Elara expected the hideout to be dark.
She expected the floorboards to creak, the kettle to be half a memory on the stove, the kind of silence you keep when you know you've left half the city on fire and you're trying very hard to pretend the smoke is a tasteful effect.
She did not expect light.
The small room smelled of coffee and solder and something impossibly soft—wool, or a sweater, or a presence that had lingered like a whisper. Footsteps were a different thing; hers were practiced and precise. The footsteps she heard now were not hers.
She paused at the threshold and let the mask sit heavy in her palm like a small, cold secret. The dusk from the alley made the room glow in golds and bruises; a lamp on the console threw warm light across Jess's face.
Jess was sitting on the workbench with her boots kicked up, knees crossed, one brow permanently arched like a question mark that had learned to sneer. She had the kind of posture Elara had learned to read in the dark: defensive, exhausted, and at the same time furious enough to cause small shuddering earthquakes.
"Elara Quinn," Jess said, voice a single long exhale. "You arrogant idiot."
Elara stepped inside and closed the door with slow ceremony. "Hi, Jess," she said. "Room looks lovely. Did you happen to—" She let the rest of the sentence dangle like a stage flourish. "—miss me?"
Jess threw the sleeve of a half-finished sweater at her with the wrong amount of force. It hit Elara in the shoulder and slid to the floor like it had lost a bet. "Do you ever not crash into other people's diplomatic meetings and then come home and expect me to knit you a scarf?" Jess's words were mostly insult but there was warmth in them that would betray her to anyone who knew how to look.
Elara's grin softened for the tiniest instant. "You're mad I went to the Concord? I only went to—" She tried for blasé and landed on sheepish. "I only went to look pretty."
Jess's jaw dropped just enough to be dangerous. She pushed off the bench and walked toward Elara with the steady menace of someone who had, for years, perfected the art of worrying while also being judgemental. Up close, Jess's eyes were a map of every late night and hard deadline, the kind of eyes that had seen too much and learned to keep an inventory of worry.
"You are not allowed to 'look pretty' at their expense," Jess said. "You are not allowed to waltz into a meeting designed to coordinate mortal, divine, and infernal policy like you're the mayor and expect no consequences. You made promises." She pressed the word like a coin into a vending machine. "We made promises. Bad decisions are one thing; willfully antagonizing three pantheons is another."
Elara's mouth twitched. "Promises are fashion accessories, Jess. Functional, but ultimately decorative."
Jess's soft laugh was quick, but it broke when she wanted it to. "You are impossible." Then softer, "You are selfish." Even softer than that, just to herself, "You are reckless." She pressed both palms to Elara's face like someone steadying a compass needle. The gesture was intimate in a way that made the air between them heat.
Elara's hands hovered at Jess's wrists, then fell. She was used to being the brazen one—Eclipse at a balcony, smirking as empires took their bows. But here, under the hum of a single lamp and the smell of solder, the mask felt less like theatre and more like metal on a pulse.
"Why'd you stay?" Elara asked the question small, as if she were afraid of what the honest answer would do to the room.
Jess's mouth was a hard line. "Because I was supposed to. Because I promised. Because I don't sleep when you disappear. Because I know how the city repays carelessness." She blinked hard, and for one soft, impossible breath, Elara watched the careful armor of sarcasm crack into something raw and true. "I watched the feeds. I watched them talk in circles about you like you were a disease they could outline in red ink. I sat there with the bread shears and the solder and the stupid modem and—" She stopped. The words splintered like poorly cured resin. "I was angry. I still am."
Elara gave her one of those smiles that used to be categorized as dangerous. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "Not because I was at the Concord. Because you sat up and worried."
Jess's expression folded, like pages turning. Her hands, still at Elara's cheek, trembled like small contraband. "Do you have any idea the things I thought for the last hour?" she asked. "Do you know the conversations I rehearsed with the police? The lists I wrote? The person I would call to erase you and then our history—?"
Elara swallowed. The Mask in her hand hummed with a small, complaining purr, wanting the stage. She moved closer, the motion smooth as oil. "You'd erase me?"
"I would threaten you." Jess's voice found its honesty and held it like a blade. "I would threaten to chain you in paperwork so heavy even gods would sign it. I would put up guards so impenetrable even you would call me a coward later and apologize for being sensible."
They both laughed—short, shocked—because humor is the way they tie off heavy things.
Then Jess did something Elara had not expected her to do. She gripped the mask in Elara's palm and tugged. The porcelain rocked. Elara had taken the Mask off only in private; in public the world saw Eclipse and assumed legend. But here—here was the private.
