“Does your master know you bleed bitter myrrh, little bride?”
His voice, a rasp of broken glass, cut through the quiet. Tahirih met the wounded noble’s stare, a cold, empty calm settling over her. The bait hung between them, demanding a flinch. She gave him nothing, keeping her ash-scarred features slack.
Kivanc shifted across the tiles in a single blur, lunging before the bleeding intruder could draw breath, his knuckles locking about the man's throat. No words, just a guttural sound, like stones grinding in a deep chasm. Boots kicked empty air as Kivanc drove his thumb into the trachea.
The Lord-Exarch pinned him rigid. The air thrummed, heavy with brine and sulfur. The captive clawed at the iron grip, flailing until the torn silk slipped from his fingers, drifting to the tiles below.
Kivanc glanced down at the fallen fabric, then met the purpled face above him. Black tendrils coiled around the man's fractured wrist, twisting until bone cracked against bone. The muffled scream died as Kivanc hurled the body across the dining hall, sending crystal goblets clattering across the floor.
“Take him,” Kivanc ordered, his low voice vibrating through the masonry. “To the lowest oubliette beneath the canal vaults. Leave him in the dark.”
Two armored sentries hauled the bleeding wretch across the threshold, leaving a red smear over the mosaic floor. Kivanc turned, his gaze sweeping over Tahirih for a fraction of a second, before settling on the silk scrap on the floor. He nudged it with the toe of his boot, his lips tightening into a thin line. He looked, for a fleeting moment, like a man staring at a ghost.
“Clean this filth,” he commanded a trembling servant, gesturing to the bloodstains and scattered glass. “And bar my inner study until my return. Not even my... wife enters.” His voice was laced with an ambiguous chill, impossible to decipher. Then, without another word, he strode from the dining hall, his cloak swirling behind him like a storm cloud.
Tahirih remained rigid beside the splintered wood. The scrap held her scent, and Kivanc now searched for the marrow-blood rune that tied her to him. If he dissolved their marriage while that pact remained active, the recoil would rip her spirit into ash.
“Mizrak,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath. The civet crouched beneath a carved credenza, twitching his ringed tail. “The Null-stone shard. You remember the one in the abandoned observatory’s lowest vault? The one that hums like trapped starlight? I need it. For the dampener. Move like a whisper in the wind.”
Mizrak slipped between the table legs, sleek and noiseless, disappearing toward the servants' flues.
Her own mission was far more dangerous. Her target lay in Kivanc’s private quarters, forbidden to every servant in the house. She waited until the servants completed their scrubbing and the corridor fell quiet before slipping into the drafty corridor.
Bypassing the main ascent, she climbed an open conduit where canal pipes groaned against the stone. Gravity-wards pulled sideways at her hips, but she adjusted her footing against the masonry, slipping past the upper gallery unobserved.
At the iron-banded door of the study, she pressed her palm to the cold surface. A ward hummed beneath the iron, tied to Kivanc's pulse. Drawing a thread of gloom through her nails, she unraveled the alarm's anchor until the metal fell dormant.
The lock mechanism was old, a series of intricate tumblers. She withdrew a slender steel wire from her cuff, feeling each tumbler shift under steady pressure. With a soft click, the heavy bolt retracted, and she slipped past the seam.
The room held none of the Kasir's usual gold leaf. Shelves of vellum rolls climbed to the vault overhead, flanking an ink-stained desk loaded with coastal charts. Salt dust and dried wormwood thickened the air.
She checked the desk drawers before pulling back an embroidered sea-drape along the northern wall. Mounted behind the cloth was an expanse of cork and parchment pinned directly into the masonry.
Charcoal sketches tracked the contours of her hooded form from every angle: the tilt of her shoulders, the sweep of her veil as she ran. Notes charted escape routes through the estate's sunken ducts. In the center, pinned beneath thin glass, lay another shred of dark weave, preserved beside a jar of dried blood.
Tahirih backed toward the desk. Resting beside an open inkwell lay a heavy ledger bound in shark-hide.
She undid the bronze clasp and turned the stiff leaves. Across the third page sprawled the blood-rune she had etched during their single encounter, paired with Kivanc's bold cipher. The runes above it did not outline an annulment.
The text established a Qarinah-Binding: a total union of spirit that tethered life force to life force. An annulment of the mundane marriage would sever her living essence, leaving her a hollow shell.
He had not sought an ordinary separation. He intended to sever ties with his political bride so he could claim his nocturnal seducer without harm, blind to the fact that both women shared the same skin.
Her fingers gripped the vellum edge. Her bid for independence had walked directly into his trap.
The heavy latch snapped shut behind her. Tahirih wheeled around. Kivanc stood against the closed door, black mantle framing his shoulders, his gaze fixed directly upon her face. “I knew the rat would return to the trap.”