A note lay atop it, the handwriting messy but unmistakably familiar.
I’ll be late tonight. Overtime. Forgive me :(
She peeled back the lid and found two slices of meat pie, each exactly one portion. Her lips twitched into a thin smile. No one had ever insisted she eat this much before. Not to the point of leaving food behind, especially when they couldn’t even come themselves.
The word choice lingered in her mind. Late, not can’t come. That subtle difference, a promise of return, or at least an attempt, was something new, something unexpected.
She brushed the lunchbox aside gently. Lunch could wait. The report couldn’t.
This was what usefulness demanded. Attention sharpened until nothing else was allowed to matter, not even hunger.
Today, they’d allowed her to bring the scribbled papers she’d filled out before, along with the official file handed over yesterday. That alone was a small mercy. Less reliance on memory, more on ink and paper.
It was better this way. Better to capture the rawness of it all, while the facts still burned fresh in her mind, before time dulled the edges.
She reached for pen and paper, the mana lamp flickering steady as the room’s only true light. Daylight still pressed faintly against the window, but the curtains were drawn tight, shutting it out.
Words spilled awkwardly onto the page. Sharp, fragmented, disjointed. But they captured everything that pulsed in her thoughts.
Her hand trembled faintly, but she pushed through the fatigue and weight pressing down on her. This report might change everything.
Yet she knew, deep down, there was no way to fully explain how Rowan had acted, even without Caedern’s pointed reminder.
Could Blissbane cause this? Delusions? A warped perception of reality?
When they found out she had read her notebook differently, the Accord had whispered that she was infected. Was Rowan caught in the same snare? Especially with his direct contact to the flower. Could synthesizing the cure have infected him?
That was why she’d risked asking Caedern for access to Blissbane research.
But his answer had sent her instead to Kesherra, Bronze’s main headquarters.
Right after Rowan had confessed to trying to leak the cure there.
Was it a sick joke? Or a genuine suggestion cloaked in irony?
It felt sinister either way.
Yet Rowan had mentioned the cure’s effectiveness improved after Bronze shared the composition. They must know something important.
But did Blissbane even count as common knowledge? Now? Or ever? Kion had said it wasn’t exactly public information these days, but had it been before?
If such a dangerous, contagious blight existed, why did it seem to only surface now? Why hadn’t more people known about it? If it wasn’t common knowledge, there was no way the public library would hold those records. Such secrets would be buried deep, behind locked doors and guarded wards.
And even if it was public, the library stood in the same wing as his room, Arkwyn’s. She remembered him calling it his private library. A high councillor’s private library.
That was a risk all its own.
Her head sank until her temple touched the table’s edge, her writing faltering.
Months ago, during a scouting mission, she had slipped into Kesherra under night cover. And he had been there, watching. Marking her, no doubt, given how swiftly he’d found her afterward.
He’d probably received an immediate alert the moment she stepped inside. He had given her his guarantee that she wouldn’t be detained. But did that assurance still stand if she walked back into Kesherra now?
He hadn’t reported her to the guards. Not yet. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t.
She hadn’t told the Accord about that either. Doing so would be admitting to another compromise. One grave enough for indefinite detention.
But Rowan’s behavior made no sense. Why he seemed desperate, searching for something, tipped off by someone she couldn’t sense or see.
Her mana sensing, once so reliable despite her limited pool, kept failing her when she needed it most.
The hidden room in Relay Nine, the sudden absence of mana during that caravan dinner on the way to Dryfen, the old woman’s vanished trail, and now this. Another blind spot, another failure to detect what lurked beneath.
She straightened, a sudden thought sparking a fragile hope.
Kion’s charm. The one he had given her when she first arrived in Zeirath. Back then, no eyes had turned her way. Not until she shattered the orb. That charm could help her now.
She would ask him for another. And if he refused... she’d have no choice but to enter Kesherra without it. She prayed Arkwyn’s promise of safety stretched that far.
Tomorrow, she would walk straight into the crocodile’s mouth.
But first, she needed to slip into the lion’s den, to make sure the jaws didn’t close too tightly.
At worst, she’d run. Again.
