"Wait, wait, don't chop her, she gets terrible skin rashes when decapitated!" I hurled my body sideways, plowing into the murky water and wedging myself directly between the whistle of the polished steel and Maliwan’s jugular. The edge of Natthawut’s saber stopped half an inch from my collarbone. A lock of my hair, severed cleanly by the displacement of air, drifted down into the black froth. Water poured from my sleeves. I held up both palms, offering a smile so toothy it strained my cheekbones. "General! How festive! Fancy meeting you beneath a sewer grate at midnight!" Natthawut’s dark brows pinched toward the center of his forehead. The canal's spotlight carved sharp hollows beneath his cheekbones, rendering him less like a flesh-and-blood soldier and more like a statue chiseled from wet river granite. His gaze flicked from my dripping nose to Maliwan, whose fingers were still hooked into lethal claw-strikes. "She bears the stance of an executioner from the under-docks," Natthawut said. His voice was a low scrape of gravel against iron. "Step aside, little seamstress. She was about to gut you." "Gut me? Maliwan?" I let out a shrill peel of laughter that echoed through the brick culvert. "Perish the thought! She’s my personal muscle! I pay her three copper shells a month and whatever sticky rice dries on the counter. She has poor social instincts and smells of salted mackerel, but her heart is as soft as boiled taro!" Maliwan’s teeth audibly ground together behind me. "Chailai," she hissed through the side of her mouth, "shut up before I prove him right." "See? Terrible manners!" I patted Natthawut’s vambrace with wet fingers. "Just an unruly hireling trying to escort her fragile employer home before the rain ruins my inventory. No crime syndicate here, just two girls and their damp dreams!" Natthawut did not blink. The water swirling around his greaves began to steam faintly, responding to the innate heat humming in his veins. He twisted his wrist, angling *Monsoon’s Breath* downward, though his knuckles remained white against the hilt. "Three men float behind you with their throats crushed by silk cord," he said evenly. "Your hireling possesses talents far exceeding three copper shells." "It’s the discount tier! Very economical!" He studied my face, ignoring the muddy river muck clinging to my cheek. The relentless scrutiny made my ribs ache with that ancient, inherited terror—the ancestral prophecy that whispered his shadow would bring the ruin of my bloodline. Yet his gaze carried no malice; it held a terrifying, immovable stubbornness. "The streets are crawling with blades meant for you," Natthawut declared, sheathing the sword with a crisp, final click. "You will not return to your shop tonight. You are coming with me." "Oh, goodness, I couldn't possibly impose—" "To the Glass Pavilion," he cut in, grabbing my upper arm with a grip that left no room for negotiation. "The high lords hold court there tonight. You will sit where I can see you, weaver. Before you drown yourself in someone else's murder." *** The Glass Pavilion rose three tiers above the central canal, an architectural monstrosity of spun crystal, green jade tiles, and dripping lanterns. Inside, Wiangthara’s nobility sipped fermented plum wine while water cascaded down the transparent outer walls in artfully channeled waterfalls. I smelled of cheap dye and wet silt, despite having been scrubbed down by two terrified maidservants on the war-barge and stuffed into an emerald brocade coat two sizes too broad in the shoulders. "Look at that," a voice like crushed glass trilled across the banquet gallery. "The general brought a sewer rat into the conservatory." Lady Phailin, daughter of the master of the Salt Guild, glided toward us. Her gown was an exorbitant creation of silver-threaded rain-silk that probably cost the equivalent of three merchant skiffs. Her lips curved around a gilded porcelain cup, her gaze raking over my ill-fitting collar with dripping condescension. "Tell me, girl," the patrician sneered, projecting her voice so the surrounding dignitaries could hear, "does the mud wash out of your hair, or does it simply become permanent? Perhaps you can mend the hem of my servant’s tunic while you wait for scraps." I smoothed the front of my borrowed silks, pasting on the dimpled, harmless grin of a brainless market merchant. "Oh, your ladyship! The mud actually acts as a fantastic pomade! Though if I were to mend your servant’s tunic, I’d have to charge double—the silver threads on your bodice look entirely synthetic, and I wouldn't want the contamination to ruin my needles!" The salt heiress choked on her wine. Her pale skin flushed mottled pink. "You insolent little—" "Lady Phailin." Natthawut stepped forward, the broad line of his shoulders blotting out the hanging lanterns. The heavy wool of his ceremonial coat brushed against my arm, instantly muting the chatter around the table. The man chilled the air like an oncoming frost. "You mistake her position," the general said, his voice flat, carry-weight crushing the ambient music. "She is not here to mend tunics. She is my personal guest. Speak to her with disrespect again, and your father will find the Salt Guild’s barge permits revoked before sunrise." The heiress shrank back, curtsying so hard she nearly spilled her cup across her shoes before fleeing into the crowd. I tilted my head, looking up at him through my eyelashes. "You shouldn't threaten high-born ladies over a common artisan, General. People might think you're soft on me." "People think what I allow them to think," he muttered. His hand clamped around my waist before I could dodge, pulling me toward the polished jade dance floor as the musicians struck up the slow rhythm of the Rainmaker's Waltz. "Dance. You are twitching like a rat about to bolt." "I do not twitch, I flutter!" His palm was a searing brand against the small of my back. As we moved through the formal turns, our steps mirroring the sway of the canal beneath the glass floor, I looked up into his face. Up close, the terrifying conqueror looked entirely depleted. Beneath the severe cut of his hair, dark shadows bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He shouldered the rot of the city's corrupt courts and brutal borders alone, braced against the world just as rigidly as I braced against my curse. My ribs pinched with an unwelcome ache. He wasn't a monster; he was just as exhausted by isolation as I was. *Don't,* I warned myself. *His presence is doom. The prophecy will turn this entire hall to ash if you yield.* Then, over his broad shoulder, I saw it. Out on the moonlit balcony beyond the crystal arches, a cloaked figure slipped a red lacquer scroll case to an attendant wearing the silver-and-black sash of the Prime Minister’s household. The Crimson Lotus seal was pressed into the wax. My ditzy facade dissolved within a heartbeat. "Oh dear, my lace is catching!" I squeaked, purposely stepping on Natthawut’s boot heel. As he instinctively shifted to steady me, I spun out of his grip, ducked beneath a velvet curtain, and slid out through the side archway into the lashing rain of the open gallery. The night air was cold, snapping against my skin. I pressed my back to the slick exterior wall, creeping toward the balustrade to catch the whispers drifting through the storm. "...the shipment arrives at dawn at the sluice gate," the cloaked man muttered. "The artisan girl dies tonight, as agreed. Natthawut won't be able to protect her once the levee—" A heavy hand seized my wrist, wrenching me into the dark alcove beside the stone pillars. I gasped, my back hitting the rain-slicked wall. Natthawut pinned me there, his towering frame blocking the gallery lamps, his chest rising and falling with shallow, agitated breaths. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead. His fingers gripped my wrists against the stone, not crushing, but unbreakable. "Why do you look at me like that?" he whispered, his voice cracking with a fierce, raw desperation that shattered his usual composure. "Every time I pull you out of the river, every time I stand before you, you look at me like I am death itself." I could barely draw breath. His face was inches from mine, smelling of clean rain and sandalwood, the threat of an ancestral ruin hovering between our lips. Behind him, rising silent as smoke from the balcony railing, a masked assassin leveled a slender brass blowpipe directly at the nape of his neck.