Constellation Realigned

The Tower’s walls were never truly silent, not even at this hour, not even with most of the students sealed behind their doors. The leyline energy vibrated faintly in the stone, a hum that was half-magic and half-memory, and it kept Ophelia from sleeping more than a half-hour at a stretch. Not that she tried particularly hard. It felt greedy, somehow, to claim more than fragments of rest. Like returning to a friend’s house after betraying them and expecting the couch and the best blanket.

She’d claimed Lavan’s room because it was the only space in the Tower that still registered as “hers” in any sense of the word. The beds in the old dormitory made her feel like she was borrowing childhoods from girls she’d never known. The Masters’ lounge was too public; the archives too full of ghosts. So, she took a guest room in Lavan’s suite, with its high shelves and battered wood desk, its heap of mismatched blankets on the floor, and its window angled perfectly to catch the morning light (when there was any). She perched on the sill now, legs folded to her chest, tail wrapped tight around her calves, watching the city’s distant rooftops go blue to violet to ash.

She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. The Circle was gone, dissolved, or at least made irrelevant, now that the Gentleman’s true identity was a matter of public rumor. A new regime in the Nightvalley would fill the vacuum soon enough. Ophelia had instructed her best lieutenants to do whatever was required to protect the most vulnerable, and then let it go. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was maturity. Either way, she’d abdicated the mask for the time being, and the city would live or die on its own merits.

She tried to catalogue her other options. She could flee the city, change her name, start over in another place. She could join the defense of the city, as the other Masters had suggested, but the thought of putting on another uniform made her stomach turn. She could turn herself in to Runecoat, plead for leniency, accept a neatly labeled punishment. Or she could simply do nothing, and wait to be told who she was supposed to be.

The old Ophelia would have made a joke at this point, “What’s the difference between a Arcanist and a corpse? Only the speed at which they rot.” The old Ophelia would have poured another drink and fucked it out of her system, or gone for a midnight run, or orchestrated a citywide scavenger hunt with an actual corpse as the prize. The new Ophelia, the one who’d spent half a lifetime playing archvillain and the other half pretending it was all a lark, simply pressed her forehead to the cold glass and waited for the other shoe to drop.

She didn’t have to wait long.

The first footstep in the corridor was unmistakably Lavan’s. The second set was lighter, the cadence a little too regular to be natural, Isemay. She braced, tail flicking once, then again, until the knock landed on the door.

“Come in,” she said, her voice somehow raw and hollow at once.

Lavan entered first, his expression unreadable but less closed than usual. He’d lost weight, she noted, and his hair looked like it hadn’t met a brush in weeks. Isemay followed, arms folded, gaze fastened to a spot over Ophelia’s left ear. The awkwardness was thick enough to taste.

For a long moment, none of them spoke. The Tower’s hum grew louder, or maybe Ophelia’s senses just sharpened to fill the gap. Lavan looked at Isemay, then at Ophelia, then at the books on the desk. Isemay studied the window as though hoping to find a better version of herself reflected there.

Ophelia broke first, because she always did. “Did you need the room?” she asked. “I can take a walk. Give you both a chance to trash my character in private.”

Lavan snorted, a sound that was almost a laugh. “It’s your room now. I only ever borrowed it from the Tower, technically. And I’m not in the mood for character assassination. I think we’ve all had enough of that to last a few months.”

Ophelia waited. Her tail did not, it continued its nervous semaphore.

Isemay’s eyes flicked to her, softening just a fraction. “We just came from a meeting with the other Masters,” she said. “They asked about you.”

Ophelia tensed. She’d expected this, but the confirmation still landed sharp. “Should I start packing?”

Lavan shook his head, slow and deliberate. “You’re not being kicked out. Not unless you want to be.”

Isemay stepped into the room, letting the door close behind her. “You’re not in any danger here, Ophelia. They—” she hesitated, glancing at Lavan “—they voted. On what happens next for you.”

Ophelia’s mouth went dry. She tried for a joke and failed. “So what’s the sentence? Are they going to stick me in a fishbowl and let first-years poke at me with wands until I break?”

Isemay almost smiled. “Nothing like that. They want you to be a Master. If you want it.”

The words landed with less an impact than a chemical reaction, something fizzing and violent under the surface. “You’re serious,” Ophelia said, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “They want me as a Master? After all of this?”

