t carry. A faint pop, sugar-snap sharp, and the scent of burned sage rises thin and holy.

The glyphs slacken.

I lift the parchment.

It’s lighter than it looks; fibers whisper against my skin, old but not fragile—made when people expected paper to outlive them. The instant it leaves the pedestal, a low hum wakes inside it, the same pitch the shard in my drawer sings when storms roll in. Not loud. Not ignorable.

Memory cuts sideways—Cassie’s fingers brushing mine in the library, that bright static nick. My mouth tries to form the lie again; what comes out is only breath. “I don’t—” The hum drowns it, and I let it drown.

The dome interior fogs and clears, fogs and clears. I slide the parchment flat along my forearm to steady it; warmth pulses through my skin in even beats. My satchel’s strap creaks when I pull it around—familiar leather, familiar weight. The false bottom seam finds my thumbnail like it’s been waiting; the texture is always the tell—stitch slightly raised, waxed thread smoother than the rest.

I ease the panel up with two fingers, nestle the fold inside, and lower the panel until it kisses home. A soft snick. I smooth the seam once, twice, until my skin can’t find it blind.

The hum is quieter now, muffled but present, like a secret that expects to be carried.

I reset the scene: parchment space empty under the dome, glass lowered, latch aligned exactly where it was. If someone is counting condensation rings, they’ll have to work for their outrage.

Upstairs, a floorboard complains.

My spine tightens. I don’t snatch my hand back. I don’t run. Every muscle begs to. I choose not to.

Measured. Calm. Like I belong here. Like I’m not burning from the inside out.

I turn from the pedestal and walk.

The hallway exhales me back into the shop like nothing happened.

Heat rides my skin; a cool draft licks under the door and steals it. The room smells the same—old ink, beeswax, lavender—but now cheap aftershave threads under it, a cinnamon bite I didn’t clock before.

Marielle is gone.

Gary is back at the counter. Same ledger, same posture, same dissecting stillness. His eyes touch the strap of my satchel, the damp at my hairline, the angle of my shoulders—and don’t move.

I keep my gait lazy. Sleeves still swallowing my hands. Tragic-girl slouch, book in one fist I don’t intend to buy. My pulse is too loud in my ears. The ward behind him hums like a throat clearing.

He doesn’t say hello.

He just watches.

You’re up to something, Cassie says in my head, voice cool and certain, like she’s catching me in a lie I haven’t told yet. The way she reads me—the way she enjoys being right—lands like a hand on my sternum.

“I don’t like girls,” I mutter into the soft edge of the charcoal scarf at my mouth—thin as tissue, half a breath, more ritual than meaning. The heat in my face doesn’t care.

I angle toward the front like I only came for the smell of old books and regret. The door leaks another cool draft across my ankles. Gary’s pen taps once against the ledger and stills. The aftershave bite lifts, paper dust settling behind it. I can feel the ward behind the counter vibrating—subtle, steady, a cat purring to itself.

“You find what you were looking for?” he asks at last, tone so even it might be a recording.

I don’t flinch. My mouth curves before I decide it will. “Not yet.”

A beat. His gaze ticks—barely—past my shoulder toward STAFF ONLY, then returns like it never left. Unspoken warning. Or a promise that he saw nothing and will remember everything.

“Try the poetry wall,” he says, like we didn’t already have that conversation.

“Mm.” I let it register as noncommittal and drift that direction for three distracted steps, enough to sell the lie. The satchel strap presses a clean line into my collarbone; beneath the leather, the false bottom rides light and innocent.

On my way to the door, I adjust the scarf like I’m hiding a yawn, then lift one sleeve to press the cuff seam flat—grounding the jitter in my hands. The bell still doesn’t ring when I reach the threshold. Of course it doesn’t.

Outside air edges colder, autumn damp and neon sheen waiting to swallow me. Behind me, the ledger page turns.

He didn’t stop me.

But he will remember me.

The wrought-iron streetlamp hums as I pass beneath it. Not electric—Veil light, the cool kind that feels like moonwater poured over skin. The old glyphs along its base give a tiny shiver, like they’ve tasted me now and want a second sip.

My glamour loosens.

Not a spectacle—an intimacy. Hair warms at the ends, ember-glow rippling through dull auburn like someone breathed on coals. My eyes slide toward starlit brown for a single heartbeat—gold and silver threading the dark. Skin takes on copper-sunset at the high points of my cheekbones. The world sharpens, then softens—quiet, private, mine.

