Chapter 25 · The Voice in the Fire

The fire spoke Chinese.

Rowan froze three steps inside the ash circle. The flames curled around his boots but didn't burn. They whispered in a language he shouldn't understand, except he did. Every word.

Because he'd heard her use it before. In her sleep. When she thought no one was listening.

"You know who I am." The voice was Wantang's, but wrong. Flatter. Like someone had peeled the living warmth off it and left only the shape. "You know what I am."

He kept walking. The tribunal guards were shouting behind him, but the ash curtain muffled everything outside the circle. Just him and the fire now.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

The flames twisted higher. They didn't touch him. They never had. Not since the first time he'd signed his name in blood and felt the contract settle into his bones like a second skeleton.

"Then you know why I'm here." The fire's voice cracked, and for half a second it sounded like her. Actually her. The woman who'd looked at his house's crumbling ledgers like they were a crime scene. Who'd negotiated a border truce with nothing but a pocket watch and a decade-old grain receipt.