Tet's house sat on the edge of the city like an apology. Small, grey, and carefully unremarkable. The kind of place you'd pass a hundred times without noticing. Which was probably the point.
We approached from the back, through a garden that had gone to seed. My feet were torn and bleeding from running barefoot through the streets, but I barely felt it. The pain was distant, happening to someone else.
Everything felt distant now.
Tet knocked three times on the back door, paused, then twice more. A code. After a moment, I heard the bar being lifted from inside.
The door cracked open, and Sebtenius's face appeared in the gap. His eyes found me immediately, widened.
"What happened?" He pulled the door open fully, and I saw he was holding a kitchen knife. His hand was shaking. "Father sent me home, said not to ask questions, but I heard the tree was screaming and there were sounds in the city and..."
"Inside," Tet said, pushing past his son. "All of us. Now."
We filed into the house, and Sebtenius barred the door behind us. The kitchen was warm, a fire still burning in the hearth. It smelled like bread and safety, and the contrast with the alley where I'd left my grandmother's body made something twist in my chest.
"Rhohar." Sebtenius was staring at me, at the blood on my clothes, not mine, the assassin's, at the journal clutched in my hands, at my face. "Gods, what happened to you?"
I opened my mouth to answer and found I couldn't. Didn't know where to start. Didn't know how to explain that everything had changed in the space of a few hours.
"Shadow assassins," Aret said, saving me from having to speak. "Three of them. They were hunting your friend here. For that." He gestured at the amulet, still visible around my neck.
Sebtenius looked at it, then at me. "That's your mother's necklace. You've worn it for years. Why would anyone..."
"It's not a necklace." My voice came out rough, strange. "It's the amulet of Kii Hore, the first sun holder. My mother stole it when she ran. And now people want to kill me for it."
The words hung in the air, absurd and terrible.
Sebtenius looked at his father. "Is that true?"
Tet nodded slowly, and I saw something pass between them. A conversation they'd had before, maybe. Or one they'd been avoiding.
"Your father was a Serpent," I said, because apparently we were doing truths now. "One of the elite guards who protected the sun holders. He was assigned to my mother. And when she ran, he let her go."
Sebtenius's face went white. "Father?"
"It's true." Tet's voice was flat. "All of it. I failed in my duty. Let her escape. And I've been hiding from that failure ever since."
"You told me," Sebtenius's voice cracked, "you told me you were just a soldier. That you served your time and came here to farm. That you wanted a quiet life."
"I lied." Tet met his son's eyes, and I saw the weight of that lie pressing down on him. "I wanted to protect you. Keep you away from all of this. But apparently, that was never going to work."
"Because of me," I said. The guilt was there, familiar and heavy. "Because I'm friends with your son. Because I brought this to your door."
"No." Tet's voice was sharp. "Because the nobles are making their move, and they would have come eventually regardless. You're just the catalyst. The excuse they've been waiting for."
Aret had moved to the window, was peering out through a gap in the shutters. "We don't have long. They'll track us here. Maybe not tonight, but soon. The boy can't stay in Arazon."
"Where am I supposed to go?" The exhaustion was catching up with me now, making my words slur. "I don't know anywhere else. I've never left the city."
"There are places." Aret turned back from the window. "Safe houses. Old Serpent outposts. People who remember the old ways and might be willing to help."
"Might be?" I laughed, and it came out bitter. "That's reassuring."
"It's the best we have." Aret's expression was unreadable. "Unless you'd rather try your luck with the nobles. I'm sure they'd be very welcoming."
I wanted to snap back, but I was too tired. Too wrung out.
"Let him rest," Tet said. "He's been through enough for one night. We'll plan in the morning."
"Morning might be too late," Aret argued.
"Then it's too late." Tet's voice had an edge to it now. "But the boy needs sleep or he'll be useless to everyone. Including himself."
Aret studied me for a long moment, then nodded. "Fine. But I'm keeping watch. And at first light, we move."
"Agreed." Tet turned to his son. "Sebtenius, show Rhohar to your room. He can have your bed..."
"He can share it," Sebtenius said quickly. "Like when we were kids. Remember? We'd stay up talking about becoming warriors and seeing the world."
The memory should have been there. Should have been warm and familiar.
But I couldn't quite grasp it. The details were fuzzy, slipping away like water through my fingers.
The amulet had taken something when I killed that assassin. The taste of my grandmother's stew. But maybe it had taken more than that. Maybe it was taking pieces I didn't even realize were gone yet.
"Rhohar?" Sebtenius was looking at me with concern. "You okay?"
"Yeah." The lie came easily. "Just tired."