And gods, I want her to see it.

Cassie, tilting her chin under this same cool light, not looking away because she never does when I wish she would.

The snap-back is quick. Heat spikes in my cheeks as the glamour seals; the ember in my hair tucks itself down to respectable auburn, my eyes human-green again. The one-beat tell lingers—warmth across my cheekbones that doesn’t fade as fast as it should, a breath that misted and didn’t.

No one’s on the street.

Still, I keep walking.

One block. Two. The Veil light fades behind me, replaced by ordinary neon and rain.

At the corner I lean into the brick and finally exhale. That’s when I smell it—singed wool—and see the tiny smoke-thread curling from my sweater’s cuff where it grazed the seal earlier. Not flame, not yet—just a darkened edge, heat holding on where it shouldn’t.

I pinch the hem between my fingers until the smoke dies. It doesn’t hurt.

That’s the part that scares me.

I meant to keep moving.

But the longer I stand here, the more everything stacks at once—the lock giving under my hand, the parchment warm against my ribs, Gary’s voice:

“Find what you were looking for?”

“Not yet.”

I lied. Beautifully. Flawlessly.

Court poison with a smile.

I hate how easy it was.

I push off the wall and cut down the narrow between two apartment stacks—the shortcut to the checkpoint. The alley tightens the farther it goes, brick closing in until it feels like someone’s hands at my temples. Autumn rain left the ground slick, but the brick still keeps the day’s heat, breathing it back in damp waves that fog the edge of my kohl.

Spray paint hangs sharp in the air—fresh. Under it, the sticky-sweet of spilled citrus soda goes to sugar on the concrete. My brain does what it always does: borrows the scent and gives it her voice. Frosted citrus. Cassie. Don’t.

My footsteps fall in time with my heartbeat: step-thrum, step-thrum, the satchel tap at my hip counting with me. The parchment hum is soft, muffled by the false bottom, but once I notice it I can’t un-hear it. I hook pinky to ring finger to stop the tap wanting to start and smooth my cuff seam once, twice, until my hands behave.

Halfway down, the alley kinks. A phoenix rides the bend—spray-lacquered wings flaring across brick in molten oranges and golds, feather-edges haloed by rain. Heat crawls up my forearms like recognition. Mine, says something under my skin, and I hate that it’s right.

Voices ahead—low, breathy laughter. For a second, the echo overlaps with Cassie’s pep-rally laugh in my head: clean, wicked, the sound she makes when she’s already two moves ahead of me. It lands too close, like a hand on the back of my neck.

Locker room memory bites—tile cold under bare feet, the cramped space of bodies and mirrors and her too-near voice: Quinveil, eyes up. The flush that crawled up my throat then is the same heat that sits there now.

“I don’t like girls,” I whisper into the air, the words thin and papery against my mouth. Ninth time. It feels like writing on wet glass.

I keep going.

The alley narrows one more notch and the mural’s wings widen until they’re all I can see, color reflecting in the puddles like fire caught under water. The spray paint is so fresh it still throws a chemical shine; the citrus hangs brighter here, like someone just cracked a can.

The laughter resolves into two girls ahead, a rustle against brick. I slow, heartbeat and steps falling perfectly in sync, and the corridor of heat and color funnels me straight toward them—and the part of me I keep trying to outrun.

Two girls. Pressed against the mural. Lips locked like they forgot the world has edges.

Velvet jacket. Gold-ring braids. Radiant. Effortless. Unbothered.

Behind them, the phoenix sprawls across brick—orange into red into gold—the same geometry as the fire glyph on my bracelet, feathering into heat where rain beads on paint. Neon from a half-dead sign buzzes nearby—an insect hum that syncs to my pulse.

I stop. My breath catches and doesn’t come back right away.

Of course they can.

They’re not princesses.

No rules hammered into their skin. No crown they’re not allowed to want. No mother measuring them for usefulness instead of love.

They can want.

They can have.

They don’t flinch.

For half a second one of their faces turns toward me and my treacherous brain puts Cassie’s face there—chin tipped, mouth soft, cool eyes warmed by the kind of wanting you don’t apologize for.

“I don’t like—” The lie doesn’t even make it out. It collapses in my throat, a label peeling off in damp air.

Heat rises.

