“Give me the boy.” He reached out, but Luscia tightened her grip. Kasim motioned angrily to her distinctive eyes. “You create complications by being here! How will you hide those from your own cross-caste?”

Luscia chewed her lip. He was right. In their political climate, the Boreali al’Haidren could not be seen stalking the Bazaar in the middle of the night with a bleeding child in her care. And unlike her visit to The Veiled Lady, there was no amount of cocao powder that could mask the truth from one of Boreal’s own descendants.

Slowly, Luscia relinquished the boy into Kasim’s stiff arms. They wrapped around his little body possessively—protecting him from Luscia. As if she would ever even dream of hurting this child, or any other.

“Where are your parents, little one?” she asked, but he only whimpered into Kasim’s chest. “Your mother?” Luscia stroked his hair. “Yeh Mamu? Mamu ou Fappa?”

“Fappa!” The boy sobbed and pointed toward the eastern slums.

Luscia nodded and looked warily to Kasim. “When you find their vessel, instruct his father to stitch the wound and make a paste of pure kaleo flower and gilead leaf. He’s likely a Boreali trader if the boy calls him that. He will understand.”

The Darakaian al’Haidren held her gaze for a moment, his bright eyes narrowing at her instructions. Turning, Kasim rocked the boy from side to side as he issued orders to his men.

“Takoda, you’re with me. Kumo—” He angled his head at Luscia. “—escort the y’siti back to the palace grounds. Unnoticed. We don’t need any questions about our…association.”

Luscia bristled, but started walking.

The beta, Kumo, kept pace with her as they navigated between the more forgotten buildings of Marketown. After nearly half an hour of quiet, he began to speak.

“So, eh,” he tried cautiously, as if their interaction would rouse her ire, “how’d you know where to go? You smell him out, yeah? After all that, uh…” His dark, oversized hands swarmed about his skull. “Kakka-shtàka…?”

She snorted, though there was little to laugh about.

“Kakka-shtàka sounds accurate,” she grumbled. Despite logic—for Luscia had been right to ensure the boy’s safety—it still felt as if she’d permitted a killer to run free.

“You get a look, uni?” The beta inched closer as they walked, but kept a hand on his kopar. “You saw him, I mean?”

“Man or woman, they wore a cloak, which did its job.” Lusica picked a few splinters of wood from the seam of her surcoat. “He’s not from any slum, though. The fresh polish of his boots gave that much away.”

“Huh.” Kumo’s hand eased off his kopar. Suddenly, a pearly grin sparked on his face. “You no y’siti hound, ano! You like Maji’maia!”

Unsmiling, Luscia eyed him, suspicious of her new branding. “In other words?”

Sheepishly, his thick forefinger rose to point at Aurynth’s watchman. The full moon, alarmingly bright, illuminated their steps as they turned a corner.

“When Àla’maia still has her magic.” His finger shook toward the sky. “The Witchy Moon.”

Slowly, with great care and exhausting control, Luscia lowered the heel of her foot to the stone of her private terrace. Even slower did she allow the rest of her body to follow.

With the gentlest click and turn, she nudged open the stained-glass door to her bedroom chamber. On any night, Luscia welcomed her luxuriously extravagant bed, but tonight her mind proved as weary as her extremities. Head pounding, she slipped off her hood and cowl, then bent to untie her upturned boots.

The hiss of a match kissed her ears just before the light of its flame sizzled into existence. Luscia’s stomach dropped. Najjan were called Boreal’s shadowmen for good reason; she was the last being who should have forgotten.

On a humble stool in the middle of her quarters, Marek slumped over the candle, elbows propped on his knees. His oceanic eyes were grim, shaded by his furrowed brow, when he eventually looked up.

“Marek, I—” Luscia started.

“You do not answer to them.”

Luscia felt the warmth drain from her cheeks when Alora’s outline moved through the doorway. As her own candle crossed the room, the light illuminated the whole of her guard. Declan, positioned nearest their Haidren, stood stoically, with an expression equally stern. The twins bookended her dressing table. Böwen rubbed his face with his palms, clearly uncomfortable. Collectively, their eyes remained downcast, but it was Noxolo in the corner who physically turned his elegant features toward the wall, away from his charge.

None of them uttered a word when Alora stopped behind Marek’s stool. Her posture spoke volumes.

“These men have given their lives to protect the al’Haidren to Boreal,” she said, her tone icy. “Yet through your petulant actions, your infantile ignorance, you’ve turned their sacrifice into a petty game of hide and seek. A game—” Alora leveled her glance around the tense space. “—that they appear to be losing. If one loses the petty games of a child playacting as an adult, how then could one possibly be victorious against a real threat?”

Many shoulders slumped at her communal admonishment.

“Ana’Mere, they are faultless in this. Meh fyreon, but the Darakaians have made a mockery of the cross-caste massacres.” Luscia implored the humanity in her aunt. “I just…I needed to do something, anything in my power to—”

“Niit, Luscia. What you have done is jeopardize the already fractured balance of the Ethnicam.” Alora’s unbound veil of platinum tresses followed her like an ethereal cape as she stepped in front of the captaen. “If your selfish whimsy and childish justifications were ever discovered, the Accords would be tested beyond your limited imagination.”

“The Darakaians are dragging their feet, Ana’Mere! Are we to stand by and watch?”

“Wem, as I instructed, weeks ago.” In her periphery, Luscia’s guards shifted uneasily. “Once the Darakaians conclude their investigation, the Najjan will be permitted to intervene. Not before.”

“That investigation is a joke. You haven’t seen because you weren’t here!” Luscia’s face warmed again with the flurry of passion rising from her gut. “You weren’t here, so I made a choice. I too am Najjan—”

“Niit, Luscia.” The etchings of age creased when her aunt’s lips pressed into a harsh line. “You are al’Haidren to Boreal. That is your duty—to be a servant to your House. Meh’dajjeni Dönumn, weh’dajjeni Lux. ‘My strength in the Gift, our strength for the Light.’ We lay down everything, Luscia—everything for our people.” Luscia’s mother’s eyes stared out from her aunt’s face. “Your pride—this need for your version of justice—has made you blind. And your blindness,” she emphasized in a detached voice, backing away, “is beyond a disappointment.”