Starveil had given Kess one of its inner chambers, deep enough inside that no sound from the city reached it and no curious courtier could wander close by accident, and I hated how grateful I was for that because gratitude made the room feel like mercy instead of containment. The walls looked like twilight caught inside black glass, threaded with veins of silver light that pulsed when Kess slept badly and dimmed when she did not. There were no bars, because Mira would have burned the room down before allowing that, and there were no visible chains, because Cassie had looked at the first proposed restraint array with the kind of expression that made three healers remember urgent appointments elsewhere. Instead, Starveil had shaped the chamber around protection: wards under the rugs, moonlit lines along the door, a window that showed a quiet stretch of silver-leaf forest, and furniture too heavy for a panther to throw easily unless she truly meant it. That last part had been my suggestion, and every time I entered the chamber, I had to live with the fact that I had been right.
Kess was asleep when I came in, or pretending to be. It was hard to tell now. She lay curled on the wide bed with one arm tucked beneath the pillow and the other hanging over the edge, fingers loose, nails blunt for the moment. Her black hair had spilled across the sheets in wild uneven waves, too clean because healers kept washing it, too soft because no one had let her run rooftops or vanish into alleys or sweat the wrongness out of her own skin. She looked smaller in sleep, not fragile because Kess had never once looked fragile in her life and death had not managed to teach her the trick, but reduced somehow, like too much of her had been folded into a shape that did not quite fit. I paused inside the doorway and listened to the rhythm of her breathing, the faint purr that sometimes came from her chest without permission, and the low hum of the wards as they recognized me and let me pass.
“You stand there much longer, bear, and I’m going to start charging admission,” Kess said without opening her eyes, her voice rough with sleep and too much resurrection.
I closed the door behind me and waited until the ward settled again. “You were asleep.”
“I was being mysterious.”
“You were drooling.”
Kess opened one golden-brown eye. For one bright, blessed second, she looked exactly like herself: offended, amused, beautiful in the sharp, dangerous way of a blade someone had taught to flirt. “Panthers do not drool.”
“Apparently dead ones do.”
Kess’s smile widened, then faltered by a fraction, not because I had said dead but because the word had touched something in her. I felt the change before I saw it. Her fingers curled against the blanket. The silver in the walls dimmed. Her pupil widened too fast, swallowing the gold until her eye looked almost black.
I kept walking, slow enough not to startle her, casual enough not to tell her body there was something to fight. “Bad joke.”
“No,” Kess said, and the word came out soft, almost dreamy. “No, I liked it. Dead girls should be funny. Otherwise everyone cries too loudly and the worms get vain.”
I stopped at the foot of the bed. Kess blinked, then frowned as if she had heard herself from another room. “That was weird.”
“A little.”
“Sexy weird?”
“No.”
“Rude.”
I let out a breath I had not meant to hold. “Still you, then.”
Kess rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, one knee bent beneath the blanket. “Sometimes.”
I crossed to the chair beside the bed, the one Starveil had reshaped twice until it could hold a frostbear shifter’s weight without complaining. I did not sit yet. Sitting too soon could feel like settling in, and Kess had been unpredictable about that all week. Some nights she wanted me beside her so badly she shook with it. Some nights closeness made her bare her teeth like a cornered thing. Some nights she did both inside the same breath.
Kess turned her head toward me. “You smell like snow.”
“I am a polar bear.”
“You also smell like worry.” Her nose wrinkled. “Less attractive.”
“I’ll try to make my distress more alluring.”
“Please do. I have standards.”
There she was again. Kess. Not all of her, maybe not held in place for long, but enough that my chest hurt with wanting to grab the moment and pin it down. I sat carefully, elbows on knees, hands loose between them. My body knew the room the way it knew a battlefield: door behind me, window to the left, wards under the rug, water carafe within reach, bell cord three steps away, healer’s glyph hidden under the side table, Kess’s right hand visible, left hand under the pillow where claws could come out before I saw them. My mind catalogued all of it with brutal efficiency while my heart sat at the edge of the bed like a starving animal.
Kess watched me for a long moment. “Where’s Mira?”
I had known the question was coming. That did not make it easier to hear. “She wants to come.”
Kess’s mouth twisted. “That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” I said, and made myself keep my voice level. “It’s the answer I can give first.”
