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"How?" Sona's voice cracked around the word. The knife pressed harder against Rhys's throat. "How do you know that name?"
"Sona Vhelrn." He said it again, slower. "Youngest of the Nine Bells. You haven't told anyone in this keep. Not even Ethlin."
"Say it a third time, and I stop asking."
"You won't." His pulse knocked against the steel, but he kept his voice flat. Panic got people killed faster than silence. "You want to know how. So do I. Doesn't change the fact that I know you take the east stairs two at a time because the third step groans, and you hate anything that gives you away."
Her eyes narrowed. The knife stayed put, but her attention shifted. She was rebuilding the whole picture in her head.
"Guard!" she shouted. "We've got a problem on the west stair."
Boots thundered through the corridor. Metal struck stone with every step.
Rhys's stomach dropped. He knew that stride. Corren. Third-night rotation. Vittal's quiet-post boy.
"Don't let him take the lower door," Rhys said. "Tell him to hold the landing."
Sona looked at him. "What?"
"Corren. Tell him to hold the landing. Not the lower door."
"How do you know his—"
The crossbow bolt punched through the murder slit.
It struck the landing.
Corren dropped without a sound. His blade clattered across the stones. A wet cough followed, then nothing.
Sona spun away from Rhys. The knife dragged a thin line across his collarbone, but he barely felt it. She hit the floor beside Corren and pressed both hands to the wound.
"Corren. Hey. Stay with me." Her palms slipped in blood. "Look at me. Don't you dare—"
The boy's eyes rolled toward her. His mouth opened. No words came out.
Rhys stayed where he was. He knew better than to crowd her while she was trying to save someone. He also knew the wound was fatal.
The ledger in his coat had warned him: landing, third bell, bolt.
He'd given her the wrong door on purpose.
Now Corren was dead because he needed to know whether the warning could be changed.
Sona lifted her head. Blood ran between her fingers.
"You knew." Her voice was quiet now. Worse than shouting. "You knew, and you sent him here."
"I told you a door. I didn't know which one was true until it happened."
"Don't dress it up."
"I'm not."
"You watched him walk into that bolt."
Rhys crouched several feet away, keeping his hands open. "I watched him die in three different places. This was the first time I knew where the bolt would land."
Her hand slid toward her knife again. "Three?"
"More than three."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the night keeps changing the way it kills us."
Sona rose in one sharp movement. She didn't wipe the blood from her hands. The knife came up in both of them, aimed straight at his chest.
"Show me the book."
"No."
"That wasn't a request, Rhys Kaldane."
"I know."
"You knew my name before I said it. You knew Corren's name before he reached the stair. You knew a bolt was coming three seconds before it hit him." She took one step closer. "Show me that book, or I'll put you beside him and read it from your corpse."
He reached inside his coat.
Sona's grip tightened. "Slowly."
"That's the plan."
"No jokes."
"Wasn't a joke."
He pulled out the ledger and held it by the cracked spine. The cover was scarred from hands that belonged to versions of him she had never met. He'd carried it through nine loops. He'd bled on it twice. He'd begged it for answers more times than he could count.
He offered it to her.
Sona snatched it from his hand and opened the cover.
Her gaze moved across the page.
Then the next.
"It's blank."
"No. You just can't read it."
"I can read three languages."
"Add a fourth."
She flipped faster. The pages showed nothing but pale parchment to her. Rhys watched the frustration build in the tight line of her mouth.
"Who can read it?"
"Me."
"Only you?"
"Only me."
"Convenient."
"You think I made the book?"
"I think you walked into my keep knowing too much, and now you're holding a book nobody else can verify." She shoved it against his chest. "Give me one reason not to cut you open and look for the answers myself."
"Because the ledger's warning you next."
Her eyes dropped to the cover. "What warning?"
"It doesn't work that way."
"Then explain how it works."
Rhys kept the ledger between them. "It doesn't show the future. It shows what the night is leaning toward. If I move, it leans somewhere else."
"So it lies."
"No. It stays true. That's the problem."
"That makes no sense."
"It makes perfect sense when you've watched the same person die in four different ways."
The words stopped her.
Her fingers tightened around the ledger's spine. "You've watched me die too."
Rhys said nothing.
"Answer me."
"Yes."
The word landed harder than the bolt.
Sona's breathing changed. She looked down at Corren, then back at Rhys. Blood darkened the front of her gloves.
"How many times?"
"I don't know."
"Try."
"Nine loops that I remember. Maybe more."
"And in every one, I die?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me."
"You die in most of them."
Her mouth pulled tight. "Most."
"The last time, you stepped between me and a blade. It wasn't aimed at you. You still moved."
"Why?"
"Because that's what you do."
"Don't pretend you know me."
"I know you hate the third stair. I know you sleep with your left hand near your knife. I know you don't trust anyone who smiles before answering a question." His voice roughened. "And I know you died because you decided I was worth saving."
For one second, she didn't move.
The corridor seemed to shrink around them. Rhys could feel the heat of her body through the space between them. Her breath touched his jaw when she stepped close enough to take the ledger back.
"You let me die?" she asked.
"I tried to stop it."
"You failed."
"Every time."
Her fingers caught the front of his coat. She hauled him toward her until the leather pulled tight across his shoulders.
"You're gonna tell me everything," she said. "Every loop. Every name in that book. Every reason you keep walking into this night."
"And if I don't?"
Her gaze dropped to the cut at his throat, then returned to his eyes.
"I'll finish what that bolt started."
She pushed the ledger back at him. "Take it."
He closed his hand around the book.
Then he froze.
The page beneath his fingers had changed.
Ink spread across the parchment, wet and black. No hand held the pen. No one spoke the words. The letters formed one at a time in the cramped script he knew better than his own.
S.
O.
N.
A.
Sona saw it too.
Her grip snapped around his wrist before he could close the cover. Her pulse beat against his skin, fast and hard.
"Why is my name in your book?"