They caught him where he wanted to be caught.
On the eastern parapet.
Under the blind gargoyle with the cracked lip.
Shouts split the air.
Bolts hissed like snakes tasting blood.
Hands dragged him down.
Ryven smiled. He let the smile be seen.
Let them think they'd won a race he'd never tried to run.
Iron circled his wrists.
Time circled his ribs.
The clock in his veins kept talking.
They marched him through door after door.
Each ward burned his skin like a question.
He answered each by not answering.
House arrest!-they said.
In his own room.
In his own palace.
In his own kingdom.
Hilarious.
The room watched him.
Windows barred. Curtains heavy.
A silver bowl of water on the table—clear, tasteless, safe.
He didn't drink.
Safe was a word for fools.
A soft knock scraped the wood.
Three. Pause. Two.
Morthen.
"Come in." Ryven said, because nothing about tonight had been subtle.
Morthen entered—sharp, young, dangerous.
Ink on his fingers.
Black hair bound by cord.
Eyes like knives, polished on secrets he shouldn't know.
No rings.
No titles.
A hidden blade where others hid excuses.
He shut the door with a heel and a sigh.
"I heard you tried to run to Morbrak last night,"His mouth curved. "Idiot."
Ryven let the word land.
He liked how it sounded, spoken by the one person allowed to say it.
"They were going to refuse you,"
Morthen went on."You knew it. But you walked into the Hall to be denied. To them, you're not a king. You're the crown they left rotting on the floor."
"Good." Ryven said.
Morthen blinked. "Good?"
"They think me finished. The underestimated live longer.People don't bother killing what they've already buried."
He snorted. "Council hates you. The Fourth Wing laughs at you. The Second Wing counts your minutes. The Third Wing weighs your worth and finds it light. The Fifth Wing—"
"—measures where to bury me," Ryven finished.
He remembered the ring on Althar's finger—motionless, like an eye that had chosen never to open again.
He remembered the flinch no one else saw when he said Morbrak.
He remembered the word home flicking like a blade across six faces.
He kept those memories where he kept his knives.
Morthen folded his arms. "So… why put your neck on their table just to hear them say no?"
"Because I wanted to watch their hands."
Ryven stepped to the window, stared through his reflection at the night. "Mouths lie. Fingers betray their masters without meaning to."
"You went to the dungeons too," Morthen said, like tossing a stone into deep water to hear how long before it splashes.
"Someone told me.He said you chased a ghost in gold chains."
"Someone talks too much." Ryven said, and did not look away from the dark.
He thought of the woman's eyes—green with their teeth hidden.
He thought of her whisper:
Six wings. One is broken. One is home.
He thought of the map, the red wound of Morbrak, the way the chains had sung when the torch stuttered.
Morthen's voice dropped. "You're trusting a madwoman?"
"I'm trusting her details," Ryven said.
"She knew the oath the way dead priests used to say it, not the way we polish it now."
Morthen's jaw tightened.
"So, you believe the Child of Darkness breathes. You believe the curse has teeth. And you believe Morbrak is more than a stain on a map."
"I believe I'm running out of minutes," Ryven said.
"When time is a knife, you grip the blade. And you bleed before anyone else dares touch it."
Morthen's gaze flicked to the door, to the wax, to the corners where shadows crouched.
"House arrest looks good on you," he said dryly. "Almost regal."
"I tried to leave because leaving was the quietest way to take a measurement," Ryven said.
"Who catches me. How fast. From which wall. Which orders arrive first. Which seal is warm when it should be cold."
Morthen's mouth tilted. "And?"
"And the eastern parapet sings with watchers, not soldiers," Ryven said. "Two rotations. One new, one old. The old one doesn't look down. The new one looks too long."
Morthen said nothing.
Which was how Ryven knew he understood.
"They don't consider you the First Wing," Morrthen said finally.
"Not really. Not now. They've pushed you to the rim, Ry. If they could, they'd scrape you off."
"Then let them," Ryven said softly.