Kess pushed herself up onto one elbow. The movement was too smooth and then not smooth enough, her body forgetting itself halfway through and correcting with a little jerk that made the wards shimmer. “She sent you to babysit the corpse and stayed away?”
“Kess.”
“What? Is the queen busy? Crowns to polish? Courts to rise? Too important to visit the dead girl she dragged home?” Her voice sharpened around Mira’s title, but the hurt underneath was worse than the bite. “She got what she wanted, right? I’m back in the box. Everyone can stop being sad near the delicate firefly.”
My hands curled once, then opened. The part of me that led cells, broke locks, and dragged children out of Shroud facilities wanted to answer with clean facts, but clean facts had teeth tonight. Mira had tried to come. Mira had stood outside this door with tears she refused to let fall, and Cassie had stood behind her with every shadow in the hall pulled tight around her like a warning. Kess had screamed through the wards that night without knowing she was screaming, and every light in the corridor had gone out. I had seen Cassie’s face. I had seen Mira’s too. There were wounds no one got to call cowardice just because they kept someone alive.
“Kess,” I said again, softer this time. “Mira wants to see you so badly she’s making herself sick with it.” Kess’s expression flickered.
“She cannot be in here with you right now. Not because she does not love you. Not because you are being punished. Because you are not always in control, and Mira is pregnant.”
Kess went very still. The room seemed to narrow around the word. “What?” she said.
I hated that I had to be the one to put it into her hands. I hated that Mira was not here to say it with a stupid joke and watery eyes and one hand pressed over the place where everything had changed. “Mira is pregnant.”
Kess stared at me like I had spoken in a language she knew but could not immediately translate. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, she would have told me.”
“She wanted to.”
Kess’s mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes moved over my face too fast, searching for the lie because a lie would have hurt less. “Mira. Pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“With Cassie?”
“Yes.”
Kess blinked again, and for one fragile second she looked so much like herself that it almost ruined me. “Of course Cassie knocked up the queen. Overachieving shadow bitch.”
A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it. It hurt. “Something like that.”
Kess’s mouth trembled. “She’s really pregnant?”
“Yes.”
The humor cracked and fell out of her face. “And I’m dangerous.”
I did not look away. “Yes.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“When you are you, no. Never.”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
“I believe you.”
Kess’s jaw tightened. “Then why...”
“Because yesterday you tried to claw through the north wall because the wardlight sounded like bells.”
The room went too quiet. Kess stared at the blanket, and I watched the memory move through her in broken pieces. It was not a clean remembering, just a sensation, a recoil, shame arriving before context. Her fingers pressed into the mattress. “I did?”
“Yes.”
“Did I hurt anyone?”
“No.”
“Did I try?”
I hated that question most. I hated the smallness of it. The way Kess asked like someone checking whether she had become a weapon when she was not looking. “You threw a table,” I said. “You bit the healer’s sleeve. You called Tharion a sun-burnt coffin nail.”
Kess blinked. I held her gaze. “That part was actually very you.”
A laugh broke out of Kess, sudden and cracked, and for a second it almost became crying. “I called Tharion what?”
“A sun-burnt coffin nail.”
“That’s good.”
“It was vivid.”
“Was he offended?”
“He looked confused.”
Kess pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth. Her shoulders shook once. “That’s better.”
I let the almost-laughter breathe between us before I continued. “After that, you shifted halfway and did not know where you were. You asked for Mira then too.”
The humor drained out of Kess’s face. “You told me this already.”
I nodded. Kess swallowed. “Yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“I forgot.”
“You remembered part of it.”
“That’s worse.”
“I know.”
Kess lay back slowly, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I keep doing that. I keep waking up with holes in me, and people keep having faces like they’re trying not to show me the holes have teeth.” Her voice softened, and the rhythm of her words bent into something stranger. “The little teeth chatter. White-white-white in the dark. They bite the thread and the thread screams and the pretty firefly burns her hands trying to tie it back together.”
I went still. Kess turned her head. Her eyes were open too wide now, pupils huge again, the gold almost gone. “She shouldn’t touch the thread. Tell her not to. Little star carries little dawn carries little court sleeping under bone. Hungry shadows like warm cradles.”
My pulse slowed in the way it did before a fight, every instinct forcing itself into discipline. I did not know whether Kess was seeing something real, remembering something broken, or letting fear turn itself into prophecy. I was not going to ask. Not tonight. Not when she could barely hold the shape of this room.