Lavan shrugged. “The Tower wants you. The vote was whether to let you, and, well, the Tower doesn’t exactly care what the rest of us think if it’s made up its mind. But Kerrowyn said it would go easier if everyone was on board.”

Ophelia laughed, too loud. “You’re talking about the Tower like it’s a person again.”

Lavan and Isemay exchanged a glance. “That’s not so far off, is it?” Isemay asked, her tone mild. “After last night, I’m not sure where the Tower stops and we begin. Or vice versa.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lavan said, dropping into the chair at the desk. “You belong here. That’s the only criteria that’s ever mattered. All the rest is just…pretense.”

Ophelia stared at her hands. The bruises from the Square had gone yellow around the edges, and the scar on her arm still twinged if she pressed it the wrong way. “It’s been years since I set foot in the Tower as a student,” she said. “I didn’t even make Arcanist before I…before I left. I’m not qualified for this.”

“You’re more qualified. You’ve got the magic, and the recklessness to wield it,” Lavan said.

Ophelia’s lips twisted, not quite a smile. “I see the standards haven’t changed.”

“They never existed,” Lavan said. “Not for us.”

A silence opened. Ophelia found herself scanning the room for traps, for hints of a punchline, for anything that would turn the moment back into the kind of joke she knew how to handle.

It was Isemay who broke the thread this time. “We need your help,” she said, the words simple but freighted with something too heavy for Ophelia to dodge. “The city’s on the edge. The wards are failing. Pembroke says the only way to stabilize them is with at least three Masters in resonance at a time. And Alavara and Iliyria are leaving soon, so that’s two less. The rest of us…we’re not enough.”

Ophelia tried to process it, then just shook her head. “This is all happening too fast.”

“That’s how disasters happen,” Lavan said. “One minute you’re watching the sky, the next you’re on fire.”

Ophelia let out a sigh. “If I say yes, what do I have to do? Is there a ceremony? A gauntlet? Do I have to apologize to every person I wronged in the last decade?”

Lavan grinned. “No ceremony. The Tower will tell you when you’re in. Usually with a headache, sometimes with a hallucination. Kerrowyn claims she saw a pink elephant the night she was inducted, but I’m pretty sure that was the absinthe.”

Isemay added, “All you have to do is show up. And be willing.”

Ophelia looked out the window. The city was lighter now, the towers and domes of the Capitol smudged into silhouettes by the dawn. “This is surreal,” she said softly. “When I was a child, I thought if I could just become a Master, I could fix everything. Now I just want to keep from breaking things further.”

“That’s more than most people want,” Isemay said.

Ophelia turned back to them, her posture less rigid. “Was the vote even close?” she asked, voice threaded with something like hope.

Lavan exchanged another glance with Isemay, then nodded for her to go ahead.

Isemay took a breath. “Kerrowyn voted yes. Alavara did too, once she realized how much the Tower wanted it. Evanton was against, on principle, I think. Iliyria said she wasn’t sure if we could trust you, so she voted no. Pembroke was on the fence but eventually said no, too. It’s not that he doesn’t want you here, it’s that he thinks it’s too soon. Three to four, with Alavara as the tiebreaker.”

Ophelia blinked. “So, I barely made the cut.”

“Kerrowyn was ecstatic that Alavara sided with her over Iliyria,” Lavan said, amusement curling his lips. “She called it a triumph for chaos.”

Ophelia shook her head, and the last vestiges of the old mask, the one made of snark and detachment, dropped away. “Thank you,” she said, voice thin but genuine. “For supporting me. After everything.”

Isemay smiled for real this time. “I’d say it was nothing, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be the death of us all. So, you’re welcome.”

There was a brief, honest silence. The kind that would have made the old Ophelia run for the hills. The new one, unsure what to do with her hands, just picked at her sleeve.

“We don’t have time for a full reconciliation arc,” Isemay said, voice light but not unkind. “So let’s speed-run it. If you’re going to betray us again, do it quick so we can adapt.”

Ophelia snorted. “And here I thought you’d want to at least yell at me for an hour or two first.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t yell,” Lavan replied, eyes glinting. “I just want to do it over coffee.”

Ophelia grinned, a real and reckless thing, then stood and stretched her arms over her head. “I can live with that.”

