I wasn’t in any hurry to find the knife Mother had told me about. I already knew what was going to happen, so what was the point in fighting? Better to just let Yann?k find me and get it over with. I strolled lazily through the tunnels, keeping one hand to the wall, fingers gliding over the cold, uneven stone. The map was already in my head; I’d memorized the layout from an old schematic I’d dug up in the archives weeks ago. Mother should have hidden it better.

  For someone who wanted this whole ordeal kept secret, from us, from everyone, she wasn’t exactly subtle. Anyone with patience and a bit of dust tolerance could have pieced it together. A faint draft tugged at the ends of my hair as I turned a corner, and somewhere far off, water dripped with steady rhythm. It was the kind of sound that got under your skin if you listened too long. I tried to drown it out by whistling. Soft, tuneless, just enough to keep the silence from swallowing me whole.

  I didn’t want to be here any longer than I had to. The air felt thick, weighted with something that wasn’t quite fear but close enough to sting. Still, I moved slowly, deliberately. Not out of caution, but defiance. If the tunnels wanted to unsettle me, they’d have to try harder. A low vibration hummed through the stone beneath my palm; faint, but steady. At first, I thought it was the echo of my own steps, until I realized I’d stopped walking. The sound was still there, deeper now, rhythmic like a heartbeat. The house is excited. I heard the sound of someone throwing up. Yann?k must be close. He always had a way of announcing himself without meaning to. If I hadn’t heard him, I sure could smell him from a mile away. An awful mixture of vomit and death.

  For a moment, I considered hiding. An old reflex, pointless but tempting. Then I sighed, dragged my fingers one last time across the wall, and stepped forward into the narrowing corridor. The air grew colder. The whistling died in my throat. Only the drip of water and the echo of something, someone, moving beyond the bend filled the silence now.

  “Come on then,” I whispered, half to the dark, half to myself. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The tunnels tightened around me, the air pressed closer, heavy with the smell of damp stone and old dust. My footsteps sounded too loud now, even though I tried to soften them. The walls seemed to listen. Every breath, every shift of fabric echoed down the passage like a secret being passed along. Then, there. A flicker. A shadow moving where no light should be Leo,” came the voice, quiet but sure, the syllables shaped like a memory.

  I froze. He didn’t sound angry. He never did, not at first. It was that calm tone that always made my stomach twist. The kind of calm that came before something sharp.

  “Yann?k,” I said, forcing a casual tone I didn’t feel. “You took your time.”

  A faint glow bled around the corner, his light. It wasn’t fire, not exactly; more like a shimmer that clung to him, bending away from the walls. When he appeared, the shadows didn’t flee. They only leaned closer, curious. He looked like he always did when he was on Mother’s errands: too composed, too clean, as if the dirt of the world refused to stick to him. His eyes flicked to my hands, searching.

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  “You don’t have a blade,” he said.

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “But I’m working on it.”

  He sighed, and the sound echoed down the tunnel like the wind through a grave. “You shouldn’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, stepping sideways, keeping the wall at my back. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”

  Something unspoken passed between us. That old, bone-deep understanding neither of us ever asked for. We’d both been trained for this, in our own ways. He was the blade, and I was the shield that never quite held.

  The glow around him dimmed slightly as he took a step forward. “You’re not going to fight me?”

  “I’m not.” I shrugged. “I won't let them get the satisfaction.”

  Yann?k’s expression didn’t change, but his jaw tightened. “Stubborn until the very end.”

  I let out a bitter laugh as the space between us shrank to a breath. I could feel the warmth of his light against my face. Now I see the faint reflection of my horns in his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m going to miss you.” His voice broke in a half-formed sob.

  And before I could answer, the tunnel flared white. The light swallowed everything. For a heartbeat, there was no sound; only brightness, raw and perfect, burning through the dark. Then came the sting. Sharp, precise. I didn’t even feel the knife go in at first. Just the pressure, the cold shock of metal sliding between ribs. Yann?k’s face was close. Too close. His hand still on the hilt, his eyes wide; not with anger, but something worse. Regret.

  The breath left my lungs in a broken laugh. “Yeah,” I managed. “Me too.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered again, voice shaking.

  I stumbled back, the knife dragging free with a wet sound. The world tilted, walls melting into each other, air thinning around me. I pressed a hand to my side, came away slick and red. The heat hit next. It started deep, somewhere behind my heart, blooming outward like a pulse. The fire had always been there, waiting. Contained, controlled, locked beneath layers of patience and denial. But pain tore those layers apart like paper. She had kept her part of our deal.

  “Yann?k~” I tried to say his name again, but it came out as a hiss. The breath seared my throat.

  Flame licked across my fingers first, curling gold and white, swallowing the blood. It spread fast across my arms, my chest, the tunnel floor. The air filled with the sound of it: a low roar, alive and angry, pushing out the dark. Yann?k staggered back, shielding his face from the sudden blaze. The light that had been his was nothing now, swallowed by mine. The walls cracked. The ceiling groaned. The tunnels that had hidden generations of secrets began to crumble under the weight of my fire. I hit the ground hard. The stone beneath me burned, but I didn’t hurt anymore. Everything hurt less now, or maybe I was too far gone to tell the difference. Through the heat, through the smoke, I saw him still standing there. Half-blinded, half-breaking, watching me fall.

  “You always were too slow,” I murmured, though I wasn’t sure if he heard. My voice was almost gone, lost in the roar of my own unmaking.

  “Run.” I managed a murmur.

  Then the fire took me, and the world folded into light.