"You promised me one time when you came home all brilliant and broken," Jess murmured, not looking up. "You promised—if things ever got too loud, if you ever danced too close to the edges—you would come home before the echo took on a voice of its own."
Elara blinked. She had promised, years ago, with a bottle of something cheap and a rooftop that smelled of copper. She had been younger, so much more insolent, certain she could wrest gods into charity performances. She had said things as if they were vows. "I remember."
"You keep changing the rules," Jess said. "You keep wearing the mask because you like the applause. But I keep you because I love the person who yells at me for leaving the milk out."
Elara's chest tightened—an odd, human ache that had nothing to do with theatrics or cosmic repertoires. "You love a lot of things beside my worst instincts," she said, and the sentence skittered and landed honest.
Jess huffed a laugh and shoved the mask back into Elara's hands. Up close the porcelain had the smell of ozone and something older. "Don't steal that thing again," she snapped, but her fingers lingered against Elara's wrist.
Elara stepped in and—because she'd always been terrible at dodging the gravity of genuine moments—she let herself be pulled. Jess wrapped her arms around Elara like a belt. The hug was fierce, immediate, the kind of thing that rearranged the bones of certainties.
For a breath, Elara had nowhere to be but Jess's shoulder. The mask's whisper faded, as if it hated to be ignored. Raven padded into the doorway with his own unique trepidation—barn-door wolf one minute, shadowed statue the next—and nosed at Jess's boot like checking in on an old joke.
"You are impossible," Jess muttered into Elara's collar. But the words were not the scolding they had been when she was angry. They were a private, worn-down admittance. "You are reckless. And when you are reckless, I pace. I make lists. I steal your cartography for the nights you forget how to come back."
Elara let out a laugh that had its teeth—funny, defiant, a little wet around the edges. "And yet you always do."
Jess pulled back enough to look at Elara full on, her face flushed with the perpetual caffeine of worry and the soft starlight they happened to hoard between them. "Of course I do," she said plain as weather. "Because you make the world interesting, and because if you disappeared, I'd have to stop laughing. You make me laugh too much to risk your being removed."
Elara's mouth twitched. "That's awfully selfish of you."
Jess's answer was a poke—sharp, with hidden affection. "I prefer 'self-preservation.'" She jabbed Elara's ribs with the edge of her thumb. "Also—don't ever do that Concord stunt again unless you promise me tickets. Not as a joke. As a warning."
Elara's grin returned. "As long as the tickets come with popcorn and the seats are front row."
Jess shook her head. "No. You get no audience for that sort of chaos. You get me, and I get to lecture you into a pile of shame later."
The way Jess said it—lecture you into a pile of shame—was the shortest, most affectionate threat in the English language. Elara folded herself into that promise like a gown. "Fine," she whispered. "I promise."
Jess's eyes glinted. "You say that a lot." Her tone was challenging and soft all at once. "Promise me this one will be kept. Not because I am afraid of the Concord's minutes—but because there are things you shouldn't invite inside the house when you're trying to sleep."
Elara unhooked a card from her sleeve and spun it between her fingers. It was a nervous habit; cards calmed her like lullabies calmed children. She watched it sparkle and then tucked it back. "I promise," she said. The word landed somewhere like a small, bright coin. She could feel how much weight that coin had in Jess's hands.
Jess's shoulders dropped in a quiet surrender that was almost prayerful. She leaned in and kissed Elara full on the mouth—quick, fierce, clean. It was not all theatrics; there was something mortal and absolutely unperformative to it. For a terrifying second the mask in Elara's hand felt like a third wheel.
When they parted, Jess's face was flushed. "Now," she said briskly, "go make coffee. And then tell me everything you did that risks us being burned at the stake."
Elara laughed and moved for the kettle like a knight going to his scabbard. She had never been good at detailed confessions in environments that required legal documentation, so she improvised:
"Well," she began, theatrically. "There was a clock, there was light, there was an unfortunate priest with a taste for ceremonial velvet—"
Jess rolled her eyes. "And?"
"And then we left," Elara said simply. "And the city had a tantrum and the gods sent us a very stern text message. And the demons think it's hilarious because they have poor table manners."
Jess grinned despite herself. "Idiots," she said. Then she turned serious with a small terrifying softness. "If anything—anyone—comes for us, I'll bleed for you."
It was not a metaphor. There was a glint in Jess's eye that meant she would keep that promise until the very last acceptable protest. Elara watched Jess fold her hands around the mug as if warming a small metal, and something in Elara's chest unclenched that she had not known was a fist.