A ripple passed through the walls of the Tower, a shimmer of leyline resonance so subtle most would have missed it. But Ophelia, now tuned to its frequency, felt it curl around her like a cat.

“Guess that’s the Tower’s way of saying welcome back,” she muttered.

Isemay caught the words, and for a moment her expression flickered, some deep hurt or hope surfacing and then receding. “Don’t make us regret it,” she said, almost a whisper.

Ophelia straightened, hands at her sides, and for the first time since the Circle she felt something like the gravity of belonging. Not trust, not yet, but the possibility of it. “I’ll try,” she said.

It wasn’t a promise, but it was enough.

Lavan stood, and so did Isemay, and for a moment the three of them existed in a kind of equilibrium, suspended between what they’d been and what they might still become.

Then the moment broke, and they all moved at once, like strangers whose hands had brushed at a crosswalk. Ophelia gestured to the corridor. “After you,” she said. “I think it’s your turn to lead the way.”

Isemay smiled, and Lavan gave a mock-bow, and together they stepped out into the Tower’s blue-lit halls.

The world outside was still dark, but inside, the leyline hum was just a little bit warmer.

***

The Tower, even when at rest, was never truly silent. Its core hummed at a pitch just below the threshold of waking, a sound that threaded through its walls and the dreams of its inhabitants alike. But tonight, for the first time since she had returned, Ophelia found herself able to sleep. It was not an easy sleep, nor a kind one, her mind lurched from memory to memory, from ice-cracked alleyways to the blinding flare of spotlights on the gallows, but somewhere in the thicket of old regrets she managed to slip the leash of waking and let herself drift.

The sensation of falling was not new to her. She had spent much of her life waiting for the moment when the floor would disappear, when the careful arrangement of choices and consequences would tilt and cast her into the unknown. But this fall was different. There was no fear, no stomach-twisting panic. Only the rush of wind, and an odd, prickling certainty that this time she would not hit bottom.

The world around her unraveled, then reknit itself into a corridor of infinite length, lined with books and candlelight and the echoes of laughter she had never quite been able to forget. She passed through it, falling not downward but inward, the sense of velocity growing until she was sure she would splinter into fragments. Then, with a jolt that rippled out through her bones, she landed.

But the impact did not hurt. Instead, it was as if the floor caught her, softened at the last instant into something yielding, a mattress, perhaps, or a mother’s arms, not that she remembered the latter. She lay there, face pressed to cool stone, waiting for the pain, waiting for the inevitable indignity of being unable to rise. It never came.

She rolled onto her back and stared upward.

The chamber was vast. The ceiling arched so high above her that it could have been the sky itself, and the darkness between the stones was peppered with points of light, some as sharp as diamonds, others a hazy glow, all of them moving, tracing slow and deliberate paths across the vault. For a moment, she simply watched them, unable to reconcile the size of the space with the memory of the Tower’s floorplan. Even in dream, she thought, the Tower liked to show off.

She sat up, brushing dream-dust from her sleeves, and realized with a start that she was not wearing her usual armor of velvet and silk. Instead, she had on a pair of striped pajama pants and a threadbare tunic whose hem had seen better centuries. Her feet were bare, her hair unbound. Of course, she thought, bitterly amused. Of course she would face the greatest magic of her life half-dressed and unarmed.

At the center of the chamber was a beam of light. It was neither flame nor electricity, neither magic nor natural phenomenon, but something that existed only at the intersection of all four. It rose from the floor and pierced the ceiling, a rod of pure white so bright that it left afterimages on her retinas every time she glanced at it. Around the base of the beam, the stone had been carved away into a shallow basin, filled with water that reflected the stars above and doubled their number.

She stood, feeling the pulse of her own heart echo in her feet, and walked toward the beam. Each step was accompanied by a subtle shift in the air, as if the room itself was drawing breath. By the time she reached the basin, she could taste metal on her tongue and ozone in her nose, the unmistakable tang of leyline magic at its most concentrated.

She peered into the water and saw herself: Ophelia Saloth, The Gentleman, the woman who had spent half her life running from the consequences of her own brilliance. But the reflection was wrong. The eyes were too bright, the horns more pronounced.

She looked up, and felt that something was there.

The Tower’s sentience did not bother with a physical form tonight. Instead, it was a voice, a presence, a shape that flickered at the edge of vision and refused to resolve itself. “Welcome,” it said, and the sound was not in the room but in her mind, layered a thousandfold with every voice that had ever called Ophelia by name.

