The city never truly slept, but tonight it pretended.
Wind slid down Fantasia's slate roofs in long, cold strokes, shouldering past banner poles and lantern chains until it landed in the arteries of the old quarter—alleys so narrow the moon had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Kairo moved like a whisper inside that hush, a dark coat, a tighter grip, a new respect for corners.
He replayed the alley fight whether he wanted to or not: two blades, a conduit, a pulse of blue, and those eyes—violet, bright as a cut amethyst when light found them, dull as bruises when it didn't.
Not Marek's men. Not thugs. Trained. Coordinated. And one of them had known his name without saying it.
He cut across a roofline, chain blades clipped tight to his wrists—"training mode," as Harper had smirked—no mid‑range throws, no clever whip arcs. Until he stopped fighting the weapon, he didn't get to pretend he'd mastered it. He'd earned that restriction the hard way.
He landed in a crouch beside a vent pipe and watched a plaza breathe. People drifted. Drones blinked. The old stone hid new nerves: faint blue conduits under the cobbles, the pulse of arcane power feeding lights, doors, warded windows.
Fantasia looked medieval because it wanted you to underestimate it.
He exhaled through his nose and dropped to the street.
The observation hub he'd used earlier—Vera's "silent eye"—was dead behind its plain metal door. He palmed the reader; the panel recognized him with a cold flick in his wrist bones, then unlocked.
Inside, the triangle of holo‑glass came alive. He rolled the hours. The alley, the chase, the bait. He traced the assassin's route frame by frame until the glitch that had bothered him earlier snapped into focus.
She hadn't left Marek's estate.
She'd been waiting two buildings north of it, poised, the way you put a knight on a square you know your opponent will blunder onto.
He rubbed his jaw with a knuckle. "You weren't guarding a secret," he muttered. "You were measuring me."
The dragon's presence stirred like heat at the base of his skull. You are only interesting to people who are already dangerous, it said without saying, voice a deep electric shiver across his nerves.
"Yeah," Kairo murmured. "I'm noticing that."
He sifted the feeds again, this time widening the net. Two other shadows had mirrored his patrol from three streets over, never interfering. Another had perched on a spire across the plaza the entire time, motionless—watching the watcher.
A test. Or a welcome.
He cut the feeds and slid his palm off the panel. The room went dark, except for the slim spine of city light peeking under the door.
He was halfway to the handle when the lights died altogether.
Not the hub lights—the district.
The hum of conduits went silent. The plaza outside exhaled in surprise. The drones in the sky froze, then sank on failsafes like dandelion seeds losing faith.
"Great," Kairo said softly. "Of course."
Something moved behind him.
He half‑turned on instinct, chain blade drilling up across his body. A second edge kissed his throat first—cold and calm, as if it had always lived there.
"Storm boy," a voice said. "Don't flinch."
He didn't. He let his breath thin to a wire and stared at the reflection of himself in the black glass.
Silver hair in the glass. A hood pushed back just enough to show it. Violet eyes, closer now, watching with professional curiosity. The same woman. This time alone.
"Your friends?" Kairo asked quietly.
"Elsewhere," she said. The blade at his throat didn't tremble. "If I wanted you dead, you would be."
"Comforting."
"I didn't come to comfort you."
She eased the edge a fraction and stepped to his left side, enough to put both of them in the door's thin skein of light. Up close she looked younger than her poise suggested—twenty? Twenty‑two?—but there was steel in the set of her shoulders that felt older.
"I came to return something," she said.
It took him a heartbeat to notice: a subtle weight on his right wrist that hadn't been there a moment ago. She'd hooked a loop of line through one of his chain rings and anchored it to the door hinge. He hadn't felt it. She flicked once with a fingertip and the line pinged free.
"You fight your weapon like it's an argument you want to win," she said. "So it uses you."
"Thanks," Kairo said. "I love being coached at knife‑point."
A smile ghosted across her mouth without warming it. "You can tell your strategist friend I'm not Marek's," she added. "And tell your fire‑fisted commander her soldiers telegraph their weight when they turn."
"You've been busy," he said. He didn't ask how she'd heard the things she was replying to. The answer was the blade.
"We hear a lot," she said. "We prefer not to shout."
"And you are…?"
"You already know the color." She moved toward the door, light painting her profile. "We're called many things. You can call us the Covenant."
