The horrors

within Sunset's sundered prison

attacked instantly,

pressing Aj sorely.

Though Aj attempted reason,

offer,

plea,

they forced it

to kill them all

until only one remained.

A creature of cunning

not might or terror.

One that could listen.

The Path of Thorns

was death to all who had not a key

so Aj gave to the demon

the one person it had saved.

A Valeer.

And released the demon to share

the Valeer's secrets

with its creators.

The Mon at long last

holding the key

to the Vale.

The demon slithered away

with a parting obscurity.

“I was created to be captured

millennia ago

to tell you:

You do not have enough time.”

The linemen shouted as Hassani leapt from the carriage rail and landed precariously on the linehouse's rain-slick, whitewashed stone, the momentum from the trolley sending her skidding and rolling. Stairs flew beneath her feet before the trolley even came to rest. Jaxestack's tunnels passed in blur, the heaving in Hassani's chest part fear, part exertion from her sprint, part rage.

Adonissian. She still longed for him, maybe always would, but she would kill him when she saw him. Ancients be damned. Rega be damned.

The front door of their apartment yawned open and her heart skipped a beat. Someone came back to finish Denault? Someone found Avani and returned he rhome? Ambush?

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She loosened her grease-packed sword in its scabbard, dumped her pack, crept in.

Inside, someone sobbed.

Though the shattered model of Denault's dipper ship spoke of violence, after stalking like a panther around the periphery of the apartment, Hassani snugged her sword into its sheath. Denault slumped against the balcony wall beyond the flung-open double balcony doors, soaked and shivering in the thundering downpour.

"Denault?" she whispered, approaching slowly.

He raised bloodshot eyes. "Hassani."

A crude bandage wrapped his bare torso, rain-diluted blood soaking through it. Bumps covered his skin, his lips bore a blue hue, and he shivered violently. The damage she'd inflicted still writ large across him in swelling and bruise.

"Hassani," he repeated, his voice tired beyond measure. "They took our child, Hassani."

"I know. That was all your damned message said." Hassani wanted to scream at him, but instead knelt and put a tentative hand on his knee.

Denault's reaction belied his exhaustion. He surged to his feet, flinging her hand away so violently she fell backwards. She rolled to her feet but he'd already collapsed against the balcony rail as though the burst of anger wore out whatever held him together until she arrived.

For several minutes he hung there, wracked with sobs while she stood in the chill rain, desperate for information yet aware of her husband's precarious state. She'd never seen him cry before.

His gaze lifted to find her.

"They came for you. You weren't here since you're never here." Accusation thick with exhaustion.

He staggered towards her as if drunk and maybe he was. Hassani backed away slowly.

"They came for me in Libriam first," Hassani said softly, trying to soothe even though she felt like shaking him, dragging where they'd taken Avani out of him through sheer force. "I turned them down but it seems they don't accept 'no'. We talked about the potential for something like this happening before I became an Inviolate. We agreed I should stand my-"

"We agreed?" He found a bitter laugh as he slumped against the archway. "You mean you decided and I followed along, like everything else in this sham of a marriage."

"That's not fair. We-"

"Nothing about this life is fair, Hassani, but you refuse to accept that." He shook his head.

She tried to speak in her defense but he continued relentlessly on, talking over anything she tried to say.

"The Dynasts own everything, everyone. When I was young I thought being Kin would make me an exception, but no. Kin are slaves to the Dynasty, every one of us doing whatever it takes to prolong our lives in desperate hope of reaching a century and our fabled Partaking even though not one in a hundred of us manages to live so long. We're paralyzed, Hassani, frozen in fear. No one takes risks, does anything that might disrupt the order, not with immortality and rule dangled always before us if we but follow the rules, play it safe, somehow struggle on through to old age and infirmity in hopes of maybe-"

"They have Avani, Denault!" Hassani shouted over him. "I don't care about any of this. Where did they take our child? Every passing heartbeat adds to the chance we never see her again!"

His laugh punched deep; a blade ripping in her guts. "See her? When do you ever see her? Do you even know our daughter?"

"How can you laugh, Denault?" Tears streamed down her cheeks. "How can you use that against me, use her against me now? It's not too late, I can find her. I will find her. Just tell me!"

"Use her against you?" He swayed towards her again. "You have no idea. I told her to eavesdrop on us whenever you came, to see how you abuse me. When you left last she asked me if you hated her like you hate me. Did you know that?"

