Chapter 101. Under the Lion

The square still smelled like iron and prayers when the Quiet Duke tugged my sleeve.

“Stop being a banner,” he murmured. “Be a lockpick.”

“Say it plain,” Neris snapped, wiping a line of blood from her cheek with the back of her hand. She left it there, a stripe that made her look like an answer to a riddle no one liked.

The Duke’s eyes flicked to the Lion Gate, then down. “Veins under the city. Old cistern tunnels. Vesper priests turned them into a hymn that eats oaths. The root is below. Not theirs alone.”

“Yours?” Syra asked, voice flat.

“Mine once,” he said. He did not apologize. “Yours, if you’re unafraid of ugliness.”

Kael’s shoulder brushed mine. The bond didn’t carry me to him; we walked. “Show us,” he said.

“Small,” the Duke warned as he limped toward the arch where the lion’s shadow fell thickest. “Four, no more. Weight makes echoes. Echoes make graves.”

“Neris,” I said.

She flashed knives into somewhere they coul