She’d done it before. She could do it again.
For now, all she could do was draft a rough report, capture every flicker of memory before it faded.
It was inconvenient that Kion had to stay late tonight. But it wasn’t her place to ask him to change his plans.
So she waited.
And she hoped he would come sooner.
Kion's POV
Room 203, Binding Post Inn, Brandholt City
The vent above her window gave its familiar hiss, and Kion slipped through in a practiced curl of wings and limbs.
He landed without sound next to the empty lunchbox, ready to pass along the usual greeting, until he saw her looking at him.
Not her usual distracted, halfway-thinking gaze.
Expectant. Direct. Like she’d been waiting for him.
The expression alone sent a shudder along his spine.
And then came the question.
“Can you lend me the same charm you gave me when I entered Zeirath? So I can search Kesherra’s public library discreetly.”
His mind stalled.
Of all the things she could have asked...
He managed to get out, “it’s open for public. Why do you need to enter discreetly?”
“Because Arkwyn might know and call guards on me,” she replied, utterly earnest.
He very nearly screeched. A sharp sound clawed up his throat, but he strangled it into something like a cough.
Instead, he asked for a timeout.
Said his head was still buzzing from today’s work and he couldn’t think yet.
She let him.
Now he lay flat on her bed, boots still on, eyes fixed on the water-stained patch of ceiling above.
If he stared long enough, maybe the plaster would open up and swallow him whole.
He hadn’t asked her why yet. He needed to brace himself first.
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What in all the fractured realms could possibly make her want to step into Kesherra?
She’d managed, with unsettling ease, to pin down exactly who Rowan Brennan would have leaked cure information to.
She already knew the “glitterstorm”, or her clumsy “glitter group”, was tied to Bronze in some capacity, official or not.
She knew they could identify her. Lurean had made that clear when he greeted her instead of pretending she didn’t exist.
And after she admitted her fear that Arkwyn’s golden thread (cough) might see her arrested, he’d pulled strings so Arkwyn himself assured her it wouldn’t happen.
That still didn’t mean Kion had expected this.
That she’d want to walk into Kesherra of her own will.
A sick joke, wasn’t it?
She asked for that without realizing he had just come from Arkwyn’s office. In Kesherra.
So... why? What had put the idea in her head?
Did something happen while he’d left her alone in the interrogation room?
He’d stepped out to shadow Rowan. Needed to know where they were keeping him.
Maybe that stoic observer who sat near the wall? Had he said something?
But how could Kion ask without revealing he’d been there too? Without unraveling the careful cloak he’d kept over his movements?
He’d already endured Veska’s lecture when he came back. And Euri hadn’t even tried to defend him, just waved the signed waiver in Kion’s face, said, “I’ve warned him,” and went back to reading.
As if Kion hadn’t just returned with the single most important lead in years.
He could still see the moment it began to unravel.
Rowan had started to babble, the stoic observer shifting as though ready to knock him down.
Kion needed Rowan breathing, clearheaded, still alive. Long enough to answer questions.
He couldn’t risk the Accord cutting him off too soon.
So, when the danger rose too high, Kion had whispered the glitterstorm’s challenge code.
The one Rowan himself had sent months ago. The one that would guarantee recognition.
It worked. Calmed him instantly.
Though Kion winced at the way Rowan’s eyes scanned the room afterward, searching for him in plain view of Writ, the observer, and whoever monitoring behind the glass.
That would help no one. Luckily, the observer stilled, fingers lifting from his glyph stones.
And that was only the first stumble.
The second hit during the off-record session, after the observer had left.
Writ asked about the false cure laced with control spells, and Kion, fool that he was, murmured a fragment of the truth to Rowan. Gave him the Accord’s hand in Writ’s own forced dose, for context.
He had not meant for Rowan to lower his guard and try again, openly, to find him.
He’d left after that, tailing Rowan to his cell.
At least the man still wanted to talk.
Still wanted his information spread, even if Kion made certain the glitterstorm couldn’t attempt a rescue. Never could.
Rowan seemed to understand. He’d already given up saving himself, but not his message.
He gave Kion everything.
