Arden in the herb garden, dirt under her fingernails, her voice dropping when she said it. Dr. Fell. Thirty-series. Frequency work. A name the staff handled carefully.
Then the first name reaches me.
Faith.
My knees go loose, and I sit because the floor is coming up whether I choose it or not. My hands find my knees, knuckles white.
“…faith has no mercy…”
His voice comes back so clearly I can almost feel the wood of the door against my ear. Ravenclaw. The locked room. Rafael speaking through sedation while I sat outside with my notebook in my lap and caught four words I thought were a prayer.
He wasn’t praying.
He was naming her.
“Sable.” Nadia’s hand on my arm. “Talk to me.”
“I know who she is.” Flat. The healer’s voice. “I’ve known the name for weeks. Arden told me at Ravenclaw. Dr. Fell. Thirty-series subjects. Frequency work. She was the worst of them.” I swallow. “I didn’t have a first name. I didn’t know Faith was a person.”
“She’s claiming she can help him. That Aurora’s containment is damaging his ‘systems.’ She says she can stabilize what our team can’t.”
The scar.
It comes back through my hands, not my eyes. My fingers on his ribcage in the dim light of the healers’ wing. Washing around the wounds the way I did every day for two weeks. The surgical scars I could read—clean, purposeful, the work of a trained hand. And the other one. The long line curving along his ribs from the fourth to the eighth. Not clean. Not purposeful. A line traced into his skin with something sharp, by someone who took their time.
I washed around it. Dried it. Applied salve with my fingertips. I knew it was different from the others.
Now I know who did it.
My stomach clenches. I breathe through it…in through the nose, out through the mouth. Trying to calm myself.
“She carved him.” Quiet. Steady. Wrong for what the words carry. “She wasn’t just running experiments. She marked him. Hurt him, Nadia. It wasn’t procedure. It was personal.”
Nadia is quiet.
“And now she’s sitting in a conference room offering to fix whatshefucking broke.” My hands are shaking again. “Five years in a sealed room with him. She carved into his body and burned symbols into his skin, and she’s calling it research.”
“Sable —”
“Has she asked to be alone with him?”
Nadia doesn’t answer right away. Finally, “She has. She’s requested access to evaluate him. Says she’s the only one who understands the frequency work. That, without her, Aurora’s suppression methods will push him past recovery.” Her voice is careful. “She’s framing it as a medical consultation.”
The fluorescent light hums. Outside, a vehicle crosses the compound.
“And Viktor?”
“Viktor hasn’t agreed to anything. He’s listening.” Nadia leans forward. “But Creed is pushing. Twenty-four captives. Plus intelligence on three active operations. Viktor can’t dismiss that without hearing it out.”
That’s how they’re making him small enough to trade.
I stand up.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Viktor.”
“Sable, you can’t walk into that meeting. No clearance. You’ll be escorted out, and it’ll undermine every argument I’m making on your behalf.”