"The Covenant," he repeated. "Covenant of what?"
"Of not letting old men decide the shape of the future." She opened the door. The blackout made the alley a mouth. "You'll decide soon whether you're an old man or not."
"And if I decide wrong?"
She slipped into the dark like water into a crack. "Then we'll stop measuring and start breaking."
"Wait," he said.
He didn't mean to, but she paused.
"Your boss," Kairo said. "Evelyn Vastra."
Her head tipped a millimeter, enough to mean: go on.
"She's not you," he said. "But she's yours."
"She is our hand that shakes other hands," she said. "You'll see her kiss rings while we cut them off."
"Why the blackout?"
"That wasn't us," she said. "Someone else wanted to see how fast you panic when the lights go."
She was gone before he could recognize the shape that made inside his ribs.
Kairo touched his throat, then his wrist. He checked the line she'd snuck through his chain ring, then fed it back through to feel how it had trapped him: not by force, but by a fraction of weight and angle he hadn't planned for.
Learn, the dragon murmured. Before they come to teach you harder.
Kairo stepped into the street. He didn't panic. He let the dark become a classroom, counted heartbeats, counted corners, and walked toward the next wrong place on purpose.
The council chamber smelled like old stone, old power, and ink. It was never truly bright here; light trickled through the stained panes and bled into murals of dead kings who'd made worse decisions than anything this room could imagine and then called those decisions history.
Solomon sat where Kairo never would—comfortably, like a knife is comfortable in a sheath it chose. He'd already read the papers in front of him twice, not for content but for fingerprints. Marek's smirk had a weight now, the kind of density you get when you know you're about to outsource your crimes to someone more expensive than you can afford.
The doors opened, and all that expense walked in on a pair of violet eyes.
Evelyn Vastra wasn't the woman from the alley. Her violet was darker, like wine under low light; her hair was black, straight, pinned with silver that didn't catch. She wore a dress that said she understood the fantasy of this place and a coat that said she understood the world under it.
Marek made his politest face. "Lady Vastra. We're honored."
Solomon watched her walk to a seat that hadn't technically been offered and take it.
"I always find that honor sounds like apology when men in power say it," she said. "Let's try something else."
She folded her hands. "Our Covenant controls routes your maps don't admit exist," she said without preamble. "We can make your borders quiet or loud. We can turn raids into rumors. We can turn rumors into war. We don't want war."
Rylas fluttered with papers like a nervous bird. "And in exchange for… quiet?"
"Three listening houses in your city," she said. "Unmarked. Sanctified by your law so your soldiers can't ask questions they'd be sorry to answer. We share what we hear if what we hear threatens Fantasia."
Marek's eyes glittered. "Reasonable."
Solomon smiled like someone had drawn a blade across his gums. "And what do your houses listen to when the borders are quiet, Lady Vastra?"
"Breathing," she said lightly. "You can tell a lot about a kingdom's health by whether it holds its breath."
"And if we refuse?" he asked.
She took a folded sheet from her coat like a magician produces a dove, unfolded it, and placed it on the table. Numbers. Line items. Account strings Solomon recognized from audits he'd had to threaten people to get.
"Then I bring this to your King," she said, still pleasant. "And explain which of his noble councilors have been building summer houses with winter grain."
Rylas went stiff. Marek didn't blink.
"You brought us blackmail wrapped as policy," Solomon said.
"I brought you consequences wrapped as choice," she said. "You like choices. You make them very quickly."
He leaned back, crossed an ankle over a knee, and looked at her like a battlefield. "Here's one. You get one listening house under our law, not three, and the law that sanctifies it is written by me. In exchange, you give me names—every hand that's paid to make our borders loud for the last six months. We call them in the room and make them sorry together."
"And if I refuse?" she said, mild.
"Then I go to the King," he said, "with this paper and the twenty nine you didn't bring, since you wouldn't blow your whole hand in one play. I say a woman with violet eyes and very expensive friends just told us we don't own our own city."
Marek cleared his throat. "This is becoming—"
Solomon didn't look at him. "Quiet, Marek. Adults are speaking."
That got a low ripple of reaction around the table. Evelyn's eyes warmed a fraction.
"You're very good at this," she said softly. "You'll burn out early."
"That's the hope," he said. "Pick, Lady Vastra."
She considered him the way you consider a blade: not whether it can cut, but whether cutting with it will make the mess you're willing to clean up.