“Kess, look at me.”
Kess did, but not quite. Her gaze landed a few inches to the left of my face. “You have snow in your fur. I told them not to bury you in the spring. Bears should sleep cold. Bears should wake angry.”
“I’m here.”
“Are you?” Kess whispered. “They said you were outside the door, but doors lie. They open their mouths and swallow girls, and then everyone says thank you for keeping the hallway clean.”
I rose carefully from the chair. Kess’s fingers flexed. The wards brightened under the rugs, silver light breathing through the woven fabric. “No cages,” I said.
Kess’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “Pretty room. Pretty lock. Pretty lock. Pretty lock.”
“It is a room,” I said, because lying to Kess right now would be useless and cruel. “It is also a lock.”
Kess focused on me then. Really focused, sharp as a claw. Rage came into her face so fast it almost looked like relief. “You locked me up.”
“Yes.”
The word cost me something. I paid it anyway. Kess’s body went very still. “You?”
“Yes.”
The first growl was low enough that the bedframe trembled.
I did not step back. I wanted to. Every intelligent piece of me understood that distance was safer. Kess was faster than she looked, and whatever had come back with her had made her strength uneven but vicious when it rose. I had bruises under my shirt from two nights ago that were only half-faded because I had shifted enough to heal and not enough to frighten Kess when she woke. But leaving space right now would feel like abandonment, and moving too close would feel like challenge, so I held the middle and let my voice carry everything my body could not.
“I helped lock the room,” I said. “I did not lock you away.”
Kess laughed, high and wrong. “Listen to the bear splitting hairs. Hair, fur, thread, rope. Tie the cat. Keep the cat. Love the cat until she stops scratching.”
My throat burned. “I love you while you scratch.”
The growl broke. For a moment, Kess looked like she might strike. Then she looked terrified. Then she looked lost. “I don’t know where I went,” she said.
My chest caved around the words. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Kess’s voice dropped to a whisper full of splinters. “I don’t either.”
There it was. The thing underneath the rage, underneath the strange warnings and the teeth and the jokes that came out sharp enough to bleed. Kess did not know what death had been. I did not know either. None of us did. We had no clean map for what had happened to her, no priest I trusted enough to ask, no healer who could say resurrection without looking like they wanted to spit afterward. Kess had been gone. Kess had come back. Somewhere between those two facts, something had touched her, or followed her, or torn pieces loose and put them back in the wrong order.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Kess flinched, then hated herself for it, and I saw both reactions cross her face. “I won’t touch you unless you ask,” I said.
Kess stared at her hands. “What if I ask and then bite you?”
“Then I’ll be very annoyed.”
“Naomi.”
“I have thick skin.”
“You have stupid skin.”
“I am aware.”
Kess made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had survived the trip out of her chest. Slowly, carefully, she shifted closer until her shoulder brushed my thigh. That tiny contact felt more dangerous than any fight we had ever survived together.
“Where’s Mira?” Kess asked again, but this time the question came out smaller. Not accusation. Wound.
I closed my eyes for half a breath. “She is safe. Cassie is with her.”
“Cassie hates me now.”
“No.”
“She should.”
“No.”
“I’m dangerous.”
“Yes.”
Kess looked up sharply. I met her gaze. “You are. Right now, you are dangerous. That does not mean Cassie hates you.”
Kess’s mouth trembled. “She would kill me if I hurt Mira.”
“In a heartbeat.”
For some reason, that steadied Kess more than comfort had. She stared at me, then let out a slow, broken breath. “Good.”
My eyes burned. “That is what I told you yesterday.”
Kess nodded faintly, like the words were settling into grooves worn by repetition. “Pregnant Mira does not get used as anyone’s emotional comfort object.”
“Those were your words.”
“Smart girl.”
“Obnoxious girl.”
Kess’s lips twitched. “Alive girl.”
I could not answer that immediately.
Kess lowered her head until her temple rested against my thigh. “I want to see her.”
“I know.”
“I want to smell her. She smells like toasted sugar and rain and that stupid flower I used to pretend I didn’t like because it made me sneeze.”
“Stargazer bloom.”
“Pretentious.”
“Yes.”
“She cried?”
