The first bomb was tucked behind a crate of citrus fruits.
That detail stuck with me — the absurdity of it. Something designed to tear through human bodies, hidden behind oranges. Like the world had a sense of humor nobody asked for.
Bella found it first.
She crouched low between two vendor stalls, pretending to adjust the strap on her sandal. I drifted past her like a stranger, pausing to study a display of ceramic wind chimes, keeping my back to the alley. My HUD pulled up the device signature the moment she activated her lens — a faint orange outline bled through the crate in my peripheral vision.
"Left wire," I said quietly. Low enough that only her earpiece caught it.
A pause.
"Done."
She straightened, smoothed her skirt, and drifted back into the crowd. When she passed me, our shoulders almost touched. She grabbed a candied fig from the nearest vendor without breaking stride and pressed it into my hand as she went.
I stared at the fig for a second.
Then ate it.
It was good, actually.
We moved like that for the next two hours — in and out of the current of the festival, never quite together, never quite apart. Two people who looked like they were enjoying themselves. Who smiled at street performers and got jostled by families and paused at stalls selling small carved animals.
I bought her a fox.
I don't know why. My hand just reached for it, and then she was standing beside me with the sun behind her hair, and it seemed obvious.
She looked at it for a long moment. Her expression did something I couldn't name.
"You collecting these for me?" she said finally.
"Consider it field equipment."
"It's a stuffed fox, Marx."
"For morale."
She tucked it under her arm. Didn't give it back.
Another device was near the main stage.
Harder. More exposed. The kind of placement that told me whoever built these knew what they were doing — they'd chosen locations with maximum crowd density, maximum chaos potential. They weren't amateurs playing at danger.
They were sending a message.
I stayed back, running interference. While Bella slipped through the crowd toward the stage scaffolding, I killed the nearby surveillance loop on a twelve-second rotation, bought her a clean window, and guided her through the scaffolding structure using the drone I'd deployed low and dark along the roof-line.
"Eleven seconds," I murmured.
"I know."
"Eight."
"I know, Marx."
She cut it with four to spare.
When she reappeared at the edge of the crowd, she looked like she'd just been watching the dancers. Effortless. Unbothered. The only thing that gave her away was the way she exhaled once, sharp and controlled, when she reached my side.
I handed her a cup of something warm from a nearby stall.
She took it without looking at me.
But her fingers brushed mine around the cup.
And she didn't move away.
The third device found us first.
I picked up the signature on my HUD — a mobile unit, moving — and had exactly four seconds to pull Bella sideways into a side street before the drone it was attached to swept through the main thoroughfare.
We ended up pressed against a wall in a narrow alley, her back to the stone, my arm across her, bodies close enough that I could hear her breathing recalibrate in real time.
The drone passed.
Neither of us moved.
"Mobile unit," she said, voice low. "They upgraded."
"Someone knows we're here."
Her eyes came up to mine.
Not panic. Not anger.
Something sharper and quieter than both.
"Then we need to move fast," she said. "Third device is forty meters ahead. If they're already deploying active surveillance—"
"—they're preparing for contingencies."
"Which means they're not expecting to succeed cleanly."
The implications settled between us like smoke.
"They don't care if the bombs go off," I said slowly.
"They care that something happens," she finished. "Whether or not those bombs go off is secondary."
It was a distraction. The whole thing — the festival, the devices, the choreographed threat — was designed to pull eyes and bodies to one location. To make someone move. To flush someone out.
I thought about the overhead briefing images. The grainy footage. The way the mission had landed in our lenses exactly on time, like a gift.
Like something that wanted to be found.
"Bella."
"Don't." Her voice was quiet. "Not here. Finish the job first."
She stepped out of the alley before I could argue.
I followed.
The third device came apart cleanly, professionally, and without incident.
Then Bella's foot gave out.
I heard the sharp hiss of breath before I saw the limp — the way her weight shifted wrong on the new leather sandals that had been rubbing against her heel for hours. She caught herself on a railing, and the movement was so controlled that most people wouldn't have noticed.
I noticed.
"How bad?" I asked, keeping my voice level.
"It's fine."
"How bad?"
She shot me a look that could've stripped paint.
"Blisters," she said flatly. "Happy?"
"Thrilled. Can you walk?"
"I said it's—"
"I heard what you said." I crouched before she could finish the sentence. "Get on."
A long pause from above my head.
"Marx—"
"We're in a crowd, your cover's half-blown, and limping is more conspicuous than this. Get on."
Another pause.
And then her weight settled across my back — careful at first, like she was trying not to commit to it. Her arms slipped over my shoulders. I straightened, adjusting her, and for a moment neither of us said anything.
The festival swirled around us. Lanterns swayed. Music swelled from somewhere distant, something low and melodic that rose and fell like breathing.
She was lighter than I expected. Or maybe not lighter — more like she fit differently than I'd anticipated. Like the way a sentence lands when you finally say it out loud.
"You're going to pull a muscle," she said eventually.
"Probably."
"And you'll be insufferable about it."
"Absolutely."
I felt the quiet sound she made against my shoulder. Not quite a laugh. Something smaller and more private than that.
We found a patch of grass near the edge of the festival grounds where the crowd thinned and the lanterns gave way to real stars. I set her down, settled beside her, and without really thinking about it, took her foot and started working the tension out of the joint.
She went very still.
"You don't have to—"
"I know."
She didn't pull away.
Overhead, the first fireworks cracked open against the dark — gold and red blooming wide and dissolving into sparks that drifted down like slow, burning snow. The crowd erupted somewhere behind us.
Bella tilted her head back.
Her profile against the fireworks was the kind of thing I was going to think about later when I was trying not to think about it.
"Do you ever wonder," she said quietly, "what this would look like if it was just normal?"
"What do you mean?"
"This." She gestured vaguely at the sky, at the festival, at the space between us. "If we were just two people who met in school and came to Sunfire because it sounded fun."
I thought about it honestly.
"We'd probably still argue," I said.
"Obviously."
"You'd still have bought me that fig without asking."
A pause.
"You ate it," she pointed out.
"I did."
The fireworks bloomed again — blue this time, vast and silent for a half-second before the sound hit. Her shoulder pressed lightly against mine. I didn't move. She didn't either.
"I think," she said, very quietly, "it would look exactly like this."
I didn't answer.
I wasn't sure I needed to.
We stayed until the last firework burned out.
Walking back, her foot was better — not healed, but manageable — and she kept her hand through my arm with the casualness of someone who had decided not to make it a thing. So I didn't make it a thing either.
The streets were still full. Lantern light on everything. Festival vendors packing down slowly, music drifting out from late-night stalls.
We passed a photographer still working the crowds. One of those people who captures moments that don't know they're being captured.
I didn't hear the click.
We were halfway up the stairs to our block when she stopped, one hand on the railing, and turned to look at me. Her expression had shifted slightly — that soft openness from the grass replaced by something more measured. More careful.
"The bombs," she said.
"I know."
"They were a setup."
"I know."
"Which means someone wanted us there together." Her eyes held mine. "Someone wanted to see how we operate."
The implication sat between us like a third presence.
Someone was watching us. Had been watching us. Had built a mission specifically designed to draw us out together in daylight, in public, traceable.
"TRAD assigned this," I said.
"TRAD passes on assignments. He doesn't originate them."
I thought about that.
"The Princess," I said finally.
Bella's jaw tightened slightly. Not fear — recognition.
"Get some rest," she said. "I have a feeling tomorrow's going to ask things of us that tonight didn't."
She turned and went to her door.
I stood in the hallway a moment longer.
The stuffed fox was still under her arm when she closed the door.