"One house under your law," she said at last. "And names for the loud mouths. In return, your Commander Vera stops moving resources in ways that make old generals cry on the floor of my informant's taverns."
"She stops making them cry," he said. "She doesn't stop moving."
Evelyn's smile slipped, then returned, thinner. "Done."
"Done," he said.
They didn't shake. She rose, leaving the paper like a calling card.
"Last thing," she said at the door. "Your King's new toy with the dragon breath—tell him the blackout wasn't us."
"If not you, then who?"
"People who think in centuries, not elections," she said. "And yes, I know you don't have elections. That's the joke."
The door took her with it. The chamber exhaled. Marek's jaw worked; Rylas looked like someone had swapped his blood for vinegar.
Solomon picked up the paper with two fingertips.
"Lord Marek," he said, gentle.
"…Yes?" Marek's voice was the sound of a man who had planned to eat someone's lunch and then found out the lunch bit back.
"Find your spine," Solomon said. "You'll need it. We have guests."
Vera ran.
Not for training. For anger.
Her boots took the steep stone steps two at a time until the air got thinner and the city got smaller. She burst onto the watch parapet over the East Field and stared at the mess she hadn't made but would be blamed for.
Berrick's "demonstration" yesterday had done exactly what he'd sculpted it to do: her rapid‑response unit had looked brilliant for five minutes and then human for ten more. The old guard didn't need truth; they needed a story. He'd given them one: the girl commander's tactics are flashy, fragile, and expensive. Look how they tire. Look how they fail to account for disruption.
She pressed her forearms into the cold stone and breathed until heat stopped chewing her thoughts.
A throat cleared behind her. Rhyker. He knew better than to talk first.
"Did you see the blackout?" he asked finally.
"Felt it," she said. "Training hall went dark. Half the recruits froze like rabbits. Half of them charged the shadows like they could punch the dark into light."
"And you?"
"Lit my hands and waited," she said. She flexed a fist; a thimbleful of hellfire licked her knuckles and vanished. "Berrick thinks I'll overreact. Marek thinks I can be used to prove a point. They both forget I like making my own points."
"You lost the optics," Rhyker said gently. "He'll push tomorrow."
"I'll give him something else to push against," she said. "If he wants to make this public, we'll make it anatomical."
Rhyker snorted. "Vera."
"I'm done asking permission," she said. "We're building a shock lattice around the city. Not mine—ours. I want units that can move in darkness and disorder. Put Kael on stealth drills for squads who can't rely on shadows. Put Selene on rapid‑weave spells, not slow bleeds. Pair Juno with Dorian. Make the hammer learn to fake and the fox learn to finish."
"You're doing this because Berrick made you look bad?"
"I'm doing this because the blackout told me something the council won't admit," she said, chin angling toward the sleeping roofs. "We're not alone in this city anymore."
Rhyker nodded once. "Orders go out within the hour."
"Good," she said. "And Rhyker?"
He paused at the stair.
"Next time Berrick sets a stage," she said, "I'd like to set the lights."
Night came back wrong. Not darker—quieter, like the city was listening to itself. Kairo let it listen. He walked, let his eyes rest on the nothingness between lamps until movement began to have edges again.
At the plaza where the drones had failed, someone had left a coin on a fountain ledge. A thin disc of black metal, not minted but carved: two crescent slivers nested back‑to‑back like knife smiles. He didn't touch it. He didn't have to; the mark cut through the skin of the air. The Covenant had signature and style.
"Real subtle," he said.
"Some of us prefer banners," someone said at his nine o'clock.
He didn't start. The voice belonged to a boy barely older than him with a rope of hair knotted at the back of his head and a grin that made you think of trouble. He sat on the fountain like it was a bar stool he used every night.
"You're not a violet‑eyed anything," Kairo said.
"Tragic," the boy said. "My eyes are boring. My job isn't."
"Your job?"
"Delivering this before someone less poetic does," he said, and flicked a folded scrap to Kairo. It smelled like iron and smoke. The handwriting was clean, precise.
You don't get to choose all your wars. You do get to choose who stands behind you when you walk into them.
— E. V.
"Evelyn Vastra writes notes?" Kairo asked.
"She does a lot of things," the boy said. "You met the knife in the dark, right?"
"Briefly."
"She's fond of you," the boy said. "That's rare. Try not to waste it."
