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“You are strongest in rising force,” Iriset says.

“I am naturally ecstatic, but we all know all, and so in this hand”—she points at his left hand, his core hand—“think of rising, of growing, of convection, transformation to a better self. I will match it with falling force.” Iriset flexes her right hand, holding it palm up.

Lyric holds his over hers, their palms apart by a breath.

“I will charge ecstatic in my left hand, and in your right you will hold flow, or rather, let it channel through you.”

Lyric nods, and they hold their hands in balance, breathing slowly as Iriset leads him through a straightforward meditation.

“Once you feel balanced, you can let go of me and find ecstatic and falling inside yourself. Hold it all in balance.”

In the darkness, with the lilies straining for them, the two breathe and find a design that shares equally between their hands. When he has it a little, Iriset whispers, “Now on your own.”

Lyric’s hands find hers instead and he presses their palms together. “Can we just remain like this? One step at a time. I feel peace and would rather it not waver for a while longer.”

Though her palms tingle, though she feels the gentle touch of his knees against hers, and the bench between her thighs, though she wants to flee, Iriset nods. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the circle of their design. He smells of anise oil, warm and thick.

Their breath aligns. So do their pulses. Slow, steady, fluttering heartbeat with slow, steady, fluttering heartbeat.

“Did you know the moon used to move?” Lyric asks.

Iriset looks. His head tilts back again, as it had when he first arrived in the Color Can Be Loud Garden, expression awash in grief.

He looks up at the fixed moon, but Iriset can’t tear her gaze from his face.

This angle shows her new planes: the exact line of his chin and jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, his dark nostrils, and a fringe of black lashes.

She thought once to make a craftmask of his face, but gave up for the lack of opportunity to study him closely.

He says, “In writings from the Apostate Age, they mention the motion of the moon, and its regular cycle of darkness to fullness, and writings from outside the empire write of great calamities and changes in seasons when the moon froze over our city. When the moon is a bright full coin, this garden is colored in silver-pink light. Aharté’s kiss, they called it then. ”

As his lips move, Iriset imagines them against her neck.

Her emotions pepper and spike, knocking their peaceful circle off-center.

Lyric glances down, concern obvious. “Iriset.”

Her name whispered, their hands together, this shiver in her loins.

Oh no , she thinks.

“What’s wrong?” Lyric asks. His thumbs brush hers.

Iriset flashes her gaze to his, then down again to his neck. His robe is open over a long shirt, and the shirt’s collar laced just to the hollow of his throat. She lies, “It surprises me to hear you speak of the Apostate Age. To take seriously anything written then.”

“History is something to learn from, not fear,” he says. “Even terrible history. Especially terrible history.”

“Surely not everything from that age was terrible.”

“People were people, some good and some bad, and some in between. But their ways were unnatural, against the will of Aharté. They allowed too much mutation and corruption. The laws were terrible. People are their laws. Their society.”

Iriset bites her lip, wanting to argue.

Lyric says, “You don’t like our laws.”

“Some of them,” she admits softly. “Some do not seem to serve people as well as they might.”

“The Little Cat—”

“I do not mean my father. He broke laws regardless of how they served the empire. I love him, I understand what he is. I want you to—” She stops, slipping her hands free of his grip.

The Vertex Seal lets his hands fall to his thighs. “No. Isidor the Little Cat is too dangerous. I’m sorry.”

Iriset lifts her knee over the bench and turns away. “He cannot hurt you. He never threatened the Holy Design. There are many other murderers and smugglers in the undermarket, giving plenty of miran what they want.”

“But none that so thoroughly promote apostasy.”

He means human architecture. He means Silk. Her fault, again.

“She is dead,” Iriset snaps quietly. She stares at the ruffled lilies.

“Paser mé Ferrin,” Lyric murmurs. “Her core unraveled and reworked by Aharté’s hand.”

Iriset cannot believe he knows Paser’s whole name. As if he cares. And prays for her, too!

