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The walk to the new sector was slow, on purpose, every step observed. She didn’t even realise she was holding her breath most of the way.

Nuada was a constant shadow, dark and silent, his presence pressing at the edge of her awareness without touching it. She noticed the way his cloak fell perfectly in the dim light, the heavy scrape of his boots, the subtle pause in his stride when passing a warded corner.

He didn’t watch her the way Caelith did. He watched her like a man who has already decided what he’s allowed to have.

Maia’s eyes flicked to the streets around them. Normally, the lower tiers were restless even in the early hours: merchants opening stalls, apprentices scurrying with scraps of parchment, fragments pulsing like quiet heartbeat warnings along the alley walls.

But today, the streets were unnervingly empty. Shutters were closed too evenly, stalls abandoned mid-setup, a child’s toy left in the exact centre of an alley as though someone had been pulled away too fast to notice they’d dropped it.

A sudden hum from a stone corner made her pulse spike. A fragment set into the wall beside her vibrated sharply. She cast a quick glance at Nuada. He didn’t react though, except his eyes flicked briefly toward her, assessing. She swallowed, heart thundering.

“Where is Caelith?” she asked at last, careful to sound neutral, almost casual.

Nuada’s lips quirked. “Do you care?”

Her stomach tightened. She chose her next words carefully. Because every question she asked aloud was a question this creature would carry back to someone else, and she would not be the reason Caelith paid for her concern.

“I’m aware of duties. Of obligations,” she said, forcing her voice even. “That is all.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re wondering about the one they’ve reassigned. Understandable.” He tilted his head. “Word travels fast, in a city this frightened.”

“Frightened people repeat things,” Maia said. “They don’t report them.”

He smiled then, slow and pleased. “For a girl so small, your voice is not.”

“I have no interest in being smaller,” she said quickly. “Nor quiet.”

Something moved behind his eyes that she didn’t want to think about. “Good,” he said. “I do so tire of quiet things.”

By the time they reached her new post, the absence had stopped being an absence and become a weight. There was no one at her left. Three times before noon she caught herself saving something up to tell him, and had nowhere to put any of it.

That afternoon, hunting for a reference, she opened her own notes from the fortnight she and Caelith had worked side by side. Beside one of her translations, in the margin, was a single word in an old script. It wasn’t her hand. It was narrow, upright and careful, as though whoever wrote it had not wanted to make a mistake.

She didn’t know what it meant, but she closed the book and kept her hand flat on the cover for a while.

She spent the day adjusting to her new assignment, learning the subtle rhythms of the wards here, the way the shadows bent toward the glass, but her mind still drifted to Caelith without effort.

When Nuada finally dismissed her, she found Selinne in the upper archives.

“Have you seen him?” she asked without preamble.

Selinne’s eyes widened. “I— yes. With the soldiers. Training. Preparing. What happened to you today, where were you?”

“Preparing? With the soldiers? But— is he…?” Her words faltered, caught on the fear she couldn’t admit.

“He’s safe,” Selinne said gently, though her voice lacked conviction. “I saw him… but you know him. He seemed the same as always.”

The same as always. Maia knew what that meant. It meant nothing at all.

“Why combat though?” she said, thinking aloud. “He’s been in the Archive for years. Why send him to the soldiers now, after everything?”

Selinne went very still. “I think you just answered your own question.”

“I know that,” she answered. “But I think Orell wouldn’t do something without a bigger reason. And I also think preparing him for the Fracture is a very convenient reason to put him somewhere he can be watched by people who aren’t me.”

“Or somewhere he can be used first,” Selinne said quietly, her face pale. “If it comes to that.”

Maia’s jaw clenched. Her frustration flared, sharp and spiky. “I need to see him,” she said, though even as she spoke, she knew she couldn’t, no clearance, no path, and perhaps he wouldn’t want her seeing him like this.