Chapter 52 The Rift and the Reprieve

The parchment was still warm from the pin when Skye ripped it off the board. She didn’t crumple it, but she held it like something unclean, the corners bent under her grip.

“Guess who made the list,” she muttered, her voice flat but threaded with disgust.

Kai took it without hurry. The seal of the new guild crest stared back at him in ink so fresh it still caught the morning light. Their names were there, scrawled in ornamental calligraphy that made the insult worse. His. Fara’s. Revoli’s. Skye’s.

Not one name from Gregory’s freshly minted “heroes.”

The message couldn’t have been louder if they’d painted it in blood.

“They want us humiliated,” Fara said, leaning over his shoulder. Her tails bristled, fur on end in the cool air. “Publicly. In the same system they just corrupted. They want to make an example.”

Revoli snatched the paper out of Kai’s hand and flipped it over. “No bounty on the back? Not even a half-off snack coupon? Pathetic.”

“We’re bait,” Skye said. “If we fail in public, the rest will fall in line. Fear’s easier to spread when you’ve got a spectacle.”

Kai’s jaw moved once before he spoke. “Then we don’t fail.”

The guild’s training yard wasn’t the chaotic mess it used to be. The clang of steel and shouted orders were still there, but there was a pattern now—formations moving like a drilled unit instead of scattered mercenaries. It smelled more like a military staging ground than a guild.

Kai stood shirtless in the shade of a battered post, ribs still bound under fresh linen. A bruise crept over his collarbone from the last fight, darker than the rest of him. He rolled his batons in slow arcs, learning where the pain would hit and which angles would let him hide it.

A shadow slid into his periphery. He didn’t have to look. The voice carried its own stink.

“Still playing the humble wanderer?” Gregory asked.

Kai didn’t pause his movement. His grip shifted, the batons turning like water slipping over stone.

Gregory’s boots stopped just out of reach. “You’re a relic, Kai. A dreamer in a world that’s finally waking up.”

“I’ve been awake,” Kai murmured, slipping into a low block. “I just didn’t like what I saw.”

Gregory chuckled. “You know this trial’s theater. By the time we’re done, you’ll rank lower than a green farmhand. And when that happens, your little entourage won’t be so loyal.”

Kai’s lips twitched, the hint of a smile. “You confuse loyalty with convenience. That’s why people leave you.”

The pause that followed was heavier than words. Gregory’s grin faltered before he pivoted away, his medals clinking with each step—a hollow sound that reminded Kai more of chains than honor.

A towel hit his shoulder. Skye stood nearby.

“You handled that better than I would have,” she said.

Kai caught the towel. “Would’ve cut out his tongue?”

“Only the tip,” she said, and walked off.

Night came heavy.

Their quarters were dim, the air holding that unnatural stillness after too much tension. Lena had been pulled into one of the new regime’s “late compliance meetings.” Revoli’s snare trap was rigged outside the door—something loud and messy “in case Gregory’s goons got creative.” Now she slept upside-down in the armchair, tail twitching in slow, lazy arcs.

Skye sat cross-legged on the rug, blades across her lap, working a whetstone in long, deliberate pulls. The quiet scrape of steel was steady. Fara kept to a corner, murmuring to the spirit within her tails; the faint blue glow lit her face like a foxfire lantern.

Kai stared into the low fire.

“You’ve been glaring at those flames like they owe you money,” Skye said without looking up.

“Just been a long day.”

“Don’t let it burn you from the inside out,” she said, going back to her work.

Fara stood and crossed to him, her steps unhurried. She stopped beside his chair, the flicker of the hearth dancing in her yellow eyes.

“You think I don’t notice?”

He looked up at her, guarded.

“The way you go still when you look at me. Like you’re caught between saying something and burying it.”

Kai said nothing.

“I remember,” she went on, her voice quieter now. “The kiss. The bath. The way you held me when you thought the world was about to end.”

His breath caught.

“I think about it too,” she admitted. “The heat of the water. Your hands. That moment where we didn’t know if there’d be another. That wasn’t just instinct, Kai. It was us.”

He swallowed. “I think about it all the time. When you push your hair back. When your magic lights across your skin. It puts me right back there.”

She knelt beside him.

“But you look at Skye like that sometimes,” she said—not accusing, not bitter. “And even at Revoli when you think she’s not looking.”

“I’m not playing anyone,” he said, his voice low. “I just—”

“You care about all of us,” she said simply. “I can feel it. The spirit in me sees it clearer than you do.”

“I don’t deserve it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I left behind my sons. A life I couldn’t fix. I died bitter. And now I’m here, and people look at me like I’m worth saving. Like I’m whole.”

Fara touched his cheek, steady. “You’re not whole. Neither am I. None of us are. Love doesn’t wait for perfect. It waits for honest.”

He shut his eyes. “…I don’t know how to love more than one person.”

“You already do,” she said. “So stop treating it like a crime.”

Revoli’s tail twitched in her sleep, but she didn’t wake.

Elsewhere, under the moonless sky, Patrona stalked the edges of the city’s rooftops.

She’d intercepted a courier hawk earlier—a torn scrap of a message with only three words: She’s returned. Malrissa. Now she crouched beside the body of the courier himself, a dagger in his neck, the ink from his orders still wet on his glove.

She didn’t get far before the hit came.

The blow to the back of her skull rang like a bell. She rolled with it, reaching for her blade, but another strike smashed into her ribs. She slashed upward, catching a grunt from her unseen attacker—then a boot crashed into her side, sending her to the ground.

Blackness took her before she hit the cobblestones.

The next morning, Kai woke to Revoli’s scream.

“GUYS! BODY! OUTSIDE!”

He was already moving, baton in hand. Skye’s blades were drawn before the door was even open.

Patrona lay crumpled across their threshold. Cloak shredded. Hair matted with blood. Her breathing was shallow, uneven.

Skye’s grip tightened on her weapon. “No. Absolutely not.”

“She’s bleeding out,” Kai said, kneeling.

“Maybe she deserves it,” Skye shot back. “You think she just happened to land here? She’s been tracking us for days, Kai. She could be in Gregory’s pocket.”

“Or fighting something worse,” Fara said, crouching.

Her hands glowed silver as she pressed them to Patrona’s side. The light pulsed once from her tails. “I can stop the bleeding. That’s all.”

Revoli crouched on the other side, sniffing once. “Doesn’t smell like a lie. Just pain.”

Kai looked at Patrona—torn, broken, silent.

“She’s not our friend,” he said finally. “But she doesn’t deserve to die like this.”

Skye didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t stop him.

They carried her inside.

Patrona’s eyes flickered open for a heartbeat.

“…Malrissa…” she rasped.

Then she went limp.