The apartment smelled like burnt sugar and old wards. There was a new, thin film of ash on the coffee table where Elly’s warding runes had snapped like brittle glass, another reminder of her absence.

  My bat lay on the floor, quiet and too heavy; a strip of duct tape looped around the handle to hold the insulation in place. The Pop-Tart Spider sat in one corner like a bad conscience, all too many eyes blinking like LEDs.

  Silence had weight. It pressed against the windows. When someone finally said something, their voice sounded wrong, too loud in the room’s open wound.

  Zorka was propped on the couch with her leg in a suspiciously cheerful splint of metal and string she’d assembled from things around the apartment. She’d laughed through the pain medicine, then laughed again when the pain ebbed enough to make jokes. “If the cast becomes fashion, I want royalties,” she announced, and everyone tried to laugh with her and failed.

  Sélis kept rearranging the photos on my wall. Their fingers moved like they belonged to different people—soft at the edges, precise in the middle. Where five faces had been, now there were four; one photocopied smile was missing, like a torn bookmark. They would stop, study the blankness for a breath, and then keep working as if sewing someone back into the frame.

  Eury sat with her hands flat on her knees. She kept opening her eyes and closing them again, like windows testing light. The mirror on the table had a cloth thrown over it; when she tried to look, smoke bloomed behind her lids. “It’s only temporary,” she said into her lap, voice low and brittle. “It’s only a burn. It’ll fade.”

  Lily had curled up on the armchair, face pale and sweat-slick. Her perfume was gone, or if it was still there, it was muted, a ghost of its former self. She kept clenching her fists as if to squeeze the scent back into existence. Once, she tried to laugh and the sound collapsed into a sob. “I… couldn’t even make them dizzy,” she said, half to herself.

  I felt like I had been emptied out and every sharp thing in the room was rattling inside me.

  “Could’ve done better,” Sélis murmured, not unkind. Their voice carried more than one accent now, different syllables overlaying as if multiple people were trying to apologize at once. “We misread the file.”

  “We walked into a fancy dinner party way out of dress code,” Zorka said, managing a breathy snort. She tapped the splint with one fingernail, eyes glassy. “My leg hates you all personally.”

  “I should have—” I started, because my mouth was a faucet of excuses that wanted to pour. “I should have—”

  “You should have done what?” Eury’s head turned slowly, eyes like moons under lashes. “We tried. We hit them with everything we had. We took out that first party like nothing. We thought they were vulnerable, but they catalogued our abilities and found the holes.” Her fingers curled into fists.

  “That’s the thing,” Sélis said, and their voice split into a soft cadence that sounded like someone reading different lines from the same book. “They were bait, their expeditionary force. We drew the net closed on ourselves.”

  We had won a skirmish and lost the battle. The ledger had caught our scent and decided it made good reading.

  I had been hollowed out, existing on adrenaline for hours after—hands shaking, pulse a rapid drum. As the adrenaline bled out it left a black pool of embarrassment and rage. I had a vision of sleeping with the whole town if it would get Elly back. I pictured Eury’s great aunt in a cardigan and a stare that could file you down to nothing. The thought flared and then died because thinking like that is a kind of madness, and I was suddenly tired of my own absurdity.

  Sélis moved across the room, careful, and sat beside me. They put a hand on my knee—one hand, one person, warm and oddly precise. “You aren’t to blame for trying to be brave,” they said. “Brave is noisy and foolish. We chose noisy.”

  “I got her captured,” I said. My voice broke on the word like it was glass.

  “You didn’t,” Sélis said. “You pulled her focus. She saved you. That was choice.”

  “Choice doesn’t come with a side of fries,” I muttered, and that half-sob had the shape of a joke.

  Lily stirred, eyes wet. “She—Elly—said for you to run. She said it like she meant it,” she said. “I heard it in her voice. She wanted you safe, Daniel.” Her fingers twitched like she was trying to stitch the words back into fabric. “She would—she always—”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The apartment door whispered, a sound that hit everyone at once. We flinched and listened. Steps, soft but purposeful. Not a thief—someone bearing the weight of more ancient things. The smell hit a second before the door opened: soy, spice, and the faint metallic tang of treasure kept too long in a bank vault.

  Jade filled the doorway like a misplaced sun: slight, wrapped in shawls, spectacles low on her nose. Her bun was immaculate. She carried a paper bag and set it down on the coffee table with the kind of ceremonial softness that made my throat ache.

  “For the effort,” she said, smiling like someone offering both candy and a verdict. “And for your temporary loss.” She tipped the bag toward us and a steamy curl unfurled: dumplings, warm and perfumed and ridiculous in the middle of catastrophe.

