Page 89 of Embers of Midnight

Ronan doesn’t look up from the skillet. “No.”

Ash bites a grape like he wants it to be a microphone. “I vote yes. Chaperoned by common sense and a very large man with a clipboard.”

“Still no,” Ronan repeats.

Darian sets his mug down with precision that could fix a crooked room. “Risk exists. So does mitigation.”

Caelum watches my face, not the table. “What do you need to feel safe?”

“I need to stop flinching from shadows,” I answer, too honest. “I need shampoo and a notebook that doesn’t scream when I write too hard. And I need the world to stop winning by default.”

Silence, then Ash: “Little flame has a point.”

We hammer the plan out between eggs and stubbornness. Daylight. Busy streets. No solo detours. Taya and Laz on either arm like stylish armor. I ping every forty minutes; if I feel watched, I don’t debate it—I send one word and we head for the nearest portal or public door with witnesses. If anything feels wrong, I say it out loud. No proving a point with my face.

Ronan finally nods, slow. “You’ll call.” It isn’t a question.

“I’ll call.” The thread on my right wrist catches the light, small and steady. The bracelet on my left stays warm against skin like it knows when I lie. I’m not lying.

He crosses to me and hooks our pinkies like we invented it. “If you whisper, I’ll hear you.”

“Gross,” Ash says lovingly. “Bring me back something with sugar.”

“Bring me back yourselves,” Caelum murmurs.

I kiss my fingertips and press them to his sleeve. “Yes, sir.”

We take the basement portal because Taya trusts that one and because the guard on duty likes Laz’s jokes. The gate opens clean. We step into an alley between two warehouses, damp concrete, gulls arguing high above, a forklift beeping somewhere out of sight.

Flashback tries to climb my spine. Alaska. Night. Breath and glass and hands. I let the first wave hit my ribs. Then I put it on the ground with the count.

Two short. One long. Heat low in my palms, not my throat. Boots steady. Thread light on my pulse.

“I’m good,” I tell them. “Let’s shop before I narrate my trauma for free.”

“Copy,” Taya says, jaw set, palm warm through my sleeve for one second. Laz pretends to argue with a street map while his phone’s camera sees everything.

We run errands the way people do when they’re trying to teach their bodies that markets aren’t minefields. Soap. Notebooks. A sweater Laz insists is “weaponized cozy.” We split a paper cone of hot dumplings and eat them too fast, blowing steam, laughing when I burn my tongue because of course I do. It feels almost normal.

The tail shows up like a temperature change. Not footsteps. Attention. A weight at the back of my neck that my nerves have learned the hard way.

I don’t turn. I breathe. “We’re done,” I say quietly. “Tail at five o’clock, not sloppy. We cut it.”

Taya doesn’t look either. “Back lane to the service road,” she answers, casual. Laz’s phone is already in his pocket; his shoulders loosen in a way I’ve learned means he’s coiling, not relaxing.

We pass a shop window. Glass reflects four figures for a beat: us three, and a man pretending to be interested in clocks. He’s not holding a phone. He should be. His hands sit too empty.

“Left,” I murmur.

We slide into the narrow service corridor behind the market. Litter. A palette leaned wrong. The smell of wet cardboard. I clock exits, height of fences, where the alley widens.

We don’t make it to the corner.

The Hunters don’t announce themselves. That’s new. Normally there’s a sermon about order. Today there are eight of them, masks up, stepping in from both ends like they rehearsed. No silver badges. Gloves. One of them carries a compact tube wrapped in dull cloth. Null-weave, my brain supplies. Beads along the hem.

Taya inhales like she’s about to scream. The sound dies in her throat because my body moves first.

“Behind me,” I say, already stepping. They don’t argue. Taya’s phone is in her hand; her thumb moves once, a tiny SOS thrown down the line we set this morning.