Mireya came back inside someone else's sight.
Low angle. Knees on stone. Guards' boots too close. Aderic's coat hem perfectly clean, like he didn't live in the same world as blood.
Stellan's breathing was loud in her skull.
Not just heard—felt. A rough pull in the ribs. A tremor in the hands being held behind him.
Aderic crouched in front of Stellan, voice soft as a confession.
"You're strong," the Prince murmured. "And you're loyal. I can work with both."
Stellan's jaw tightened. He didn't answer.
Mireya tried to move. Tried to blink herself back into her own body.
The bond held her where she was—behind his eyes, strapped to his perspective like punishment.
Aderic's gaze shifted slightly, like he knew she was watching.
"You too," he said, quietly. "I know you're awake, Vesper."
Mireya's stomach went cold.
Stellan's head snapped up a fraction. "Don't call her—"
Aderic's smile didn't change. "Her true name matters to the work."
He straightened and nodded to the rune pillar.
A guard pulled a different lever.
Not the sonic device this time.
This one made the room's hum… stutter.
Like a heartbeat missing a beat.
Stellan jerked.
Mireya felt it like someone had yanked a hook through the center of his chest.
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered—Mireya saw it in the way the world shifted, then snapped back wrong. The runes didn't glow like they had. They skipped.
Stellan gasped, low and involuntary. "What did you do."
Aderic's tone stayed mild. "I turned off your advantage."
Stellan's Pulse flared—then dropped.
Flared—then dropped.
A broken heartbeat.
Mireya's head spun with it, because she was riding the same channel.
Stellan swallowed hard. "Pulse disruptor."
Aderic's brows rose in polite approval. "You know the name."
Stellan tried to lift his gaze, to read the room.
His eyes weren't blind.
But his gift—his map of magic—was glitching.
Every few seconds the chamber flashed into Pulse-rhythm, then went dead.
On. Off.
On. Off.
Like someone flicking a lantern in a storm.
Aderic stepped back and gestured toward the slatted partition where the stranger Concord had screamed.
"Bring him out," Aderic said.
A door clicked. Chains rasped. A man stumbled into view—young, sweat-soaked, eyes wild. His wrists were cuffed. A collar ringed his throat, runes faintly glowing.
He looked at Mireya—
—and shuddered.
His mouth opened. Sound came out broken.
"I—taste—" he gagged. "It's still—she's still—"
Aderic sighed like the man was a nuisance. "Quiet."
A guard struck the stranger across the stomach. He folded, coughing.
Mireya's hands curled into fists she didn't own.
Stellan's voice came low. "Leave him."
Aderic glanced at Stellan. "I will. When he stops being useful."
Then he nodded once toward the far door.
Another figure entered.
Not a guard.
Not a Confessor attendant.
A Shifter.
Half a man's shape wrapped in wrongness—shoulders too broad, jaw slightly elongated, eyes reflecting blue lamp light like an animal's.
It moved with restraint, but the restraint looked painful.
Aderic spoke as if introducing a servant.
"Prototype Seven," he said. "Not fully stable. But obedient."
The Shifter's throat worked. It made a sound that wanted to be a growl and landed closer to a whimper.
Stellan's Pulse skipped.
For a heartbeat, Mireya saw the Shifter's aura in stuttering flashes—chaotic knots braided with human warmth.
Then the disruptor hit again.
The aura vanished.
Just a creature in blue light.
Stellan's voice went tight. "You can't control it."
Aderic's eyes cooled. "I don't need to."
He turned his signet hand, casual.
"Release," he said.
The guards holding Stellan shifted.
Mireya felt the change in Stellan's body before he moved: shoulders loading, breath dropping, that hunter's coiled readiness.
The restraints came off.
Stellan didn't stand.
He rose like a weapon being lifted.
Aderic stepped back, giving him space like he expected entertainment.
"Kill it," Aderic said simply. "Prove you're useful without Pulse."
Stellan froze.
Mireya felt the hesitation slam through him—hot, dangerous.
Emotion spike.
Inversion risk.
The bond trembled, warning.
Stellan swallowed it down, but it left a bitter taste in Mireya's mouth anyway.
Aderic continued, voice soft. "Refuse, and I remove your sister's blessing. The wrong way."
Stellan's breath hitched.
Mave stood near the chairs, calm and watching. Her eyes never left Aderic.
Mireya's stomach turned.
Stellan's hands trembled once.
Then he spoke, low. "Mireya."
It wasn't a plea.
It was a request.
Consent.
Mireya forced herself into the moment, even from behind his eyes.
She pushed her voice through the thread. "Say it."
Stellan's jaw clenched. "Take my sight. Now."
Mireya yanked herself out of the fog and into her own body in one hard snap.
Her eyes refocused. Her knees nearly buckled from the whiplash.
But she was standing.
She was in the room.
And Stellan—now in front of her—looked at her like he was handing her the steering wheel in the middle of a crash.
Mireya didn't waste the second.
"Take my hearing," she said, tight. "Now."
Stellan's focus locked into her ears.
The world split into usable threads.
Boot shifts. Guard breath. The Shifter's nails scraping slate. Aderic's coat sleeve whisper.
Mireya's voice dropped. "We reverse it."
Stellan's mouth tightened. "Reverse what."
"You're the blade," Mireya said. "I'm the eyes."
Stellan's Pulse skipped again—brief flash—Mireya caught the Shifter's aura for a fraction of a second, just enough to locate the graft-knot in its chest.
Then it vanished.
Mireya held the location anyway. Like pinning a mark on a moving target.