Kairo pocketed the note. "Your name?"
"People call me things I don't deserve," the boy said, sliding off the fountain. "You can call me Messenger."
"That's not a name."
"That's a job," Messenger said, dimples showing like parentheses around a secret. "Names come later."
He melted into a knot of pedestrians who'd convinced themselves the blackout had been a gust of weather and not a hand on a switch.
Kairo let out a breath he hadn't registered holding and turned the note over in his pocket. His dragon huffed, amused. You collect strange admirers.
"Better than enemies," Kairo said. "Though I seem to collect those too."
Learn faster, then, the dragon said. Or the collectors will start shopping in other aisles.
He laughed out loud in spite of himself and headed for the castle.
Solomon found him on the outer steps, shoulders squared against cold that wasn't weather.
"You get a visitor?" Kairo asked.
"I got a deal and a warning," Solomon said. "We're letting one Covenant house open under our law. In return I get names for three months of border noise."
"That a win?"
"It's a trade," Solomon said. "I don't trust it; I'll use it."
Kairo offered him the note. Solomon read it, then held it up to the lamp. "She writes like a queen's lawyer," he said.
"She is a queen's knife," Kairo said. "Or says she knows one."
Solomon's mouth twitched. "You're imprecise."
"Harper's rubbing off."
"Good," Solomon said. "We need less poetry."
They stood there a while, watching the city make itself brave again.
"Vera?" Kairo asked.
"Angry," Solomon said. "Focused. She'll make today's humiliation cost someone something expensive."
Kairo nodded. "Berrick's a problem."
"Marek's a bigger one," Solomon said. "Rylas is a useful rat. Evelyn's a problem I respect."
"And the blackout?"
Solomon looked at him. "Not them," he said. "Lady Vastra wants us pliable, not paranoid. Someone else wanted us to feel how easy we are to turn off."
Kairo's hand settled unconsciously on the chain ring the assassin had flicked, feeling the small groove in the metal his fingers had never noticed before. "So we prepare for the dark."
"We prepare for people who like it," Solomon said. "And we make sure when it comes back on, it's because we turned it on."
They climbed the last steps in silence.
In a room no map of Fantasia admitted, a woman with violet eyes closed her hand around a coin and smiled without showing teeth. The man across from her was all angles softened by money; his hands were the cleanest part of him.
"Progress?" he asked.
Evelyn didn't sit. "One house," she said. "Under their law. He'll try to bind us in rules."
"You'll ignore them," he said.
"We'll honor the ones that keep us from wasting time," she said. "And break the ones that try to own us."
"And the King's strategist?"
"Bright," Evelyn said. "Burning too fast. He thinks he has a choice between games. He hasn't realized he's already on our board."
"And the boy with the dragon?"
She looked past the man, into the dark. "He'll either drown in his own storm," she said, "or learn to carry it in a cup."
"And the Commander?"
"Fire thinks it doesn't have to learn manners," Evelyn said. "The right party will teach it."
The man nodded, trying not to show relief. "And the test?"
"Successful," she said. "They didn't panic. They pivoted."
He blinked. "We did the blackout?"
She let her smile sharpen. "Not us. But whoever did just saved us three weeks of guessing. Fantasia still thinks in daylight. We won't."
When she left, the man found his hands shaking anyway.
Vera didn't sleep. She broke the drill schedule and rebuilt it, sent orders that would drag three hundred soldiers out of bed to run lines in the dark and trip on nothing until nothing stopped surprising them.
At the bottom of the new schedule, she added a name and one line: Berrick—Public spar—optics format. Two days. He chooses terms. I choose venue.
Rhyker read it and sighed like a man who could already feel the bruises.
Vera grinned without humor. "Make sure the lights don't fail," she said. "And if they do, make sure they fail for him first."
Kairo dreamed of rooftops and chains that didn't tangle.
He woke to a note tacked to his door with a thin, beautiful knife that had never been used for anything as crude as food.
Next time, bring your dragon. — S.
He traced the initial with a thumb. Not Evelyn. The other one.
He smiled into the morning and felt, for the first time since the alley, more excited than worried.
"Okay," he told the quiet room. "Let's learn faster."
The dragon's answer was a low, electric purr that made the hair on his arms lift.
Under the city, something old smiled too.
The blackout had not been a message.
It had been a clock starting.