Page 150 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

Ark turned.

His mother stood with her arms folded, chin lifted—dry-eyed, unmoved, as always. Oromon beside her, one hand on the bedframe, knuckles pale.

“This is just another fight,” she said. “Like all the others. Easy.”

His father’s mouth curved—that wry smile Ark had seen only across dinner tables, usually after Delphyne had said something that would’ve earned anyone else a war. “I thought, after all these years, I’d finally get a soft word out of you.”

She didn’t falter. “You’ll need to come back for that.”

Ark watched his father’s smile deepen into something that looked, against all odds, like a reason. Conviction.

Oromon’s grip tightened on the bedframe. “We’ll wait for you, Father.” Quiet. Steady. And Ark let his brother’s steadiness bolster his own.

His father’s hand tightened around his.

“You don’t need to become me, Ark.” His voice was quieter now. “You were never meant to. You have something far more dangerous than power—you have conviction. And now, you have a reason.”

Ark squeezed back.

“She kept her promise,” he said, handing the vial over to the nurse. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Well then,” Kassenor said. “Let’s do it.”

And for the first time tonight, Ark smiled.

Because hope—battered and brewed from seawater and a Kitchen Witch’s faith—was now in the room with them.

38

CASSIA

Days bled into one another. The calendar insisted only a week had passed since the surgery, but her body counted time differently—in boxes packed, in bread baked, in rooms slowly emptied of the life they’d held.

She filled every hour with work. The orphanage’s packing. The bakery’s demanding rhythm. The quiet, methodical preparation of her house. There was little time to rest, and she made sure there was even less time to feel.

The bond mark had gone quiet. Not vanished—she could still get a vague sense if she pressed her fingers to the spot, a faint ember buried deep. But he wasn’t reaching for her anymore. The absence of those small, wordless pulses was its own kind of grief—like a room that had once been full of music, now gone silent. The instruments were still there, but there was no one to play them.

No shadow ravens either. The silence where his voice used to be had carved something hollow beneath her ribs that no amount of bread or busy hands could fill.

Rhodes had sent a message the morning after the surgery:

The surgery went well. New organs are adapting. There’s real hope.

It was the best news she’d received in months. She’d read it three times, pressed her hand to her mouth, and returned to packing boxes.

On the eighth morning, she woke before the alarm and didn’t go to the bakery. She’d decided the night before to take today off. There was something she needed to do this afternoon, and she needed the morning to steady herself for it.

Her hands, as always, refused to be idle. She pulled yesterday’s bone broth from the cold box—the batch she’d made for the children’s supper, but had somehow made too much of. She’d known even then, stirring the pot, that the extra wasn’t accidental. She poured it into a thermos and placed it in a basket.

On the way out, she gathered a small bouquet from her mother’s garden. Chrysanthemums, winter poppies, and a single stalk of silver lavender—stubborn things that grew out of season. She’d chosen them without thinking, only realizing later how fitting they were. Persistent. Stubborn. A little out of place.

A little like her, and perhaps . . . a little like Ark.

The train to Angelene was half-empty at this hour. She sat with the basket on her knee, watching the frost-laced countryside blur past the window. Twice, her fingers drifted to the mark at her neck. Twice, she pulled them away. From the station, she walked—past Yulefrost market stalls being assembled, past cafés fogging their windows with steam, past the turning that would have taken her to Aegis & Ash. She didn’t take it. She kept her eyes forward, her grip tight on the basket handle, until the pale-grey towers of Marvale General rose above the rooftops.

From the lobby, she followed the directions to the hospital’s first-class wing, a quiet corridor lined with polished floors and warm sunlight. Each room here came with wide windows, the best care in Meredith one could afford, and private views of a tranquil evergreen courtyard.

Her pace slowed. Every footstep sounded heavy on the rug, and she found herself listening for a second set—longer stride, heavier tread, the particular rhythm she knew even with her eyes shut. He could be here. Probably was. A son like Ark wouldn’t leave his father’s side for long.