"People at the center forget the rim has teeth."
Morthen studied him—sharp, worried, loyal in the way a blade is loyal to its owner: useful, honest, dangerous to the careless.
"You don't care about the heir," he said.
"Or your bloodline. Or the throne."
Ryven's smile was thin enough to cut.
"I care about something older."
"Revenge." Morthen said. It wasn't a question.
"Call it arithmetic," Ryven said. "Debts keep books."
Silence stretched.
Beyond the glass, the city turned in its sleep.
Somewhere, a bell forgot how many times to ring.
Morthen moved first. He plucked a quill from Ryven's desk, tapped it twice against his palm.
"What do you need?"
"A list I won't give you," Ryven said, and the apology in his voice was real.
"You'll get the wrong kind of loyal if you know too much."
Morthen's laugh was quick and void of joy. "You don't trust anyone."
"I trust you not to die stupid," Ryven said. "I also trust me to make that difficult."
Morthen rolled his eyes. "Wonderful."
Ryven took the map from the bottom drawer, the one with the false back.
Folded. Creased. Bleeding red where Morbrak lay like a mouth.
Morthen's gaze caught on the stain. "You're still going."
"Of course." Ryven said.
"How?" Morthen asked.
"The same way I left that night." Ryven said. "Loud."
"Then quieter."
Morthen exhaled. "You're going to let them catch you again."
"Maybe," Ryven said. "Maybe not."
He slipped a small, warm stone from his pocket. The pulse answered his skin—steady, ancient, patient.
He closed his fist around it and imagined ticking.
"Ry," Morthen said, voice lower. "You can't bleed for a riddle."
"I already am." Ryven said.
They looked at each other for the length of a heartbeat held underwater.
Then Morthen nodded once—the kind of nod that meant I hate this and I'm in.
He headed for the door.
"Don't try the latch." Ryven said.
Morthen's hand froze a breath before contact. "Trap?"
"A little trick," Ryven said. "for the wings' true color. Let them sit in their own pride."
Morthen smiled despite himself. "I'll bring you news that isn't already in your head."
"Bring me silence," Ryven said. "It talks louder."
Morthen left without touching anything else.
The lock drank the click.
The room exhaled.
Ryven stood still.
Still as a grave before the first spade.
He counted the guards' steps beyond the door.
Five left. Five right. Pause. Cough. Whisper. Coin.
Patterns wrote themselves like music.
He crossed to the desk.
The silver bowl watched him.
The window breathed.
And there—on the wood—
a letter.
That hadn't been there before.
No seal.
No crest.
No dust in the fold-lines.
Thin paper.
Edges frayed, ash-soft—
as if pulled back from a fire too late,
from a flame that almost won.
His pulse climbed his throat.
Slow. Careful.
Fast left fingerprints.
Two fingers lifted the page.
Ink. Five words.
Black as bruises:
You went below. Didn't you?
Iron filled his mouth.
The taste of memory.
The damp of the dungeon.
He turned the page.
Blank.
Turned it back.
Not blank anymore.
Words bled upward,
seared awake by the heat of his skin:
You saw her.
The room shrank.
The clock inside his veins hammered the bars.
Someone knew.
Not just the dungeon—
but where his eyes had gone.
Which pronoun cut deepest.
He placed the letter down.
Did not sit.
Chairs belonged to men who trusted the floor to stay. He trusted nothing that carried weight.
Closer to the candle now.
The paper breathed.
Brown ink swam out, slow and secret,
words only fire could wake:
We are not all blind, First Wing.Morbrak waits. Broken things bite hardest.
The candle guttered.
Then steadied.
Ryven's smile came.
Small. Sharp.
Nothing safe about it.
He folded the letter.
Once.
Twice.
A third time—
until it could vanish inside a sleeve.
He turned to the east.
Dawn had not yet remembered its lines.
The warm stone pressed against his wrist.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
"Good," he whispered to the window that listened.
"Let's begin."
And the wall—faithful, patient, treacherous—did not answer.