The Shifter lunged.
Fast. Desperate.
Stellan moved to meet it—pure muscle memory.
"Left," Mireya snapped.
Stellan shifted left without question.
Claws sliced the air where his throat had been.
Mireya's heart slammed. Stellan tasted it through her—fear-flavor, sharp and metallic.
"Now," Mireya said. "Two steps. Low."
Stellan ducked under the Shifter's swing and drove his shoulder into its ribs.
Bone cracked. The sound hit Mireya's raw nerves, but she kept her voice steady.
"Don't kill it yet," Mireya said.
Stellan hissed, "Why."
"Because Aderic wants a show," Mireya said. "We don't give him what he wants."
Stellan's jaw flexed. "Then what."
Mireya's eyes flicked to the pillar.
Not the sonic device. The other lever. The disruptor control.
If they could break it, Stellan's Pulse came back clean.
But getting there meant crossing open space with guards in shadows.
Mireya tightened her Silence—not to mute the room. To compress herself. To steal her own tells.
"Keep it busy," she whispered. "Thirty seconds."
Stellan didn't answer.
He just did.
He engaged the Shifter again—blade work without a blade. Forearm blocks. Elbow strikes. A knee to the thigh. Controlled brutality meant to herd it, not finish it.
The Shifter snarled and stumbled, half-feral, half-obedient.
Aderic watched, hands clasped behind his back like a man at a concert.
"Impressive," he said. "See what he is with the right motivation?"
Mireya moved.
Silent steps across slate. One breath held. One more.
A guard's head turned.
Mireya froze.
Stellan heard the guard's inhale through her ears and shouted, loud—drawing attention.
"Hey!"
It wasn't a clever distraction.
It was instinct.
It worked.
The guard's head snapped toward the noise.
Mireya reached the control pillar.
Her fingers closed on the lever.
And the bond jolted.
Not pain this time.
A sharp skip in Stellan's chest—Pulse glitching hard.
He stumbled.
The Shifter surged.
Mireya didn't have time for finesse.
She yanked the lever down.
The hum in the room faltered—then steadied.
Stellan sucked in a breath like air had returned to him.
His Pulse-sight flared—
Clean.
Bright.
Usable.
He saw the Shifter's graft-knot like a beacon.
"Now," Mireya said.
Stellan didn't hesitate.
He drove forward and slammed his fist into the Shifter's chest exactly where Mireya had marked it earlier, reinforced now by his restored Pulse.
A wet crack.
The Shifter choked.
Its eyes widened—human for one awful second.
Then it collapsed, twitching, and went still.
Silence hit the room—not Mireya's. The kind that happens when people witness something they didn't expect.
Aderic's smile thinned.
"You're learning," he said softly.
Mireya's knife lifted, point angled at Aderic's throat line. "We already learned. You're not a king."
Aderic didn't flinch. "Not yet."
Guards shifted in the shadows, weapons rising.
Mireya's stomach tightened.
They couldn't win this room.
Not with Mave as leverage. Not with collars on a table. Not with a Prince who could say blessed and mean dead.
Mireya glanced at Stellan.
One look.
A plan without words.
Stellan's jaw clenched. He nodded once.
Mireya tightened her Silence and threw it outward—not as a blanket, but as a narrow blade aimed at the lamps.
The sound of glass coils humming didn't stop, but the room's tiny cues vanished for half a second.
Enough.
Stellan grabbed Mave's wrist.
Mave went with him, calm, obedient.
That hurt worse than resistance.
They moved for the door.
A guard lunged.
Mireya slashed low, cutting tendon, dropping him without killing.
Stellan shoved a second guard into a coil frame. Metal rang. Runes flared.
Aderic's voice cut through it all, calm and cold.
"Retrieve them."
Boots thundered.
Mireya's Silence wavered under the weight of the room.
Stellan's Pulse-sight flashed—he mapped the nearest escape corridor.
"This way," he snapped.
They ran.
Out of the chamber. Into service tunnels. Past pipes that hummed alchemy. Past ward marks that pulsed faintly.
Behind them, guards poured out like a tide.
Mireya's breath came short. Her Silence shook with it.
Stellan stayed at her shoulder, taking point now that his Pulse was back.
Roles reversed, just like she'd said.
He was the eyes.
She was the knife.
Until the tunnels opened into a wider passage where faint daylight bled down from a grating above.
Noise rose—a crowd.
Aderic's people had chased them toward the surface.
Toward witnesses.
Toward chaos.
Mireya hated crowds.
Today, she needed one.
They burst out through a maintenance door into a service lane behind the palace kitchens.
Voices. Footsteps. Vendors. Guards shouting.
Tess had kept the city loud.
Good.
Mireya let her Silence narrow to just herself and Stellan and Mave—enough to slip between bodies without drawing eyes.
They pushed into the crowd.
A shoulder bumped Mireya.
She flinched—old panic biting—then forced it down.
Don't spike. Don't feed it.
Stellan heard her breath hitch through her own ears, and his hand brushed her elbow—brief anchor.
Not comfort.
Control.
"Keep moving," he murmured.
They moved.
A vendor shouted about fruit. Someone cursed. A child laughed.
Then a voice slid in close to Mireya's ear.
Not loud. Not public.
Private.
Familiar.
"Good girl," the voice whispered.
Mireya went cold.
Stellan heard it through her ears like it was spoken inside his skull.
His head snapped, scanning.
Mireya's breath caught.
Because that voice wasn't from the palace.
It was from her past.
Her handler.
Alive.
In the crowd.
And close enough to whisper like he'd never left.