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“No, you tell me.”
The food arrived before she could reply, steaming pies set before us with gravy pooling around their crusts and bread glistening with fat. The air grew thick with the scent of meat and warm spices.
“It was that child. The beggar. She looked like my sister for a moment, and it. . . hurt. That's all. Nothing mysterious or suspicious. Just grief ambushing me.”
It was a good lie. Would have convinced most people. Real emotion wrapped around misdirection.
“I'm sorry,” I said, and meant it even as I filed the information away. “Grief has a way of finding us in unexpected moments.”
She finally took a bite of pie, and I watched her expression shift—surprise, then something close to pleasure.
“This is good,” she admitted after a second bite. “Better than I expected.”
“You thought Victorian food would be terrible?”
“I thought it would be. . . bland. Overcooked.” She took another bite, this time with more enthusiasm. “But this actually has flavor. Pepper and. . . is that rosemary?”
“Thyme, I think.” I found myself relaxing slightly despite my better judgment. “We're not complete barbarians, you know. Some of us understand seasoning.”
Her smile was genuine. “Point taken.”
We ate in silence for a few moments, and I caught myself noticing too much—the way she ate without pretense. The slight furrow between her brows when she was thinking. The way lamplight kindled in her hair.
“You told me before that you believed the disappeared people in your research were Weavers,” I said finally. “After what you saw this morning—the arrest, the way the crowd reacted—do you still believe that?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I believe it more than ever. But believing they were Weavers and believing they deserved to be erased are two very different things.”
“You saw one arrest. One woman.”
“I've seen seventy-three villages worth of absence, August. Hundreds of names that stopped existing. And now I've seen how this city treats people suspected of having magic. The patterns I studied weren't just bureaucratic errors. They were evidence of something systematic. Something brutal.”
My chest tightened. She wasn't wrong. The hunts had become efficient by the 1880s. Father had seen to that.
“And you think we're the monsters in your research,” I said quietly.
She hesitated. “Empires have always needed monsters, August. Every century rewrites the facts to keep the fear alive. I’ve read the ledgers, the proclamations, the sermons—each one swearing its purge was righteous.”
She was questioning everything I'd been taught to defend. I'd be lying if I said her words didn't strike deep.
“You are correct. Empires do invent their monsters.” I didn’t raise my voice but something in it sharpened. “But monsters aren’t made only by sermons and ledgers, Lily. They’re made by the blood left on the ground when those pages are written. I’ve walked through that blood. So before I weigh any evidence, I make certain no one else has to.”
“Can I ask you something?” she said after a moment.
“Haven't you been asking me things all evening?”
“This is different.” She held my gaze. “When you die. . . do you think you'll be someone worth remembering? Or just another name that gets erased?”
The question stole my breath. Because I didn't have an answer. Had never let myself think about legacy beyond duty, beyond the mission.
“I don't know,” I admitted finally.
“Then maybe,” she said softly, “that's something worth figuring out.”
CHAPTER 14
LILY
For a moment his features shifted—shadowed, searching. The candlelight wavered between us, and I wondered if I’d finally pressed too hard.
