Chapter 98. A Door With Many Hands (2)

The seam listened. The pressure shifted, as if the door were tilting its head.

The leader responded by paying again. Lior swore softly as the shimmer showed a thin veil of smoke lifting off the man’s shoulders, carrying the distilled outline of a childhood promise that smelled of pine tar and sweat, a laughter he had tried not to remember, the way a name sounds when called down a long hall by someone who loves you without asking a price. He sacrificed all of it to grease the chant. The hollow considered, then recoiled; everything he offered had been ground into a coin, and what he meant to buy with it was dominion. Reciprocity could not be purchased with contempt.

“You are wasting your past,” Aria said, this time to the man rather than the law. “There are debts no door will take.”

He smiled with half his mouth, the way men smile when they learn again a rule they always intended to abuse. “Then I will pay with yours.”

He lunged toward the vessel again, not to