Lucian left the note where Alice would find it—wedged into the spine of her sketchbook, the charcoal edges already smudged with his hesitation. The handwriting was tight. Small. Almost restrained, as if he didn't want the words to breathe too loudly.
The safehouse creaked with its usual morning weight. The boards expanded like lungs, the pipes hissed like distant snakes. He moved through the place like a shadow of himself.
Corvina wasn't in the kitchen. No coffee boiled. No music hummed from the crankbox radio.
Good. That made leaving easier.
Outside, the road to Staesis was little more than a vein through dead hills, a path Lucian had once vowed not to walk again. The last time he'd come this way, he'd buried three names and whispered one promise: never again.
But that was before the glyph.
Before Veska's failure.
Before he learned what he really was.