She crossed her arms, pajama sleeves drooping. “Is this a dream, or are you actually inside my skull?”

The laughter was a rush of wind, gentle but not mocking. “I have never understood the difference. Does it matter?”

Ophelia considered. “I suppose not. I assume you brought me here for a reason.”

“Yes,” the voice replied, and the word seemed to deepen the shadows in the room. “You are invited to become a Master of the Tower. Properly, this time.”

Ophelia snorted. “And what, exactly, does that entail? Is there a test, or do you just want me to sign the guest book?”

“Neither,” said the voice, and the stars overhead seemed to realign, forming a spiral that narrowed down to the point where Ophelia stood. “You must accept a bond. A binding, stronger than blood or memory. You will belong to the Tower, and it will belong to you. Until the leyline itself is severed, or you are gone from this world.”

Ophelia shifted, suddenly conscious of the cold stone beneath her feet. “What if I say no?”

The silence was long, but not empty. “Then you will wake, unchanged. You may walk away, and no one will stop you. But the Tower will never open its heart to you again.”

She waited for anger, or guilt, or at least a sense of impending doom. Instead, she felt only the slow spread of warmth through her chest. Belonging, she thought, was not something she had ever expected to want. She had spent too many years perfecting the art of leaving before she could be left. But standing here, on the edge of a decision that might define her for centuries, she found that the idea was not as repulsive as it once would have been.

She glanced at her reflection again. “What do I have to do?” she asked.

A shape made of light emerged from the central beam, and it flickered, just for a moment, before its shape became solid; the suggestion of a woman in a robe of violet and starlight, a face smooth and featureless except for the eyes, bottomless and black, ringed with a faint corona of light and speckled with galaxies. “Hold out your right hand.”

She did.

The handshake was not warm, not even corporeal, but it was electric. The instant their hands met, a bolt of leyline magic shot up Ophelia’s arm, branching through her nerves and into her skull. She gasped, the sound stolen by the room, as every sense was flooded: the taste of iron, the scent of midnight rain, the pressure of a thousand books pressing in from every side. She felt her memories rearranging themselves, not erased or overwritten, but slotted into a new pattern; a constellation instead of a line, a network instead of a chain.

She wanted to scream, or laugh, or maybe both, but the sensation was over in an instant.

The Tower’s Heart faded, the beam of light winked out, and she found herself back in her room.

For a moment, she lay there, tangled in the bedsheets, not daring to move in case the world decided to shift again beneath her. The first thing she noticed was that her heart was still beating, and the second was that her hand hurt.

She raised her right hand and stared.

There, on her ring finger, was a new addition: a band of gold, set with a black diamond that glinted even in the dark. The stone was cut in the shape of a tiny, perfect star, and as she turned her hand, she could see it pulse with a faint, inner light.

She blinked, then flexed her fingers experimentally. The ring was heavy, but not unpleasantly so. She touched it with her left hand, half expecting it to vanish or bite her, but it stayed, solid and real.

It was then that she noticed the tingling on her forearm.

She pushed up her sleeve, expecting to see the old, ugly scar; three inches of puckered skin, a reminder of the day she had burned away the Friendship Sigil. The mark had never fully healed, and for decades she had worn it as proof that she could cut herself off from anyone, even her own past.

But the scar was gone.

In its place, tattooed in ink so fine it might have been spun from silk, was the constellation: three stars, connected by dotted lines, each one burning with a pale blue light. The mark glowed, faintly but steadily, and as she touched it she felt a pulse, like a heartbeat, but not her own. It was warm, and insistent, and it resonated with something just outside the edge of her perception.

She pressed her thumb to the tattoo, and the room seemed to tilt. For a split second, she could sense Isemay’s presence in the next room, asleep but troubled, the woman’s dreams flickering in and out of reach. She could also sense Lavan, restless as ever, pacing in the lounge, his mind running ahead of his body as always. The connection was not telepathy, nor even empathy, but something older, a memory of childhood made flesh and magic.

She drew her hand back, trembling, and covered her mouth.

For a long time, she just sat there, staring at the tattoo and the ring, trying to make sense of a world in which she was not alone. The enormity of it, the impossible joy and terror of it, threatened to undo her composure entirely.

