Solmaz’s offer rattled around Farkas’s skull like dry peas in an iron kettle. *“The currents say your creations will kill you. Join me, and we will cut them all.”* He had stood there, rigid as a statue carved from frozen grief, and offered no answer. A refusal would be suicide. An acceptance, a betrayal of the fragile, unacknowledged hope that had begun to bloom like a bitter weed in his chest. He had simply turned, a slow, deliberate pivot, and walked away from her, from the royal signet glinting on her finger, from the chill she left in the air. The clang of the vault door, sealing him away from her demands, felt less like escape and more like a temporary reprieve before a more brutal reckoning. He sought refuge in the kitchen, the familiar clatter of iron pots and the scent of simmering herbs a poor balm for his churning gut. Cinder was there, huddled by the cold hearth, its fur radiating heat in pulsing waves. The ember-fox’s eyes were dull embers, dimming to ash as Farkas reached down. He knelt, resting a calloused hand across the animal's flank; the blistering hide singed his palm, grounding him. Faint strands of unspun fate drifted through the air around him, pale silver filaments twitching in the drafts. A shadow fell across the flagstones. Ilka. She leaned against the doorframe, her posture a familiar blend of defiance and weary resignation, but her usual sneer was absent. Her dark eyes, typically drawn thin with resentment, drifted toward Cinder. The fox whined, burrowing deeper into Farkas’s side. “The beast is boiling,” she observed, leaning against the jamb. “You look half-dead yourself.” Her gaze flicked to him, lingering. “Why do you do it, Farkas? Why help us? The weak. The doomed.” She asked it without mocking him, her knuckles white where she gripped the doorframe. Farkas pulled his hand from Cinder’s fur, the sudden loss of heat making his palm feel cold. He stood, turning his back to her as he began to rummage through a spice rack, the clatter of ceramic jars deliberately loud. “You rely too much on rage, Ilka,” he said, his voice flat, emotionless. “It’s a blunt instrument. It might win you some petty duels, but in a real fight, a true battle for survival, it will get you killed.” He turned, a small pouch of dried belladonna in his hand, his eyes finally meeting hers. “You lash out, predictable as a cornered grognard. You leave yourself open. You fight like you expect to die. And eventually, you will.” The truth of his critique was a venomous thing, designed to sting, to push her away, to rebuild the wall he instinctively erected between himself and anyone who dared to glimpse the man beneath the chef’s apron. Her mouth hardened into an iron slit, the raw curiosity wiped clean. Before she could answer, the kitchen door banged open against the masonry. Ferenc tripped across the sill, heaving for breath, his skin the color of skimmed milk. He held a crumpled scroll in his fist. “We’ve been posted,” he choked out, bracing himself on the prep table. “The Night Hunt. Down in the under-trenches. Tonight.” Ilka’s expression, a moment ago hardened by Farkas’s words, now fractured into disbelief. “The Night Hunt? That’s for the ‘Proving’ students, the ones who survive the Culling, not F-ranks! Never F-ranks!” Ferenc stumbled forward, shoving the creased vellum into Farkas's chest. “It’s signed by Inquisitor Solmaz herself. Special exemption. For our team. All four of us.” He wiped a sleeve across his snot-slick upper lip. “No F-rank team ever comes back up from the trenches. It’s a slaughter order.” Farkas snatched the vellum. The wax crest bore Solmaz’s twin serpents, pressed deep and sharp. *A test.* Not for them, but for him. She was tightening the noose, forcing his hand. Ferenc stood knocking his knees together, while Ilka stared at the stones, her spine bending under the news. He imagined Magda, her quiet strength, now pitted against an impossible challenge. And in his mind’s eye, he saw the faint, shimmering lines of their fates, now flickering precariously, threatened by an unseen blade. The cynical voice in his head screamed at him to run, to abandon them, to save himself. But the image of Cinder, its fur still hot with shared anxiety, the memory of Magda’s clear eyes, Ferenc’s fleeting confidence after the tart, Ilka’s unexpected question – they held him fast. He would not be the butcher of their hopes. Farkas crushed the vellum into a hard ball, dry wax flaking across his palm. He stepped forward, his gaze sweeping over Ferenc and Ilka, fixing them with an intensity that burned through their fear. His voice came out low and rough, rasping over the stones. “Tonight,” Farkas declared, the words an unbreakable vow, “you will not just survive. You will feast.”

Bonds of Bitter Salt