Hassani clutched at her heart as she retreated. "By the Ascen, Denault, you didn't-"

"Oh, I did, Hassani." A vicious, pained smile contorted his features. "I told her you left because you hated this verse, hated this life, hated our home, hated us, hated her."

Hassani sobbed, her vision blurring as she stumbled into some piece of furniture and clung to it. "No, no, no. Denault, I did it all for-"

"You! You did it all for you!" Denault screamed then gasped in pain, continuing in a ragged whisper. "Always with your noble ideals, your incorruptibility, your fixing the Dynasty. As if one pale, up-jumped menial could fix a thousand years of entrenched corruption and decay across a thousand verses. Your life is about fixing the unfixable while we rot here."

He sighed, his voice weary. "Admit it, Hassani, admit it this once."

"I wanted to fix it for us! For her! So that... so..." she trailed off, wiping her eyes and finding Denault only a few steps away, staring down at her, water streaming down his face.

"So you could prove you weren't just a little fair-skinned, fair-haired menial girl playing with sticks," Denault spat. "How hard would it've been to take a bribe here and there, currency we could have used? How hard would it would have been to say yes to Adonissian when he-"

"Say yes? Sleep with him, cheat on you, become a slave to the Ancients?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "It was our marriage that saved me!"

"Cheat on this?" he said with equal disbelief. "This saved you? I fucked him, Hassani! I've never once been attracted to a man in the slightest, yet here I am..."

His voice cracked and it took a moment before he found words again. "...in love with him even after what he did."

"You can't help it. He's a Phero, Denault, he did the same to me. They do that to everyone they want. Their Masters design them that way."

"Whatever he is, how I felt... how I feel about him made me realize how little I feel for you." She barely heard his tired whisper. "Not even anger or hate anymore; that only lasted so long. I feel less about you than I do the Broadcliff whores I fuck while you're gone when I get tired of the stupid gons."

"Why are you saying this?" Hassani fell back as he lurched towards her again. Her back hit the wall and she scrabbled at it for a hand-hold, her world reeling as sobs wracked her. "Is hurting me more important than Avani? I can still save her if you tell me where they took her."

"Save her, save the Dynasty, save our marriage, pah." Denault shambled close and hocked spit on her. "Everything's doomed. That big storm the night you left destroyed the new dipper, half our fleet. Our future sank with those ships. Word's fresh from Heaven's Tread of the White Kiss come again, this time spread by Wretches and some barbarian Dynast bent on overthrowing the Blind Priests. Mobs roam the Stacks, hurling Wretches into the sea whenever they catch them. Half the trolleys shut down to stop them from spreading it, but people are already getting sick and dying in droves, Inoculists included. So much for their chants. And you must know about Inro going rogue with the Sunset Legions, aiming to overthrow the Black Court and declare himself Emperor. War is coming and my little girl's lost out in all that. Because of you."

"Denault, stop, please," Hassani gasped, driven against the door by his relentless approach, the hammer blows of his words. "Just tell me where and I'll go. I'll find her, bring her back."

"She's probably already dead." Denault turned and stumbled back towards the sheets of rain tearing at the balcony. "I couldn't stop them and you won't be able to bring her back."

"I can try." Hassani fought waves of fear and pain. "Tell me Denault, please. Where did they take her?"

He reached the archway and paused to catch his breath, staring into the storm. "If I die, are you still Kin? Will they revoke your Inviolate status, take away your precious swords, strip you back down to the menial you really are?"

"My daughter is Kin, so I must be." Hassani walked towards him, shaking hands reaching. "Please. Even if you don't love me, even if you hate me, if you love Avani tell me."

He pushed out into the storm, almost toppled over the balcony wall before catching himself. Hassani raced towards him but stopped as she caught his words over the rain.

"Ado took her to the heart of the storm, where the Wretch Plague was born. Heaven's Tread. It's too late now, though; by the time you get there they'll all be dead."

Her racing steps carried her to the door but she paused. Turned.

"Denault..."

Rain lashed an empty balcony.

Hassani's heart lurched. She took an involuntary step forward, but images flashed through her mind: Avani in the clutches of the Ancients. Lying stricken with Wretch Plague in some unknown verse. Gazing at Adonissian with adoration. Set at the feet of Rega's gilded throne in Monopolis. Crying, wailing alone in a street heaped with corpses.

She sprinted back into the tunnels, leaving her empty home behind.