She was still reeling when the door opened.

Lavan stood there, framed by the soft light of the hallway. He was barefoot, his robe half-buttoned, eyes sharp even through the fog of exhaustion. For a moment, he just looked at her, really looked, as if memorizing her face in case it changed again before dawn.

Then, wordlessly, he stepped into the room and knelt beside the bed.

Ophelia stared at him, unwilling to speak, afraid that if she did the spell would break.

Behind him, Isemay appeared, her hair loose, her face pale and pinched with worry. She saw the tattoo on Ophelia’s arm and stopped short, hands fluttering up to her own. There, just below the elbow, her own version of the constellation glowed, the ink still wet-looking even though it had been there for years.

Isemay crossed the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached out. Ophelia flinched, then relented, letting the woman trace the tattoo with her fingertips.

“I thought you burned it away,” Isemay whispered, voice thick.

“I did,” Ophelia replied. “But it’s back. The Tower…it put it back.”

Isemay smiled, a tremulous, aching thing. “Halli always did like fixing things.”

Lavan reached over and, for the first time in decades, wrapped his hand around both of theirs. The three of them sat like that, in a tangle of limbs and regret and new beginnings, the pulse of the constellation syncing in their veins.

For a long time, none of them spoke. The Tower watched, its satisfaction humming through the walls, through the floor, through the leyline itself.

Eventually, Ophelia let her head rest on Isemay’s shoulder. Lavan’s grip did not loosen.

In another life, she might have fought the feeling, clawed at it until it bled. But here, in the heart of the Tower, with nothing left to lose and everything to gain, she let herself belong.

Outside, the sky above the Tower was still peppered with stars.

Inside, three burned brighter than the rest.

***

Dawn had threatened the horizon by the time Ophelia finally waved them away, her voice hoarse from hours of explanations and apologies, the three of them having excavated decades of silence in a single night.

Isemay’s feet carried her on autopilot, each step a matter of muscle memory rather than intent. Lavan trailed her by two paces, every inch the ex-acolyte: reserved, orderly, always half-seeking a code of conduct that had never quite managed to exist. They spoke nothing as they entered their quarters. Words had already spent themselves: apologies, accusations, the stuttering confessions required to knit two decades worth of wounds back into something resembling a friendship.

The door whispered shut behind them, dampening the world to a padded quiet. Isemay did not bother with the lights. Her hands found Lavan’s sleeve and led him in the darkness to the side of the bed. He sat with mechanical obedience, then sagged, letting gravity claim him, arms limp at his sides. A beat later, Isemay curled beside him, a tangle of hair, bone and nerves. She found the crook of his shoulder and fitted her head into it like a solution to a riddle.

They lay there in a heap, as if the laws of matter had resigned. Lavan’s hand came to rest at the back of her skull, combed through her hair with slow, idle fingers, the way you’d absently trace the grain of a favorite page. He did it without thought, and for a while neither moved nor spoke.

It could have lasted an hour or the space between two heartbeats, time became an accordion, stretching or squeezing at the mercy of whatever it was that lived in the spaces between breaths. Eventually, the weight of wakefulness began to lose the war, and their breathing slowed, synchronized by accident more than design.

Lavan’s fingers wound a loose strand of white-blonde hair around his knuckle until the circulation threatened to rebel. He let it loose again, inhaled. “Are you—” he started, but Isemay interrupted by squeezing tighter, burrowing under his arm like she meant to hibernate.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, and in the dark it felt truer than it would have in the morning.

His chin touched the top of her head. She caught his heart stutter through his ribcage, then even out again. The silence made its own gravity; neither felt the urge to break it. She closed her eyes, tasting the afterimage of exhaustion, thinking of nothing in particular.

Then Lavan went bolt upright. The movement nearly pitched Isemay off the mattress.

He froze, spine rigid, every muscle braced like he’d been hit with a nerve spell. His hand hovered awkwardly in the air, as if still trying to decide whether to pet or protect or signal surrender. The whites of his eyes caught the faint leyglow that lived in the Tower’s bones, giving him the look of a man who had just solved and simultaneously regretted a terrible equation.

Isemay groaned and fished for his hand, trying to lever herself upright beside him. “Lavan, what—” she began.

He turned, the motion slow and deliberate, eyes fixed not on her face but on the inside of her forearm, where the trio of stars that was their Friendship Symbol glimmered in the faint light.