Not anger. Not adrenaline. Something truer. It flares down my arm, blooming under the scorched wool like a second heartbeat. My palm warms as if the mural were a hearth and I’m standing too close. Solvent-sharp paint bites my nose; the neon’s buzz thickens; the brick radiates stored sun like it remembered afternoon just for me.

I want.

The words land with the same certainty as a blade set on a table.

Not general. Not theoretical.

I want her.

The admission hits like oxygen. My magic answers—not bright, not loud—just true, a low thrum that rounds my shoulders from the inside. Hair along my neck embers a shade warmer; skin along my cheekbones holds a copper-sunset warmth that doesn’t belong to the weather. No show. No spectacle. Just the private reality of it.

I clamp my hand into a fist before the heat can climb, crushing it back into smoke. It bites my palm and leaves the sick-sweet scent of leather and truth. The girls never look at me. They laugh, breathless, and vanish into the deeper dark, wrapped around each other like the world never told them no.

The phoenix keeps burning.

So do I.

A single spark skates across my vision—more sensation than sight—and my glamour gives a one-beat shimmer under the skin, the same kind of quiet shift that will haunt me every time Cassie stands too close later. The air feels thin, like I’ve stepped over a line I can’t uncross and the city noticed.

I stare at the wings until my heartbeat stops trying to outrun itself.

Then I breathe. And keep walking.

I keep walking.

Past the phoenix’s last feather, past the citrus-sticky puddle, past the part of the alley where the brick leans close enough to hear a secret and pretend it isn’t there. The city opens back into ordinary neon and rain.

Three blocks to where I left the coupe. Autumn air slicks my cheeks; burnt ozone still clings to my skin, threaded with spray paint and the ghost of leather warmed by magic. When I spot my car tucked between a delivery van and a rusted mail drop, my knees want to unlock in gratitude.

Fob. Beep. Dome light blooms soft. The cabin smells like damp leather and the sweetness of the hand soap I hate from the estate garage. I slide in, seat cool through tights, then warmer as the engine turns over and purrs.

A song finds the radio—Dominveil pop with glass-bell synths and clever, cutting lyrics. The chorus hits like sprinting in rain. My brain helpfully stitches her into it: Cassie’s laugh in the aisle between us in the school library, her knuckle grazing mine as she takes a page I’m holding. It’s ridiculous how loud that small contact is in my memory.

“I don’t like girls,” I whisper to the windshield—last time—and then I shake my head, because the lie tastes wrong in my mouth. “But… I do like Cassie.”

There. A soft admission to no one, landing in the car like a dropped coin.

I breathe, and drive.

Silverlake falls away; the river warehouses give way to nightlife. The Howling Moon Tavern sign—neon wolf, one eye burned out—buzzes to life as I slip into the back lot. Rain needles the asphalt; the tavern’s back awning throws a thin shelter over crates and a dented door.

Naomi’s there, hood down, white hair damp and clinging at the nape. She looks like she’s been part of the brick since the city poured it. Boots planted. Arms folded. Violet eyes catch my headlights and don’t blink.

I kill the engine. The sudden quiet rings.

When I step out, the night steals the car’s heat. The ozone on my skin lifts like it’s finally allowed to leave. I shoulder the satchel and step under the awning.

Naomi doesn’t smile. “You alive?”

“Last I checked.”

I reach to sling the satchel deeper under cover; the motion pulls my sleeve back. Naomi’s gaze drops, sharp as a blade catching light. She notices the cracked seam across my glove and the off-axis way I’m holding my wrist that I hadn’t even clocked yet. She doesn’t ask me to prove anything. She just angles closer, winter-scented—frosted pine, snowmelt—and takes my hand.

Her palm is cool. Mine is not.

The glove peels with a soft tear. The red, glossy burn at my center-palm shows the seal’s bite like a ghost. My glamour holds—enough to smooth the flush at my cheekbones, to keep the copper-sunset warmth from reading as too Fae—but it can’t do anything about smell. Naomi clocks the ozone thread and the faint sage that clings where wax met skin.

“Let me,” she says. No push, no edge. Just fact.

She works a roll of gauze from her pocket and sets to it. The tavern’s back light flickers; rain ticks steady on the awning. Her fingers move with practiced economy, cool as river stone. When my three-beat tap tries to start, she shifts her stance so her knee presses light against mine—grounding—and I feel stupidly safer for it.

You’re up to something, Cassie would say in that voice that’s both tease and indictment. The same reading lives in Naomi’s gaze, but it lands different—protective, not performative. I wonder, uselessly, if Cassie would touch my wrist like this—careful, competent—if she’d tell me to hold still and mean it.

