"Keep your hands off me!" I twisted against the enforcer's grip as his metal cuff bit into my wrist. "Calian! You hear me? Tell them to back off!"
The crowd answered with a hundred raised phones and one ugly roar.
Calian Vey stood three steps away, black coat buttoned to his throat, his oathblade hanging at his hip. He looked clean. Untouched. Like he hadn't just watched two armed men drag me off the council platform.
My livestream phone lay on the stone at his boots. The red light was still blinking.
"Calian," I snapped. "Say something."
His eyes met mine. Gray. Cold. Too close to the color of the smoke still hanging over Esterport's eastern district.
"Release her," he said.
The enforcer's grip loosened by half an inch.
Then Calian added, "Only after she gives up the device."
My laugh came out sharp. "That's your big rescue?"
"Lia, stop making this worse."
"I was making it worse when I showed proof that the harbor collapse wasn't an accident? Or when I named the council auditor who signed the repair orders?"
A woman in the front row gasped. Someone shouted, "Traitor!"
The second enforcer yanked my arm behind my back. Pain shot up to my shoulder.
"You don't get to call me a traitor," I said. "Not when your people buried my sister under a building they knew was going to fall."
The crowd went strangely quiet.
Calian's jaw tightened. Just once. Fast enough that anyone else would've missed it.
I didn't.
"The council denies your accusations," he said.
"The council denies everything. That's why I brought the documents."
I kicked backward. My heel caught the nearest enforcer's shin. He swore and shoved me down.
My knees slammed into the platform. The impact rattled my teeth.
The phones lifted higher.
"Get up," Calian said.
I stared at him from the stone. "Come make me."
His mouth flattened.
"You heard her," the first enforcer said. "She's refusing a lawful seizure."
"She's a protected witness," Calian replied.
My heart kicked once, hard. There it was. The word I'd been waiting for.
Protected.
His oath gave him one job. Keep me alive until my evidence reached the public archive. He'd been assigned to me six days ago, and in six days he'd barely spoken more than necessary. But he had stood outside my apartment every night. He had blocked blades, bullets, and one very angry cousin with a chair.
He'd never touched me unless he had to.
I'd still learned the feel of his hand at my waist when a blast threw us into a wall. I'd learned that his breath went rough when I got hurt. I'd learned that he watched my mouth when he thought I wasn't looking.
So I looked at him now.
"Say it again," I demanded. "Tell them I'm protected."
The enforcer twisted my arm higher. "The protection order ends if the guardian withdraws it."
Calian's gaze dropped to the oath band around my wrist. A thin black line circled the skin. His matching band sat beneath his glove.
"Calian," I said, quieter. "Don't."
He didn't move.
That scared me more than the pain.
"You're under council authority," he said.
"No. I'm under yours. That's what you told me in my kitchen. Remember? You said nobody touches me while you're breathing."
A murmur moved through the crowd.
His eyes sharpened. "I was wrong."
The words hit harder than the enforcer's shove.
I pulled against the cuffs until the metal cut skin. "Wrong about what? My evidence? My sister? Or me?"
"All protection is withdrawn," Calian said. "Effective now."
For one stupid second, I waited for the band to heat. For him to step forward. For that controlled face to crack and show me this was some kind of trap.
Nothing happened.
The thin black line around my wrist stayed cold.
The enforcer smiled. "You heard him. She belongs to the council now."
"I don't belong to anybody." I drove my forehead backward into his nose.
He shouted and stumbled. Blood splashed across my cheek.
The second man grabbed my hair and hauled me upright. His fingers dug into my scalp.
"You little—"
Calian moved.
Not toward me.
He caught the man's wrist before the blow landed. His hand closed around it with brutal ease. The enforcer froze, boots scraping over stone.
Calian's voice dropped. "Don't hit her."
I felt the heat of him from where I stood, barely two feet away. Leather, steel, and the clean scent of soap clung to his coat. His shoulder brushed mine when he turned.
"You just withdrew protection," I said. "You don't get to pretend you still care what happens to me."