“I did not kill her, Iriset. She was killed in prison, by someone paid to do it. Most likely by your father before she could reveal his secrets. I wanted her alive. I wanted her to recant and take the Glorious Vow.” Frustration tinges his words.

“Better for the infamous Silk to forswear human architecture than die a martyr to it.”

She scoffs, but there’s little power behind it.

Lyric touches the tips of his fingers to her back, between her shoulder blades.

Iriset presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, squeezes her eyes closed.

He removes his touch and says, “Have you taken the Vow? Amaranth told me you were apprenticed with Silk and are talented enough to impress the palace architects.”

“I have not.” What she means is I will not.

“Do you believe in it? The mandate against human architecture is the most sacred of Aharté’s laws.”

Something in his voice makes her look at him. It’s too dark to read his expression well, but if she didn’t know better, Iriset might think Lyric méra Esmail His Glory is desperate for her to agree. Invested in her opinion.

The safe response is Of course. But after tonight the Days of Mercy begin, and knowing now her father can expect no pardon from Lyric, her plot with Bittor is the only way.

This game is ending; she’ll never have a chance to speak with the Vertex Seal again, to affect his thinking. As much as she might like to.

Iriset bends to pick up The Seven Hundred Declarations of Safiyah the Bloody .

She offers it back to His Glory, gaze lowered.

“She ascended because an assassin used architecture to murder her brother. But not human architecture. Any designer might use the forces as tools for good or evil. Might the same not be said of human architecture? There is good it can do.”

“Healing? I know the arguments, but Aharté cannot trust us with the temptation. I cannot risk my city or empire on wagering that people will choose good.”

“That is so sad, Your Glory.”

“Yes.”

“If you assume the worst in other people, how can you choose to do good yourself?”

He lets go his breath in a soft stream, a release of tension.

Iriset pushes. “Does Aharté’s Holy Design merely maintain this world as it is, as if this is the best we can be, or are we supposed to strive for more? To change ourselves and the world in the direction of peace and thriving?”

“That is the thinking that made the Moon-Eater’s apostates destroy their bodies with experimenting and mangled the threads of Aharté’s web. Pushing too far, too fast—with so much ambition in their sights they forgot what already is good in humanity.”

“And so we must not even try, because it has gone badly before, because it so easily could again? Never even try, for fear of failure.”

Lyric smiles at her. “Catastrophic failure. The end of civilization.”

She smiles back, only a little. “At least your name would be remembered, if you ended the empire in a blaze of glory.”

“I don’t seek to be remembered. I am no Safiyah. I only seek to hold as many of my people safe as possible. To pass on wisdom to my children and give them a future. A home.”

“No ambition in a Vertex Seal!” Iriset pretends at shock, that smile still pinning up the corners of her mouth.

“Or is it overly ambitious to think I can keep anyone safe?” he replies.

“Hmm.”

They fall into quiet again. Iriset notices that Lyric’s design shifts gently within the confines of balance. He’s maintained it without her, through this strange conversation.

“I like you, Iriset mé Isidor,” the last Vertex Seal says gently. “Take the Glorious Vow, remain in our service. I will give you a title: the Royal Arguer. In honoring you, I will honor your father’s design and make certain you are allowed to mourn him in accordance with Aharté’s Silence.”

Pain grips her: a terrible mingling of gladness, grief, anger, and desire.

“I would rather he live,” she whispers.

Lyric stands, taking Safiyah’s book with him. Iriset shoots to her feet, ending up too near him. She still feels the warmth of his rising force. He’s not so much taller than her.

“That I will not do,” he says, specific in his words. Will , not can .

A brutal distinction.

The cult does turn over their leadership within Moonshadow, and their enclave is spared decimation, though the town itself is burned to the hard earth.

Those who fight are captured and sent to work camps, their children given to families who practice perfect Silence.

So the cycle of rebellion and assimilation continues.

The woman whose pregnancy began it all lives, and so does her baby. On the first Day of Mercy, her name is called by Lyric méra Esmail His Glory, whose name will be well remembered, indeed, for being the last Vertex Seal, and she is granted pardon.