Naomi ties the knot snug, tucks the tail. The cold of her palm over the gauze eats the heat from my skin; the burn throbs once, then quiets like it decided to listen.

“What happened?” she asks, voice low enough the rain could pretend she didn’t.

A hundred images stack behind my eyes: the humming door, the breath of the lock, the parchment’s thrum now muffled in the false bottom pressing a line into my collarbone, the phoenix wings, the girls, the way my glamour shimmered under the streetlamp, the way I said her name without saying it.

“Complicated,” I say, which is not an answer and exactly the truth.

Naomi nods like that’s sufficient for now. “We’ll sort the simple parts first.”

Her hand lingers one breath longer over mine, then lets go before it can turn into pity. She tips her chin toward the door. “Inside. Kess is running interference if anyone asks why the wolf sign keeps shorting.”

I huff something that wants to be a laugh. The neon wolf buzzes; rain smells like clean slate. The confession I left in the car sits where I put it, heavy and real.

I follow Naomi in, bandaged hand tucked close, and let the warmth swallow the worst of the night.

“I got something,” I clarify, quieter. “Something real.”

Naomi doesn’t praise me. Doesn’t scold me, either. She just breathes in slow and says, “Good.”

The tavern’s back room smells like old wood and spilled hops. Heat coils from the radiator under the window; rain needles the glass. My satchel strap presses a clean line into my collarbone, the false bottom sitting innocent against my hip like it isn’t hiding a sin.

I almost ask her then—about me, about girls, about the rules burned into skin. I don’t. The question sticks like ash on my tongue.

So I pull the satchel into my lap. My fingers find the seam, lift the panel. The parchment slides into my hand with the soft rasp of fabric against dry leaf. The edges are rough, not machine-clean; the paper carries a faint iron-gall ink tang that lifts into my nose, old and metallic. It’s heavier than it should be.

That’s the trick of power: make light things feel heavy so you’re the only one strong enough to carry them.

Naomi’s gaze flicks to it, then to me. Her face doesn’t change, but I feel the weight of her attention like a blade laid flat against my throat.

“You went into the basement,” she says. Not a question.

I nod. “Sealed. Triple-glyph. Dome like a shrine.”

She holds out her hand.

I hesitate. Then lay the letter across her palm.

The wax seal is half-burned where my glyph kissed it open, the tri-mark impressed clean enough to cut your thumb: fire, identity, silence. Naomi turns the page once, checking the edges like a soldier checks a wound. Her violet eyes narrow a fraction. She unfolds it carefully along the old creases.

The paper scrapes softly as it opens. The ink smell kicks again. She reads.

Then stops.

Her jaw flexes. “Shit.”

“What?”

“It’s not orders. Not to the Shroud. Not directly.”

“But?”

Her eyes lift to mine. No anger. Something worse. Understanding. “It’s a pass. A permission slip. Someone asked for intervention—protection, resources—and your mother’s answer is silence.”

In my head, Cassie takes the page and reads it out loud in that clean, mocking voice she uses on school board press releases, every word knifed into perfect shape. Classic power play, she’d say, mouth tilted. Say no while meaning yes—so the mess belongs to everyone but you.

My stomach hollows.

“That’s it?” I ask, though I can see the whole of it in the few lines Naomi’s finger hovers over. “She didn’t say anything?”

Naomi tips the page so I can see. Seara’s script is as precise as a scalpel, the exact economy she uses when she’s ending a conversation by pretending she never started it.

Do not involve me. I will not interfere. You do what you must—just keep it off my lands.

Signed: S. Firebrand

The words sit heavy, more metal than ink.

“She knew,” I whisper.

“She’s always known.” Naomi folds the letter back into thirds along the same weary creases and hands it to me like it belongs to me now—as if weight transfers with ownership.

It’s not treason. Not a bargain you can hold up to a courtroom light.

It’s worse. It’s a choice. A boundary drawn in blood. A queen deciding the fire can burn as long as it stops at her line.

Would Cassie see it the same way? I picture the exact angle of her chin when she decides a thing is ugly and true.

The paper bites my fingertips. I slide it back into the false bottom; the seam kisses shut.

“I still want to fight,” I say.

Naomi doesn’t warm. She doesn’t chill. “Then keep it. You stole it; you decide what it means.” She nudges the satchel with two fingers—light, permission without push. “And Mira?”