He looked at her with abject horror, a new and creative brand of panic. “The Symbol,” he whispered, gesturing to it like it might be a live viper.

Isemay blinked, then glanced down. She was wearing nothing but an oversized nightshirt and the Symbol, which sat just above the pulse in her wrist, a triangle of stars for each of the three, still faintly iridescent. She did not see what could be so catastrophic about it.

Lavan leaned in, dropped his voice to a conspiratorial hiss. “Does this—” He paused, color rising in his face. “Does this mean that she will be able to feel it, when we…” His hands, which were normally so adept at splitting aether and handling ancient tomes, now flailed uselessly. “When we—” He made a vague gesture that might have represented a weather system.

Isemay stared at him, brain catching up by degrees. “Feel what?” she asked, half in genuine ignorance, half because she wanted to see him suffer a little more.

He made a sound not quite human, then locked onto the words: “During… you know. If we—” The blush had progressed to his ears, which were doing a remarkable imitation of boiled shellfish. “If we sleep together. If we, uh, make love. Or…whatever.”

She blinked. Once, twice. Then it hit her: the resonance, the peculiar feedback loop of the Symbol, a side-effect they’d only discovered the year after Ophelia had vanished. Anytime she and Lavan… got close, the Symbol would hum, sometimes even spark, relaying the echo of sensation through the bond. For them, it was a two-way circuit, a private joke, occasionally an unwelcome surprise. But now, now there were three points again.

She went red, cheeks glowing so vividly that they might have illuminated the whole bed. “Oh,” she managed, a squeak more than a word.

“Exactly,” Lavan said, horror and embarrassment waging a quiet civil war behind his eyes.

“But,” Isemay started, then stalled, “she—she won’t actually be here, will she? I mean, if she’s not… thinking about us?”

Lavan considered. “She’s Ophelia,” he said, “she thinks about everything. Also, it’s possible the Symbol doesn’t require conscious focus. You’ve felt the accidental stuff before, right? A cut, a burn, a sneeze?”

She remembered; Ophelia sneezing in the next room, and Isemay’s wrist prickling as if she had sneezed herself; or the night she had sliced her thumb open chopping onions, and Lavan had yelped, his own hand stinging with phantom pain.

The logical conclusion now hovered between them like a curse.

“So,” Isemay said, as the reality set in, “if we… then… she’ll—”

“Feel it,” Lavan confirmed, voice hollow.

There was a pause, pregnant with humiliation, confusion, and, if either was being honest, a shade of hilarity.

“We could try,” Isemay suggested, half in jest, “to, um, block it?”

Lavan’s laugh was the sort that only comes when a crisis has passed so far beyond the bounds of logic that there is nothing left but laughter. “I think we’d need Hallione to reroute the leyline.”

He stopped, then looked up at the ceiling, and addressed the Tower’s living mind directly. “Hallione? If you’re listening, can you do anything about this?”

There was a long, expectant pause.

The Tower responded not with words, but by gently shifting the temperature, infusing the air with a heady, intoxicating floral scent, ylang-ylang, cloying and unmistakable. It was the Tower’s way of saying: I am not helping you, but I am absolutely watching.

Isemay snorted, then pressed her face into Lavan’s chest, mortified and comforted at once. “She’s never going to let us live this down,” Isemay said, voice muffled by linen and by the combined warmth of Lavan and the weighted blanket.

Lavan slid back down onto the mattress, cradling her with both arms now, and for a while they lay there, breathing in the floral conspiracy and trying not to think about the fact that they had just become unwitting participants in the world’s strangest ménage à trois.

Eventually, Isemay’s hand found his. She interlaced their fingers, the tips of the stars glowing faintly on their skin. “Let’s just… not think about it right now,” she said. “Let’s just be us.”

He nodded, heart drumming a little faster, but already, exhaustion was closing in, drugging his limbs and smoothing the edges of embarrassment into something closer to contentment.

As they drifted, the Symbol on their wrists pulsed, a gentle heartbeat, linking three souls across the city and the Tower and the memory of a hundred better days. The air grew heavier with ylang-ylang, and in that soft, sleepless dark, Isemay and Lavan found their way back to sleep.

Outside, the Tower stood sentinel, quietly pleased, and if it could have, it might have winked.