Chapter 14 · The Price on a Memory

The shadow beneath Nara’s feet opened its eyes.

Lin saw them before Nara did—two pale slits unfolding in the blackness, reflecting the market lamps like drowned stars. The thing had no face, no mouth, no shape beyond the ragged outline of Nara’s body. Yet it watched Lin with a patience that felt almost familiar.

The cracked watch in Lin’s palm ticked once.

A second hand jerked backward.

Then the watch whispered in her mother’s voice.

“Don’t let her remember.”

Lin nearly dropped it.

Rain hissed against the glass roof of the market passage. Beyond the fractured archway, Mistbay—or whatever the city had been called before the first lamp stole its name—writhed beneath a sky the color of bruised steel. People stumbled through the streets with blank faces, clutching keys to houses they no longer recognized, calling out for streets whose names had vanished from their tongues.

Tavi Rook dragged Soren through the rain by the collar. Soren’s coat was dark with blood, one hand pressed to his ribs.

“Tell me you’ve got a plan,” Tavi snapped.

“I had one,” Soren said. His breath broke between the words. “Then the market took the name of the city. I’m working from memory.”