I meet her gaze.

“Don’t carry it alone.”

Naomi squeezes my bandaged hand once—cool, steady—then tips her chin toward the door. “Text when you’re safe.”

“Yeah.” It comes out softer than I mean it to.

Rain needles the back lot. The coupe’s cabin is a small warm planet; the neon wolf blinks once like a warning and lets me go. I drive. Silverlake peels into river-dark, then into the clean, private stretch up to the Firebrand gates. The wardstone reads me; the ironwork sighs open like it always knew I’d come back burnt and breathing.

Garage. Elevator. Hall. My suite unlocks on the first touch.

The glamor drops at the threshold—quiet, intimate. My shoulders fall an inch I didn’t know I was holding. I strip the rain-heavy sweater and toss it over a chair; the room still smells like burnt ozone and the ghost of sage from the seal, but under that, at the collar of the blouse I wore earlier today, I swear there’s a frosted-citrus ghost I didn’t notice before.

I pretend I don’t bury my nose in the fabric. I pretend the answer isn’t already in my lungs.

I pull on the oversized graphic tee—thin from too many washes, hem fraying—and sit on the edge of the bed until my pulse stops arguing with me. The parchment goes to the vanity, still folded. The bracelet slides under my pillow where it always sleeps. The suite is too quiet.

I take out the diary. It’s purple this time and part of me is amused that it’s always changing it’s appearance but another part of me hates that it gets to be this little chaos book while I’m stuck pretending to be some perfect princess.

Baretree 30, 20231

The quiet feels like pressure on my ribs and I can’t decide if I earned it or if it’s a punishment. My hand still smells like burnt ozone and old sage; the skin in my palm is glossy where the seal kissed me back. Naomi wrapped it without a lecture—cool hands, clean gauze, one question that felt like a place to set the truth when I’m not ready to hold it alone. I said “complicated.” It is.

I hate her. I like her. Both sentences sit in my mouth and taste like metal and rain. Cassie Fairborn with the blazer sharp enough to cut, with that voice like honey poured over knives, with eyes that peel back paint and leave the grain. I hate that she reads me like a sport and I like that she chooses mercy instead of leverage. I hate how my breath obeys her hands—pinky to mine, knee pressure just enough—and I like that it makes the static go quiet. I hate that I wanted her under the Veil-lamp tonight when my hair went ember at the ends and my eyes went star-dark for a heartbeat. I like the part of me that wanted her not to look away.

I am not supposed to want anything. That’s the part no one writes down, the arithmetic done in quiet rooms: bloodlines balanced like ledgers, Summer’s heat portioned out like an inheritance, treaties with the word heirs baked into them like iron. Not even the heir and still they do the womb-math on my name. Which house needs mending. Which Court wants my body to sign where my mouth won’t. A solution looking for a problem to fix. A door other people lock and unlock. I am tired of being arithmetic with legs.

So I told myself a neat sentence because neat sentences keep the numbers behaved. I don’t like girls. Princes fit the columns. Easy. Clean. Useful. Then two girls were kissing under the phoenix on Brightwater—orange into red into gold, the same geometry as the mark on my bracelet—and my chest opened like a door I didn’t give permission to. Heat rose. Not panic. Not anger. True. I made a fist until the smell of leather and truth replaced it. It didn’t hurt. That’s the part that terrifies me: right can feel like relief inside the fear.

I don’t like girls.

I like Cassie.

There it is. I wrote it. The ceiling didn’t cave. The world didn’t end. Only my excuses did, a little.

The shop was a set; the basement was a cathedral shoved into the bones of a building that shouldn’t fit it. The door at the end of the staff hall breathed when the bracelet touched it, like it remembered my name and decided to let me pass. The parchment hummed in my hands the way the shard does when storms argue with the Veil. And the letter—Mother’s neat little guillotine of a sentence—Do not involve me. I will not interfere. You do what you must—just keep it off my lands. Power pretending to be neutral; a queen who will let the city burn as long as the fire stops at her garden wall. The same math that turns people into borders. The same math that turns me into a clause.

What am I if I refuse to be a treaty. What am I if I want something that doesn’t reconcile a single column. Seventeen, half-fae, masked to survive, messy enough to be real. I am allowed to want and still be afraid of what wanting costs. I am allowed to hate her and like her in the same breath, to hold both and not die of it.

