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A smile, once, maybe twice. The second one she definitely saw, and she thought about it for three days.

It was not enough though and that was the trouble.

Every evening she went back to her narrow room, alone, having gained nothing she could confirm and lost a little more ground. And every morning, she came down the spiral stairs too quickly. By the end of the second week, she had stopped even trying to pretend that she was going early to start work on the fragments.

***

Maia stood in the lower workroom as the fragments were laid out once more on cold stone, their surfaces catching the lanternlight at angles that felt deliberate. She remembered Julen hunched over this same table, charcoal-stained fingers smudging diagrams that never quite resolved.

The spacing is wrong, he’d said once, frustrated. They’re not disturbed, they’re out of balance.

At the time, she hadn’t understood what that meant. But now, with the city mobilising above them, she could see it more clearly.

She made her notes in Julen’s green, because her own was still on the floor of her room where she’d left it. Then she reconstructed his final diagram from memory: circles within circles, density increasing toward the centre before breaking off. A structure interrupted. She placed the shard he’d never committed to the page.

It was quieter and less violent than the ones she’d seen before. This was subtle and almost responsive. Symbols sharpened, lines aligning into something that felt less like language and more like measurement.

She frowned.

Outside the workroom, boots passed in a steady rhythm. Orders barked. Somewhere deep in the city, metal rang against metal as another stabilisation team was armed and sent below.

The door opened, and of course the fragments reacted instantly.

Edges hummed, symbols distorted, then snapped back into alignment as if pulled by an unseen force.

He spoke before she could attempt to look at him.

“They are sending teams down,” he said quietly. “To find the breach. They cannot reinforce fast enough, so they have loosened the leash.” He looked down at his unchained hands. “Hoping instinct will compensate where structure fails, I suppose.”

“And?” she said.

“And to stop anything else escaping,” he finished.

Maia turned then, her whole body on fire. She did not try for anything longer than the one word she’d already managed.

Caelith stood opposite the table, eyes fixed on the fragments. The silver scars gleamed on his hands. One hand remained folded carefully at his side, posture too perfect to be natural.

Fourteen days of this and it had not got easier. The opposite, if anything. It was there in the distance he kept on his side of the table, in the way his eyes moved over the fragments and not to her mouth. He was not looking on purpose, and the effort of it was its own kind of confession.

“You haven’t looked at me once since you came in today.”

He did not look up, still. “No.”

“Why not?”

He lowered his voice. “Because for the last few weeks, I have been very careful about how I look at you. I would rather not undo all of that in front of six scribes.”

Maia kept her eyes on the table. Her ears had gone hot. She changed the subject quickly.

“What happens when they find the leak?” she asked.

“They will try to seal it,” he said with a sigh. “Force it closed. Reinforce the wards. Tighten formations.”

“And if the pressure doesn’t go away?”

His jaw tightened. “Then something else will give.”

Caelith moved closer to the table, studying the spread of glass.