The tower stairs were steep and narrow, slick with the damp that never left this side of the keep. Each step was a careful negotiation between balance and burden—Caesar's arms wrapped tight around a stack of folded linens, the fabric pressed to his ribs to keep it steady.
As he climbed, the ache in his shoulders became a dull, constant throb. He ignored it, letting his thoughts drift to the note Ethan had delivered the night before.
He'd unfolded the scrap of parchment in the dark, tracing the cipher by candlelight.
A thorned circle etched in dried crimson.
It wasn't familiar. Or maybe it had been once—some sigil glimpsed in a past life, filed away among hundreds of other secrets he could no longer trust himself to recall.
The memory hovered just beyond reach, like a name on the tip of the tongue.
I should know who sent it, he thought. I did know.
But nothing surfaced.
He paused beside a narrow casement window halfway up the stair. Frost crept in delicate webs across the leaded panes. Outside, the courtyard lay hushed under a skin of rime—roof slates glinting in the dull morning light, figures moving like shadows among the crates and covered carts.
It was the same view he'd studied a hundred times before. But now, it felt newly sharpened, the cold more honest somehow.
If I can't remember everything, he told himself, pressing his palm to the icy sill, then I'll have to learn it all again.
The thought steadied him. Almost.
When he reached the main floor, the corridor was alive with a quiet urgency. Servants hurried past, heads lowered, arms filled with bundles of kindling and sacks of root vegetables. A hush threaded through it all—a tension you could taste.
He knew why.
Word had spread that warlocks from the Shrouded Isles were here—come to negotiate in secret. Even the servants understood what it meant when such emissaries arrived unannounced: something was being bartered that no one dared name aloud.
He slipped into the outer salon just as two senior housekeepers were inspecting the arrangement of chairs and sideboards. One was a stooped demoness with parchment-colored skin and two tiny black horns like ink drops. The other, tall and skeletal, wore her grey hair bound in a cloth twist.
The shorter of the two lifted her chin as she spotted him.
"You there. Lay the linens on the counters. Then the pitchers."
He moved without protest, smoothing the embroidered cloth across the polished wood.
The room smelled of old incense and damp plaster. He traced each detail automatically, cataloging what mattered most: the inkstand poised beside the ledger of guests, the brass bell set just within Alaric's reach, the faint coppery undertone of dried blood in the cracks of the floor.
He'd seen that bell used to summon wine—or to summon guards to remove someone. One chime if the conversation was cordial, two if the guest's usefulness had ended.
He remembered that much, at least.
He was pour out the darkwine—thick and near-black—when he sensed movement at his shoulder.
"You're thorough," a voice murmured.
He looked up sharply.
Marith stood there, one hand tucked into her apron pocket. She looked steady, almost relaxed, as though the bruises from the root cellar had never happened.
"Did Berla reassign you?" he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
"Temporarily," she said. Her gaze swept the room, pausing on the half-burned candle stubs and the bowl of withered ash roses. "Someone said you were working alone. I thought you might appreciate another set of eyes."
He opened his mouth to deny it—to say he didn't need help. But the words caught in his throat.
Careful, he reminded himself. You can't push everyone away.
"…Thank you," he said at last.
Marith didn't smile, but the edges of her expression softened, the wary tension easing.
They worked together in a quiet rhythm. She unwrapped ivory-handled knives and laid them in a neat fan across the tray. He polished the decanters until the candlelight glimmered along their curves.
Now and then, their hands brushed in small accidental contacts that felt strangely significant. It struck him how rare it was to share a task without having to watch every word, every glance.
When the bell in the upper hall tolled the seventh hour, he stepped back, surveying the arrangement. Everything was clean. Precise. Ready.
"Satisfactory," Marith said in a voice that tried to sound dismissive.
"That's generous praise."
A huff escaped her—half amusement, half exasperation.
Her hand hovered over the ledger, fingertips resting against the worn leather binding.
"You really don't remember everything, do you?" she asked quietly.
He held her gaze. Part of him wanted to lie—to say yes, to pretend he had not lost entire years.
"…No," he admitted.
Her eyes didn't narrow in suspicion. Instead, they softened.
"Then maybe you shouldn't try to do this alone."
"Do what?"
"Whatever it is you're planning."
She hesitated, then added more gently, "You look like you've already decided how it all ends."
He didn't reply. Because some part of him had decided. That was the only way he knew how to survive—to believe that if he was vigilant enough, nothing could surprise him again.
Marith studied him another moment, then shifted the ledger under her arm.
"You're not the only one who wants this place to burn," she said. "But be sure you survive to see it."
Then she turned and left him in the hush of polished glass and old smoke.
When the warlocks arrived, the tension in the air grew so dense it felt almost solid.
They came in a cluster of black cloaks stitched with jagged sigils and dangling bone charms. Beneath their hoods, their faces were smeared pale with bone dust, eyes hidden in shadow.
They moved as one murmuring shape.
"…the price has doubled…"
"…you think we fear the tithes…"
"…Valemont's accounts are not what you promised…"
Caesar felt the hair on his neck stand on end.
In the old timeline, he'd watched the Shrouded Isles collapse in a storm of cult wars and famine. A plague had followed, a wasting sickness that left the flesh riddled with black sores.
He tried to remember how it began. Whether it had started in this very chamber. But the memory blurred—half-seen, half-lost.
I should remember this, he thought, a chill crawling down his spine. I did remember—
"Careful," a voice murmured close to his ear.
He flinched.
Marith had slipped in beside him, her voice low.
"Don't stare," she said, not unkindly. "They'll notice."
"I wasn't—"
"You were."
She pressed a goblet into his hand. Her fingers were cold, steady.
"Just serve," she murmured. "Watch with your eyes, not your mouth."
And so they did.
Moving together among the guests—pouring, collecting, bowing. A small, silent partnership in the middle of a gathering no one would admit had taken place.
When he risked a glance toward the far end of the room, he saw Alaric at last—reclining in a carved chair that was too grand to be called anything but a throne. His silver hair gleamed in the candlelight. The fine weave of his robe caught every flicker of gold.
Though his head was turned toward the warlocks, Caesar felt the weight of his gaze the instant it flicked across him.
As if, even here, he was not forgotten.
Later, when the guests withdrew and the hush returned, Caesar stayed behind to gather cups and fold the stained linens.
He paused near the hearth, letting the warmth touch his raw hands.
I can't do this alone.
It wasn't a weakness to admit it. Just truth.
Marith slipped back in, ledger under one arm, watching him with that quiet, measuring look.
They didn't speak as they left the salon and stepped into the cold corridor beyond.
In the stillness, he realized that whatever else he'd lost—names, dates, the precise order of his old life—he hadn't lost everything.
Because he knew, standing there in the hush of torchlight and frost, that he wasn't alone anymore.
And if he could hold on to even that much, it might be enough.