  No one reached for one.

  “Temporary?” I wondered aloud. “How temporary could it be after we got our asses handed to us so thoroughly.”

  “Nonsense. If you can rescue a car, you can rescue a Fae.” Jade corrected me.

  “We did that with Elly. She’s the one with the magic.”

  “Don’t underestimate your team, or your own connections, Daniel Mercer.” Jade said reproachfully, clicking her tongue.

  I wanted to argue, but she had a point. I did know a few people. Would they be able to do what Elly had and help us open the way?

  “Payment is due,” Jade said, and folded her hands as if reading a list. She sat down across from me with the poise of someone who had folded cities into their itinerary. “You did well to call their bluff. The Curator is not ignorant or impulsive. He sent an expeditionary force and kept his ledger open to see who bled where.”

  I wanted to spit. I wanted to run. I wanted to stuff my face with every dumpling and then eat his ledger. My hands made a fist around nothing.

  Jade’s eyes were small and careful. “Task five, your final task,” she said. The words were a soft click. “Rescue Elly.”

  For a long moment nothing existed but that sentence. It landed in the middle of the room, and all the air rearranged itself to fit around it.

  I laughed, ugly and bright. “Fuck it,” I said, the words burning like whiskey. It surprised me—my mouth made a sound that was both curse and vow. No one had heard me swear like that and then make a plan in the same breath. “Raise the army. Run the banners up. We’re going to war, ladies.”

  Zorka barked a high, absurd cheer, leaping up from her seat and promptly slumped back down, wincing despite the bravado. “I’ll need crutches.” She announced.

  Eury took a breath and rubbed the side of her face where the mirror had burned. Her eyes were wet but steady. Lily pushed herself to her feet, perfume gone but resolve in its place.

  Jade smiled like a merchant noting profit. “You will have help,” she said. “Those who have debts you can call, you should. I will do the same, with friends in the east, a merchant who owes me a favor in the south, and some others I can influence. I don’t do rescue for sentiment, but I have counted on you.” She paused, letting the offer with its invisible shackles hang in the air. “Rescue Elly. Bring her back and our ledger will be balanced. Fail and the night grows colder still.”

  She pushed the bag of dumplings toward me. “Eat. Strength is dull without food.”

  I picked one up like a sacrament. It steam-kissed my fingers. I bit down. Warmth flooded my mouth, and for the first time since the alley, I tasted something clean.

  “I will provide more details tomorrow,” Jade said. “You have three days to prepare.”

  “Three days,” I repeated. It felt both too long and not nearly enough. “Three days.”

  I looked at the crew: Sélis, reduced and furious; Zorka, howlingly loyal, and healing as quickly as her body could handle shapeshifting; Eury, sight bruised but still dangerous; Lily, hollowed and furious; and me, catalogued and useless if I sat still. That meant it was time for action.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling my voice change into command because sometimes the body speaks in what it needs to do to stay alive. “We make the block sing. We pull favors. We collect a little chaos and trade it for value.” I swung my feet onto the floor, the motion steadying. “We train. We plan. We get our people. We’re going to pull her out.”

  Sélis watched me, four voices folding into one, sounding thinner than it should. “We will be more careful this time,” she said. “Careful is another word for brave.”

  I swallowed. “No,” I said. “We will be loud.”

  Zorka huffed like a dog on the porch. “Loud works better with fireworks.”

  Lily stepped forward, chin lifted like she’d swallowed the moon. “Elly comes home.”

  For the first time since the mannequin had clapped to our initial victory back in that lot, I believed it a little.

  Jade took her shawl, pulled it over her hair and rose. She nodded at each of us—not with charity but with a ledger’s neutral assessment. “You have my support for this,” she said. “And remember this: support has weight, and weight has meaning.”

  She crossed the room with the quiet of a thing that never tripped and paused at the door. For a moment she looked at me, and the warm, grandmotherly mask slipped so that something older, more calculating, showed through.

  “Collecting is a long game,” she said softly. “You have stirred the drawer. Be certain you know what you want before you pry it open.”

  Then she was gone, and the door sighed shut like a book cover.

  We sat in the smoking quiet, dumpling steam curling up between us like a small, defiant flag.

  Zorka cracked one eye open. “So,” she said weakly, “who’s with me on a Rocky training montage?”

  I smiled, and it was thin and fierce. “Raise the army,” I repeated. “Run the banners up.”

  Sélis reached out. Their hand squeezed mine until my knuckles went white. “Alterkind,” they whispered, then corrected herself with a crooked, terrible little grin that felt like it might mean everything. “We will gather them all.”

  We had three days. We were broken. We were furious. We were going to war.