My palm throbs in time with my heartbeat. The bracelet is warm under the pillow like a small obedient sun. The letter sits folded where I left it and pretends it weighs nothing. I know better. I know what it costs to carry a truth you’re not supposed to have.

I like Cassie. I hate that I like Cassie. I like that I hate it less every time I admit it.

If that makes me broken, then maybe broken is just another word for unarranged. Maybe I am a pattern no one planned for. Maybe that’s the only way out of the math.

The pen rolls off the bed and disappears under the vanity. I don’t go after it. My throat is too tight to swallow, too raw to bargain with.

The mirror waits like a dare.

I cross the floor barefoot—tile cold, air too warm—and plant myself in front of the glass.

Unglamored: red-gold hair catching every stray light, eyes starlit brown with gold and silver flecks, ear tips not trying to be anything but themselves. Heat lifts from my skin like I’ve been standing too close to a hearth. The room feels smaller around this face. Larger, too.

— she saw this on the bus and didn’t look away —

I breathe once. Snap the glamor on.

Glamored: hair dulls to good-girl ginger, eyes obedient green, ears soft and rounded, skin cooling by a degree. The temperature drops like someone cracked a window. Gooseflesh prickles my forearms.

Mira Quinveil. Palatable. Human-enough. Cheer-team-enough.

— this is the version that fits in hallways and yearbooks —

I hold it for a count of three. Off.

Heat blooms back across my cheeks—one-beat tell, rude and honest. My heartbeat stutters like it can’t pick a rhythm.

On.

Off.

On.

It becomes a metronome I didn’t ask for. Every shift needles my skin—cool, warm, cool—until it’s the only thing I can feel. My eyes burn; my hands shake; I brace my palms on the vanity and watch the girl who keeps changing learn nothing from it.

“Which one is real?” I ask the mirror.

Neither answers.

— if you were here would you still hold my eyes like that —

I try on smiles. The human one sits wrong, a sticker peeling at the edges. The court face looks like a crime in good lighting.

On.

Off.

On.

The compulsion chews at me—self-punishment wrapped in precision. If I can get the shift clean enough, maybe the noise in my head will stop. It doesn’t.

— don’t look away, Cassie —

I press my fingertip to each tell I can’t scrub out: the scar above my right brow from the marble bannister at ten, the sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of my nose, the little heat-glow that refuses to behave. I think about the locker room and how I twist to hide my magic-scarred shoulder while the other girls toss their shirts and laugh like gravity will never find them. I think about her standing two sinks over, eyes like scalpels, and I hate her and I want her and I hate that wanting more.

On.

Off.

On.

My chest hurts. Not fire—emptiness shaped like it.

Mira, I scribble on the vanity notepad without looking, the letters slanting like they’re trying to run. You are not a treaty. You are not a ledger.

Unglamored again. The heat steadies. For a heartbeat I look like someone born of summer and night who owes no one an apology. My throat climbs into my mouth.

— would you call this beautiful like a dare —

“I just want to be real,” I whisper, and don’t know which version I mean.

I let the glamor fall and leave it down.

The room breathes.

I crawl back to the bed on uncooperative knees. The diary lies half-buried in the blanket, spine begging to be punished. I drag it close and flip to a blank page I don’t deserve.

I like boys I like boys I like—

The pen bites a trench and stalls. I cross it out so hard the paper peels.

But I can’t stop thinking about her.

Cassie Fairborn.

I hate you I like you I hate that I like you.

Ink feathers where my hand shakes. I press my knuckles into my sternum until the urge to break something looks elsewhere.

Rain threads the open window—clean, insistent. The city hums like it’s trying not to wake me.

I slide under the blanket and roll to my side. The bracelet—my small obedient sun—rests cool against my unburned wrist, the tiny fire glyph kissing my skin through the pulse. I hook my pinky to my ring finger and hold. The pillow is cold under my cheek; it smells like laundry and the tail end of storm.

“Who am I,” I breathe into the dark, “if I’m not the equation?”

The room doesn’t answer. The letter on the vanity pretends it never weighed anything. The burn in my palm throbs in time with my heart and then, mercifully, not at all.

Mira, says a voice in my head that is not mine and is unmistakably hers.

It lands like a hand at the back of my neck—steadying, infuriating, true.

I shut my eyes around it. I keep my bracelet hand at my chest. I let the ache take up the space it wants.

Tonight I don’t solve. I don’t fight. I don’t run.

I just lie there, quiet as I can, and burn where no one can see.