He led me through the small house to his room, barely bigger than mine had been, but cleaner, more cared for. There was a narrow bed against one wall and a chest for clothes. That was it.
Simple. Safe.
Everything I didn't have anymore.
"Here." Sebtenius pulled out a clean shirt from the chest. "You can't sleep in that. It's got blood all over it."
I looked down at myself and realized he was right. The assassin's blood had soaked through in places, dark and stiff.
I pulled off the ruined shirt, and Sebtenius went very still.
"Rhohar. Your chest."
I looked down and saw what he was seeing.
The amulet had left a mark. Where it rested against my skin, the flesh was slightly discolored. Not quite a burn. More like a brand. The shape of the amulet, outlined in faint gold.
I touched it, and it was warm. Not painful, but not normal either.
"Does it hurt?" Sebtenius asked.
"No. It's just there."
"Maybe you should take it off. Just for tonight."
I reached for the clasp, then hesitated. Something in me resisted. Like the amulet didn't want to be separated.
Or like I didn't want to be separated from it.
"I can't," I said, and it was true. "Not yet."
Sebtenius didn't argue. Just handed me the clean shirt and turned away while I changed, giving me privacy I didn't ask for but appreciated anyway.
When I was decent, he sat on the bed and patted the space beside him. "Come on. Like old times."
I sat, and the bed creaked under our combined weight. We were too big for this now, too old to be sharing a narrow bed like children.
But it was familiar. Comfortable.
Almost normal.
"Want to talk about it?" Sebtenius asked quietly.
"No."
"Okay."
We sat in silence for a while, and I realized my hands were shaking. Had been shaking since the alley. Since I'd held my grandmother's cooling body and felt nothing but emptiness.
"She died," I said suddenly. "My grandmother. Shadow curse. She came to warn me and it killed her."
"I'm sorry." Sebtenius's voice was soft. "I know you two weren't close. But still."
"She hated me." The words came out flat. Honest. "She raised me because she'd promised my mother. But she looked at me and saw her failure. Saw the woman she couldn't save. Every day. For seventeen years."
"That's not..."
"It is." I cut him off. "And you know what the worst part is? I understood it. I hated her too. For hitting me. For never being kind. For making me feel like I was a burden she couldn't wait to be rid of."
I laughed, and it sounded broken even to my own ears.
"And now she's dead and I can't remember what her stew tasted like. She made it every week. The same stew. And I can't remember it. The amulet took it. Burned it away to kill that assassin. And I don't even know what else it took. What other memories are just gone."
Sebtenius didn't say anything. Just reached over and took my hand. Held it.
His palm was warm and callused from work, and the simple human contact was almost too much to bear.
"I killed someone tonight," I whispered. "Used the amulet and burned him to ash. And I threw up after. But now I'm sitting here wondering if I'll have to do it again. If I can do it again. And what that makes me."
"It makes you alive," Sebtenius said. "It makes you someone who's trying to survive an impossible situation."
"Or it makes me a killer."
"Maybe both." He squeezed my hand. "But you're still my brother. That doesn't change."
The word brother hit something in my chest. Something that was still tender, still bleeding.
"Your father said I brought this to your door. Put you in danger."
"My father lied to me my entire life." Sebtenius's voice was tight. "About who he was. What he'd done. He let me think we were nobody. That we were safe. And all this time he was carrying this weight, this guilt."
"You're angry with him."
"I don't know what I am." He released my hand, ran his fingers through his hair. "I thought I knew him. Thought I knew what kind of man he was. And now..."
"Now you know he's flawed. Like everyone else."
"Is that supposed to make it better?"
"No." I leaned back against the wall, exhaustion pulling at me. "But it's true. Everyone's broken. Everyone's carrying something. Your father. My grandmother. That priest Rables. Aret. Me."
"What are you carrying?"
"Besides a cursed amulet and a dead mother's journal?" I tried for humor and failed. "The weight of knowing I'm going to have to make choices I'm not ready for. That people are going to die because of me. Maybe people I care about."
"Then we make sure that doesn't happen." Sebtenius's voice was firm. "Whatever you decide to do, run, hide, fight, I'm with you. We're brothers. That means something."
"Even if it gets you killed?"
"Even then."
The certainty in his voice should have been comforting. Instead, it terrified me.
Because I knew, with a cold clarity that settled in my bones, that before this was over, I was going to have to make choices that would hurt him. Maybe destroy him.
And I didn't know if our brotherhood would survive it.
"Get some sleep," Sebtenius said, lying down and shifting to make room for me. "Tomorrow's going to be hell."
I lay down beside him, and despite everything, the death, the fear, the weight of the amulet against my chest, exhaustion pulled me under almost immediately.
But my dreams were not kind.