The composition, the research, the timeline. The effects and side effects.
The Accord’s order to produce the laced variant he had refused.
How they must have found someone else willing to make it, how that version was already being circulated to the public, while the true cure remained locked within Accord grounds.
How his wife and daughter had been caught in the accident that claimed their lives not long after. All of it, dredged up and laid bare from memory alone.
Kion captured it all in the memory stone, along with scribbling in scratchy bursts of cramped, hurried script to keep pace.
When it was done, Rowan refused his thanks and offered his own instead.
He wished the glitterstorm success.
Pure soul. Even knowing his end was near.
And that it might be... messy.
Kion had offered him a poison pill, to make it quick. Rowan refused, saying he was too cowardly for that kind of choice.
But he did agree to the painkillers, slipped to him under concealment.
He’d been so grateful.
That hurt the most.
Afterward, Kion went straight to Arkwyn’s office, just as the day’s work was winding down, where he handed the report to Euri.
Then Veska appeared, and her scolding wore him down to the bone.
And now, somehow, he was here again.
Faced with yet another absurd request.
Kion pressed both palms hard over his face and forced the air out in a long, uneven stream.
Half-groan, half-scream. Strangled to a whisper so it wouldn’t carry past the walls.
He didn’t particularly care if Writ heard it.
The pressure had to bleed out somehow, and right now was now.
The chair at her desk scraped faintly.
When he peeked through his fingers, she had swiveled in her seat to look at him. He was sprawled across her bed like a dropped puppet, hands still shielding his face.
“Is that a... stress release?” she asked.
He lowered his hands slowly, eyes peering through the last gap, “sort of.”
“You also did that back in Oasis,” she said.
He pushed upright and sat on the bed, “right. You’ve witnessed that.”
In one motion, he sprang up, hopped across the small gap, and landed on her desk. Folding himself cross-legged in the one clear spot not claimed by paper.
His gaze drifted over the chaos of scribbles and notes.
“So...,” he leaned forward slightly, “explain from the start. How’d the interrogation go? And what, exactly, happened today that makes you want to visit Kesherra?”
“It went... quite well, I guess? He sort of confessed. That should make it clear. In theory.”
“And...?”
“Except now I have to make the report, written and verbal. You know how much they love the reports,” she hesitated, “and they’ll want me to explain why the subject behaved strangely in the interrogation room.”
His eyebrow twitched.
“‘Strangely’ why?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what she meant, and why.
“It looked like he was... searching for something. As if someone had tipped him off. Frantic one moment, then suddenly calm. And at the end...,” she looked at him sharply, “at the end he looked at me like I wasn’t his enemy anymore. Like I wasn’t part of Accord.”
His head gave a muted throb.
“And why,” he asked, “should you be the one to explain it?”
“Because I’m still on watch even though they let me run the interrogation. And they’d suspect I was sending him signs.”
Kion dragged a hand down his face. Of course they would.
And of course he was the reason for her scrutiny. Again.
“All right. Then why Kesherra all of a sudden? You said yourself Arkwyn might get you caught. Why risk it?”
“I can’t find a reason why he acted like that. I guessed it might be delusion. They thought I was ailed by Blissbane when I saw something different in my notebook...”
He winced.
“...So maybe it’s the same thing,” she finished, “just trying to connect the dots. Maybe his contact with the flower while making the cure caused it.”
“I could just tell you in detail.”
“I need a source I can directly quote. Unless you want me to write ‘Kion said’, and then I’d have to explain who you are, and how I know you, and why I’ve never mentioned you before.”
He groaned and hunched further, elbow on knee, forehead in his palm.
“There are other libraries besides Kesherra,” he muttered.
“Can you say for sure any of them have blissbane records?”
“...No.”
“Do you know if Kesherra’s public library has any?”
There was. He knew. He’d combed every shelf.
But saying so outright would trip every one of her alarms.
“...Maybe,” he said, “it’s not exactly a secret ailment. Just one people thought extinct. Two centuries ago it was common. Until they realized the cause, mass-produced the cure, and burned every flower and seed they could find.”
“Can it cause delusion? Can I blame his behavior on that?”
