Chapter 13 · A Citywide Bounty

The city began hunting before the fire finished falling.

Ash drifted through the midnight streets in soft, glittering flakes. It gathered on broken windowsills, on the shoulders of statues whose names had been scraped away, on the blood drying beneath Noa Vey’s fingernails. Somewhere beyond the smoke, bells rang from the Sanctum towers—three low notes, repeated without mercy.

A proclamation bell.

Evelyn staggered beside her, one hand pressed against her ribs. Her coat had burned through at the shoulder, exposing a strip of reddened skin. Every few steps, her boot slipped on the wet cobblestones. Noa caught her elbow before she fell.

“Don’t,” Evelyn rasped.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed.”

“You’re welcome.”

Evelyn’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. Noa saw the movement, the shape of it, but not the face it belonged to. The woman beside her was a blurred arrangement of pale skin, dark hair, and firelight. Noa had to hold on to the voice instead—the roughness beneath it, the way certain words tightened before they left Evelyn’s throat.

That voice had called her back from the chain.

Noa Vey.

The name lived in her like a hook driven through bone.

Another bell rolled over the rooftops.