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Someone in the crowd shifted between them, and when Maia strained to look again he was gone.

She sighed out. The bells rang once more, slower and heavier now.

“Return to your homes and quarters,” Orell commanded. “Obey the curfew. Trust that we act in the city’s defence. As soon as we know of more, we shall reconvene.”

The crowd broke reluctantly, voices low, tension coiled tight as wire. Guardians formed moving corridors, guiding people back into streets and stairwells as lanternlight spread along the arches. Maia let herself be carried with the flow.

As she walked, her thoughts slid unbidden to Julen; to his pale face against the healer’s pillows, to the warmth of his hand in hers. To the steadiness of him. The way he made fear manageable, simply by being familiar.

There was a life, she realised distantly, that she might have lived if she had never come to Eryssan. A quieter one. One measured in small, safe things. A hearth, a husband home by dusk. A place where danger came rarely and left nothing behind. One where affection did not feel like walking the edge of a blade.

Someone like Julen or Tomas belonged to that other life.

Caelith did not.

By the time the sky deepened to violet and the last bells signalled full dark, the streets were nearly empty. Guardians took up their posts at every crossing.

Maia turned toward the east corridor that led back to her quarters.

The passage was dim, lit only by the intermittent glow of small candelabras set into the walls. Her footsteps echoed too loudly in the narrow stone throat. She told herself she was not afraid, not truly. The curfew was fresh, the patrols were close. Still, she walked faster, her mind slipping to the horror of the Hollow Wraith.

As she did so, the air changed, subtle, almost imperceptible. The pressure she had come to recognise slid into the space around her. A shape detached from the deeper shadows near an alcove.

She stopped short and gasped. “Caelith.”

His face was pale in the low light, paler than she’d ever seen it, a faint sheen of sweat at his temple that had no business being there on a body that was meant to run cold. Shadows carved deeper beneath his eyes than she had ever seen. One arm was held stiffly against his side beneath his coat, his posture tense.

He said nothing. Only the distant clink of a Guardian’s armour somewhere down the corridor broke the silence.

Then, without warning, he moved.

One unsteady step closed the distance, faster than it should have. His hand caught her wrist, pulling her into the shadowed recess beside the alcove, pressing her back against the stone wall with his body, shielding hers from view.

Maia let out an almost soundless gasp. Caelith’s other hand rose to the wall beside her head, bracing himself. She felt his arm shake.

“Don’t,” he said under his breath. His fingers tightened briefly around her wrist, then loosened again. But still, he held it. Maia’s heart thundered so loudly she was sure he could hear.

“You’re still hurt,” she managed to whisper.

She lifted her free hand and closed her fingers around the fabric at his side, where the blood had soaked through. He sucked in a sharp breath. When she drew her hand back, her fingertips were dark with silver. Something reckless moved through her at the sight of it: at the proof of how badly he was hurt, and how far he’d dragged himself anyway to reach her. And something else in her own body felt wild and unruly. She lifted her hand and pressed her fingers to her lips, then drew them slowly down, leaving a line of silver along her chin. She didn’t wipe it away.

“Maia,” he warned, gritting his teeth. “Gods, do not do that.”

His hand slid from the wall to her waist, holding onto her as though she was the only thing keeping him steady. He bowed his head, and she felt his breath at her temple. If he leaned forward even slightly, there would be no space left between them at all. How she wished he would.

“I am sorry,” he murmured.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said quietly, tilting towards him slightly. “Nothing at all.”

Something flickered across his face: pain, or guilt, and beneath that, a kind of unwillingness. “There are things you don’t know,” he said. “Things I can’t tell you. And I am running out of time to decide what to do with them.”

“Caelith, what things? What do you mean?”

His hand rose to her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw slowly, memorising it against some near future where he wouldn’t be able to do it again. He stopped before he touched her chin.

His touch had warmed somewhere in the weeks in between the day she almost touched his chains the Archive and now, without either of them marking the moment it happened. She could feel the uneven rasp of his breath against her mouth, close enough to smell rain on his skin. The wanting between them was no longer something they could pretend away. She moved her body closer to him again, her hips begging to touch his.

But he didn’t close the last of the distance. His forehead came to rest against hers, his eyes closing as though the effort of not moving hurt him physically. She felt the shiver run through the hand still braced at her waist.