The ballroom had gone completely still.King Cyrus stood frozen at the center of the room, mouth open on a word that never came. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the marble, wine spreading dark across the white stone. Nobody moved to clean it up.The murmurs started low — a ripple through the crowd, whispers passed mouth to ear, faces draining of color as people turned to check whether their neighbor had seen it too.Wilfred stood in the doorway. Dressed in the dark blue and gold of a White Rose prince, the old scar pale against his cheek, he had the look of a man who'd survived something he'd never talk about. Beside him, Noel's arm was linked through his, her blue gown catching the chandelier light while her eyes moved across the room, cataloguing faces.The King found his voice first. "Wilfred." It cracked on the name. He took one step, then stopped, as though the figure in the doorway might dissolve if he moved too quickly. "You're — you're alive.""I came bac

Garrett moved through the city like he had nowhere in particular to be, which was a lie his whole body knew how to tell by now. The festival had finally started dying down — not dead, not yet, just thinning into that late-night version of itself where the music gets sloppier and the crowds get smaller and the only people still awake are the ones who don't want to go home for one reason or another. Lanterns burned low along the main roads, oil running out faster than anyone would refill it before dawn. Vendors had packed up hours back; all that was left of them was the smell — roasted meat gone cold, spilled wine soaking into the stones, something sweet and burnt from a stall that had probably caught fire earlier and nobody had bothered mentioning. A few stragglers drifted past. Drunks, mostly. A pair of lovers tucked into a doorway who wouldn't have noticed a parade going by, let alone one old soldier cutting through the shadows behind them. Nobody noticed him. That was rather th

The arena had changed overnight. Gone was the city of projections, the endless streets and shifting walls. In its place stood a single raised platform of pale stone, circular, ringed by tiered seating that climbed toward the sky. Banners hung from every railing—white and gold for the White Rose Kingdom, the crest of the Clover family, the sigils of a dozen noble houses that had come to watch their sons and daughters fight. The screens that had once shown the streets of the projection city now showed close-ups of the platform from every angle. The crowd was already filling the seats when Lucian arrived. Nobles in silk and velvet. Commoners who had saved for months to buy a single ticket. Merchants who had closed their stalls for the day. The noise was a low roar, a sea of voices rising and falling like a tide that hadn't decided which way to go yet. Lucian stood in the tunnel beneath the arena, waiting for his name to be called. The stone was cold under his boots. The air smelled

Isabel hit the ground for the ninth time that morning and stayed there a second longer than she needed to, just breathing, just staring at the practice yard's gray sky through the slats of the training frame above her. "Again," Flora said, without looking up from where she was resharpening a whetstone against her palm blade, like Isabel's face-first collision with packed dirt was the least interesting thing that had happened all morning. "You could sound less bored about it." "I could." Flora didn't. "Up." Isabel got up. Flora was nothing like Claire had been—Claire had corrected with a hand on the shoulder and a patient word, the kind of teacher who made you want to get it right for her sake. Flora corrected by letting you fail until your own body got tired of failing the same way twice. It was a meaner kind of teaching. Isabel was starting to suspect it was also a better one. "You're still telegraphing the block," Flora said. "Your shoulder drops before your arm does. Anyone w

Garrett laid it all out on the table like a man setting down cards he wasn't sure he wanted to be holding. "Blood or the name," he said. "That's what opens the vault door. Not the key. The key does something else—Noel wasn't clear on what, and I didn't get the sense she fully knew herself. But the door itself only answers to Everstar blood, or to the Devil's true name spoken out loud by someone who means it." The candle between them had burned down to a stub sometime in the last hour, and nobody had bothered relighting it. Isabel sat with her knees pulled up on the edge of the bed. Lucian stood by the window, same as always, hands loose at his sides. "Everstar blood," he repeated. "Yours. Cassian's, if it matters, though he's not here to test it. Your mother's, apparently, once upon a time." Garrett rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Flora told Isabel something close to the same story, from a different angle. Two people who don't especially trust each other landing on the same answer in