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Amaranth disregards her brother’s order and takes Iriset’s hands. “A girl in the offices of the Architect of the Seal was found dead, with poisoned paint on her hands. It was paint meant for you, for your mask project.”

“Poisoned paint?” Iriset blinks. “That is what killed Dalir méra Idris?” She says it as a question, but she knows: That Vertex Seal, the brother of Safiyah the Bloody, was murdered by the relatives of criminals he executed with an ingeniously poisoned face paint.

“It may be similar, and we’re collecting everything you have already, paints and dyes.” Garnet says, his voice a low rumble. “Menna will look into it, and your combat-designer.”

“Huya,” Iriset says absently, imagining poison spreading through peacock-green pigments, smeared on her fingers.

If it’s not face paint, but for her art, maybe it’s a creeping poison, architectural like her crawling design that changed the color of her skin, that dyed her hair and pulled its texture smoother.

What if she touched Lyric with that poison? She looks at him.

Immediately he pushes off the desk and strides to her, nudging Amaranth away. “You’re scaring her.”

“I’m all right,” Iriset protests, reaching for his face; she stops at the last moment, a flash of Erxan’s too-wide eyes and his yell under her hands. “I—I was thinking how easily I could spread such a poison to you.”

He takes her hands in his own and presses them to his cheeks.

“It will have come from outside the palace,” Iriset murmurs.

“I was suggesting we send you away,” Garnet says. “For safety.”

Iriset gasps, inadvertently gripping Lyric’s face. He doesn’t wince, and she drops her hands, turning to Her Glory as Amaranth says, “It’s a bad idea.”

Lyric steps closer behind her and covers her shoulders with his hands. “I would not like to see you go, but… I want you safe most of all.”

“Might they not follow me?”

Garnet says, “I doubt it. We could spirit you away in the night, with a small group of very trusted people. Perhaps Her Glory could spare Sidoné for a time.”

Sidoné surges to her feet. “We could keep you safe, away from here. Until the culprit is caught, or until…”

“That is the problem,” Amaranth says. “We do not know when you could return, if you were sent away and we continued to make no progress. Whoever is behind this has hidden for quads. They have powerful friends.”

“Who is more powerful than you?” Iriset asks, and Her Glory scowls.

“I can’t imagine being without you for an unknown amount of time,” Lyric says softly. She hears him draw breath to say more, but only silence follows.

“Lyric.” Iriset twists her neck to meet his eyes briefly, then continues on to Amaranth, Garnet, and Sidoné. “I must consider such a thing closely. For what message does it send if I go away? Not only to potential enemies, but Ceres? My father will not like it.”

Lyric squeezes her shoulders, but Sidoné says, “Singix,” very firmly, in disapproval.

Iriset says, “I will go if I must, but perhaps you will find the culprit now? Soon? Because of new evidence from this attempt?”

“Maybe,” Garnet says. “Everyone is being traced. I should go supervise now that you are here.”

“Do you think the girl, the dead girl, was involved, or another casualty?”

Sidoné answers, “Menna thinks a casualty.”

Iriset closes her eyes and leans back into Lyric’s chest. Menna probably wishes the poison had found its way to Iriset!

Or Menna is behind it all. Iriset needs to get to the paint herself, to peel apart its forces.

Try to detect the signature she caught on the assassin.

But she doesn’t know how to get Singix there.

Maybe Amaranth can smuggle her some. With a small sigh, she asks, eyes still shut, “Who could hate me so much? Who, to destroy so many lives for mine?”

Her husband slides his hands down her arms and hugs her, his cheek against her hair. “Only a monster,” he murmurs.

“Or someone who does not value those other lives,” Garnet says.

Lifting her head, Iriset asks, “Was the girl mirané?”

“No,” says Sidoné.

She looks to Garnet, who adds darkly, “But Shahd was, though Alishe—the Seal guard killed—was not.”

“Shahd was killed by the assassin, not our villain.”

“I am not mirané,” Iriset says.

“Nor was Iriset mé Isidor,” Lyric says.

Iriset tries not to melt at hearing her real name on his lips. Does she imagine a note of longing in his voice? (Probably.)

“We already suspected a miran,” Amaranth says dismissively. Disgustedly, even. “I need a drink.”

That night, she begs Lyric to stop her from thinking and halfway through the buildup of a truly epic orgasm, she turns the tables: She uses a slip of silk and ties his hands and takes out her love and impatience on his body, makes him yell and squirm, and thanks to all that practice analyzing Bittor’s rising force again and again, she’s very good at edging and doesn’t let Lyric come until she thinks he’s suffered almost enough.

After he passes out, she leaves through the secret door and plants her final anchors.

The design is ready; it only needs the trigger.

Iriset slips back into the bedroom she shares with the Vertex Seal and because she is ready, in love, and on the verge of winning, she wakes her husband up. He remains groggy, but Iriset grabs clothes for him and says she wants to pray in the Silent Chapel.

He goes easily then, never hesitant to visit his god’s house.

They walk the labyrinth hand in hand under the stars, and when they reach the center where a shallow well cuts into the rock of the Crystal Desert, she slowly strips off her clothes.

Lyric, at peace, doesn’t notice at first. When he does, he sucks in a breathless gasp.

Iriset spreads herself against the hard, cool ground and waits for him.

In the dawn light he kneels and touches her, gently, worshipfully, and Iriset closes her eyes to imagine it’s her own body, her Osahar skin and knotted brown hair, her sandglass eyes and fuller lips.

Her spine that arches, her ankle hooked over his shoulder.

He’ll never look at her this way again, never touch her this way again.

At least her insides aren’t changed, the night-shaded pink and brown all Iriset, the deep places inside her he manages to reach, her tongue and her teeth glinting in the light of Aharté’s moon.

On the sixth afternoon of the Scorched Sky quad, a force-bridge in the Falling Steeple Shadow precinct explodes in a tightly designed burst, scattering pages from Silk’s old design pamphlets.

It kills a half-quad of people, injuring more, and the lines of force that suspended the bridge flare a white so bright it gives off heat like a vicious fire.

It takes architects and investigator-designers five hours to put it out.

The moment the force-light fades, name-sigils appear in the air, hanging like afterimages of light: Silk. Every sigil reads Silk .

After an epic meeting of the mirané council, Lyric authorizes General Bey to prepare the Holy City army for a full offensive into the Saltbath precinct and root out Bittor méra Tesmose.

The army issues a statement via ribbon alarm and bulletin graffiti: Turn against the cult of Silk and apostasy, or your homes will be leveled on the fourth day.

The message rings across Moonshadow City, radiating from ribbons and steeples, four times.

Every four hours it repeats. (Iriset does not know yet, but the voice is Lyric’s.

Almost none of the citizens of the empire can recognize it, but he insists that it be his word, his responsibility.

Menna mé Garai and Raia mér Omorose capture the echo, and the Vertex Seal doesn’t shake or quail.)

When the bridge exploded there were still five days left on Bittor’s timeline, but Lyric has taken them down to merely three.

If anything else changes, Iriset is ready.

Her array is set, she has the charged robes that will become her wings, and she is so eager, despite everything, to strip off this Singix identity and be herself again.

There is rebellion throughout the city, but soon everyone will know that real apostasy lives at the side of the Vertex Seal.