The night lengthened. Noctis sent a dry message—Status: city tantrum persists. Friends: intact. Enemies: filing.—and that was enough of an update. Raven padded to the window and looked out over the street like some small, patient oracle. The machinery of the city was noisy but distant. The hideout hummed with the low, domestic life of people who were not politicians and had the gall to be in love while the world tried to be a tragedy.
Elara sat across from Jess, hands around a mug that tasted faintly of burnt ambition. She unwrapped the small joy of being ordinary: socks that never matched, a kettle that took forever, the kinds of jokes you could only make to someone who knew the map of your foolishness.
"Tell me a secret," Jess said, sometimes deliberately dangerous.
Elara thought. "That I almost kept my head down for a decade. That I almost tried the steady route. I thought about it. Once." She looked at Jess and the confessional ache in her voice made the words new. "But the mask didn't come with instructions for patience. It just liked applause."
Jess's laugh was small and tender. "Sounds about right." She leaned forward, head resting on her hand, and studied Elara like a project and a pilgrimage. Then she said the thing that made all of Elara's rehearsed lines obsolete.
"You're mine, you know."
The sentence was not possessive in the way tyrants are. It was a claim of survival: I will keep you. I will carry the boring things like milk and license plate numbers and the rest of it because I like you better than I like being safe.
Elara swallowed, heart doing something ridiculous like trying to waltz in a kitchen. "You know I don't do 'mine', right? I don't… belong."
Jess rolled her eyes—a gesture that had, for Elara, the force of truce. "You belong here," she said, softer than any vow she had ever given before. "And if you try to convince me otherwise, I'll glue you to the couch and feed you soup until you admit you're human."
Elara looked at her and laughed properly—the sort that leaves the ribs pleasantly bruised. For a moment the whole of her—mask and myth and sin—felt smaller, manageable, like a deck of cards placed carefully into a box labeled This One: Handle With Care.
Then the mask in her pocket ticked, impatient and jealous.
Elara kissed Jess lightly, the promise of more quiet rebellions humming in the contact.
Outside, the city still argued with its gods. Inside, someone kept watch at a window and pretended to be fierce for a friend. In the hideout's quiet, under a lamp's honest glow, Jess's soft spot for Elara revealed itself: not only the warm place where affection lived, but the lodged, permanent indentation where she would go back to, again and again—risk be damned.
There is a kind of bravery in someone who keeps loving a person whose job is to make everyone else's life complicated. Elara knew that. She loved Jess with the kind of affection that made her want to be better—and to be worse, depending on the audience.
She took her mug, smiled into the steam, and for once, let the mask be only a prop she used on stage. Here, with Jess's hands warm around a knitted cup, she was Elara—reckless, selfish, and utterly, gloriously in love.
She would confess more mistakes tomorrow; she would probably steal something small and ridiculous the day after. That was the choreography of them: a dance on the edge of catastrophe and the kitchen table.
Tonight, the Concord had been an orchestra, and it had played its solo. Jess had been the one who sat in the quiet after the final note and breathed the song back into Elara's lungs.
Elara set her mug down and, very deliberately, tucked the mask back into her bag. The thing was not a person here—just a tool. A very effective, very dangerous tool—and tonight she chose a different kind of tool: a pair of hands that would not let her fall.
She wondered, with a sudden and dangerous sincerity, if one day she'd be brave enough to take the mask off at a performance—not because she had to, but because she wanted to. But that was a kind of theater she had not yet rehearsed.
For now, she had a promise to keep, a partner to annoy, and a city in which to cause a scandalous amount of beauty.
Jess looked up and mouthed, without the theatrics, simply:
"Stay."
Elara smiled. She had been a thief of clocks and gods and dignity. She had stolen stars and audiences. She had waltzed into Concords and rolled dice with pantheons.
But tonight—this small, domestic night—she was stealing a different thing: a fraction of safety, bartered in the currency of kisses and knitted sweaters. She accepted it like contraband.
"Always," she said, quiet as a final curtain.
Raven padded forward and nosed their joined hands, a small, sleepy guardian. Noctis's message pinged once more—Watchful. City grumbling. Friends warm.—and the hideout sighed.
Outside, the world continued to plot. Inside, two people practiced loving despite everything that could, at any second, try to unmake them.
And somewhere very near to the mask, Elara kept a small, ridiculous secret: she loved being unpredictable even when the person she loved wanted her to be predictable. It made the work of staying alive more fun, which was its own kind of sin.