“Yes. Not the most common symptom, but possible.”
“How do you know so much?”
He met her gaze. Through the tether, her curiosity pressed at him. Hesitant but insistent, like fingertips against glass. He didn’t answer right away.
Her eyes slipped down and away, shame rippling faintly across the bond.
“Sorry,” she murmured, “I shouldn’t have asked. Forget I said anything,” her voice thinned, as if retreat itself could erase the question.
He sighed, tilting his head back against the wall. For a moment, the ceiling held his silence.
“It took... people close to me,” he said finally, voice low and even, “that’s why I began searching for it.”
A beat. His eyes came back to hers.
“It remained a hypothesis. At least until I saw the flower itself, when I followed you to Tenzurah.”
Her brows drew together, “didn’t Accord already have samples? Why didn’t you know sooner? Why didn’t you get involved then?”
“You’ve spoken with the researcher yourself,” he said, his tone sharper now, though not unkind, “do you think they would share?”
A pause, the question hanging between them.
“And besides... do you think Accord should be the only ones allowed to create and distribute the cure?”
Her lips parted, then pressed shut again. She didn’t answer.
But the tether did.
Recognition flared first, swift and undeniable, before folding into guilt, so heavy it pressed through him like lead. Threatening to drown the fragile thread of relief she’d carried earlier.
Her chest rose with a breath too shallow. She was already taking his words and turning them inward.
Stacking Rowan’s confessions atop her own memories, layering them into the familiar spiral in her head, 'I should have known. I should have done more. It’s my fault.'
He could almost feel her paper crumpling in her hands.
Tomorrow’s raw report, trembling under the weight of her self-condemnation.
He didn’t know the exact shape of her thoughts. But he knew where they were headed. And he couldn’t let them settle.
“You’re different from them,” he said, cutting into the spiral before it could tighten further.
Her head lifted, eyes startled back to him.
“You’re just trying to survive the only way you know how.” A pause. Firm, steady, “you’re not at fault.”
She blinked. The tether shifted.
Like it had pulled back, shy, from being seen too clearly.
Good. At least the blame wouldn’t eat her all night. That was something.
“All right,” he said, “back to the topic. Kesherra public library.”
“You don’t have to go. I can go myself. Preferable if you lend me your charm, but... if you’re not comfortable...,” she trailed off, awkward, “as you said, it’s open to the public. I’m sure I’ll manage.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I can show you which book to look for. I’ve done it before.”
“So... I’ll be cloaked?”
“No. Just your disguise and your issued ID. Should be fine.”
He didn’t add that he’d obscure her presence anyway, the kind of blur that kept eyes from remembering faces.
She didn’t need to know, and she shouldn’t get used to it. Comfort dulled edges, and dulled edges got people hurt.
“Can we go now? It has to be done tomorrow before fourteen hundred.”
“Yeah. Go get ready.”
She slipped into the bathroom. The hiss of water filled the silence.
On second thought, he should probably cloak them both this time. Full invisibility, not just blurred memory.
But that might be overkill. And she’d wonder why the guards hadn’t even checked her ID or belongings.
He wished Mirev wasn’t breaking curfew again.
Wished Lurean wasn’t wandering Arkwyn’s library.
Wished no one from Glitterstorm noticed her poring over their public archives.
The water stopped. She emerged, shoulder-length wig damp at the ends, a loose scholar’s robe draped over a tighter shirt beneath.
And that face, her 'default' disguise. A soft, steady gaze and the faint, unshaken smile.
He wished Lunlun reserved that gaze for him, and him alone.
He blinked.
...Stop.
He slapped his cheeks with both hands, forcing the tether away before it could breach his mind.
“Kion?” she asked.
“No, nothing. Let’s go?”
She nodded.
He matched her pace as they stepped into the corridor, distortion magic curling over them.
He told himself he was only there to guide her.
But in truth, he was ready to gut anyone who gave her reason to walk this path at all.
Although he knew he didn’t have the power to do that.
Not even close.
And she would never let him.
The street stretched ahead, quiet but full of unseen threats.
And with every step, the weight of what tomorrow might bring pressed heavier on them both.