My hands curled in the blanket. “Yes.”
Kess went quiet. “Did she think I didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Good.” Kess shut her eyes. “I know when Mira cries. Even when she’s being a royal pain about it.”
I looked toward the window that showed the quiet forest beyond the glass. “She will come when it is safe.”
“What if safe doesn’t happen?”
I hated that too. I hated how adult the question was, how present, how much of Kess lived in it. “Then we make safer.”
“That sounds like something you say when you don’t know how.”
“It is.”
Kess huffed against my leg. “Honest bear.”
“I try.”
“Bossy bear.”
“That one requires no effort.”
Kess’s hand found the edge of my shirt and gripped it. Not hard. Not yet. “Stay?”
I looked down at her. “Yes.”
“Even if I get weird?”
“You are always weird.”
“Mean.”
“Accurate.”
Kess shifted again, careful and clumsy at once, until I understood what she was asking without words. I moved onto the bed slowly, boots already left by the door because I had learned the room’s rituals too well, and stretched out beside her without trapping her. Kess curled toward me immediately, then stopped, muscles tense.
I waited.
Kess breathed once, twice, then pressed her forehead against my shoulder. Her body was too warm. Or maybe I had expected her to be cold for too long. The thought made my throat close.
“This is pathetic,” Kess muttered.
I rested one hand near her back, not touching. “Completely.”
“I used to be sexy.”
“You are currently covered in three blankets and threatening to drool on me.”
“Still sexy.”
“Debatable.”
Kess pinched my side weakly. I smiled despite myself and let my hand settle between her shoulder blades. Kess shuddered once, then relaxed so suddenly my entire body forgot how to move. The purr came back, faint and uneven, rising from her chest like something her body remembered even if the rest of her did not.
“There,” I murmured.
“Don’t healer-voice me.”
“That was not healer voice.”
“That was definitely healer voice. All soft and doomed.”
My smile faded. “I am a little doomed.”
Kess tucked her face closer. “Hot.”
“Your standards concern me.”
“They should. I died.”
I closed my eyes.
Kess went still against me. “Bad joke?”
“No.”
“Lie.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
I pressed my palm gently to her back. “Don’t be sorry for sounding like yourself.”
Kess was quiet for so long I thought she might have fallen asleep, and for a few precious minutes the room allowed us to pretend this was only a late night after a bad mission. Kess half-draped against me, all restless heat and sharp bones. Me on my side, one arm careful around her, staring at the dark glass ceiling while Starveil’s silver veins pulsed slow and dim. If I blurred the edges enough, I could almost believe Mira was going to burst in any second with snacks she had stolen from some royal kitchen, Cassie pretending not to supervise from behind her, all of us too loud and too alive and too stupidly certain we would survive everything because we had survived so much already.
Then something tapped the window. My eyes opened. It was soft, barely a sound. A branch, maybe, from the forest beyond the glass. Tap. Pause. Tap tap. The kind of ordinary noise no one would notice unless they were waiting for disaster to announce itself politely. Kess noticed. Her purr stopped.
My hand stilled on her back. “Kess.”
Kess lifted her head, eyes already gone too wide. “They knock from the wrong side.”
“It’s the window.”
“No.” Kess’s voice thinned, sweet and distant. “No, pretty bear, windows are eyes. Doors are mouths. Wells are throats. Don’t answer when the throat sings.”
My mouth went dry. “There is no well here.”
Kess smiled at something over my shoulder. “There is always a well. Little stars fall in. Little queens climb out. Little cats drown twice if they forget which way is up.” I slid my hand away from Kess’s back. Too late.
Kess grabbed my wrist. The grip hurt. Not enough to break bone, but enough that I felt the warning travel up my arm. Kess’s nails sharpened against my skin. The wards brightened under the bed, silver light threading through the room.
“Kess,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You are holding too hard.”
Kess looked at my wrist as if surprised to find it in her hand. Then her face changed. Rage and terror and hunger, all tangled too tightly to separate. “They had wrists. Little wrists. Tagged and tied. Don’t let the bells take the children down. Don’t let the white masks count their teeth.”
I stopped breathing for one beat, but only one. It could have been Shroud. It could have been memory or nightmare, or something that had followed Kess back wearing pieces of all three. “You’re in Starveil,” I said. “The children are safe.”
Kess’s head snapped toward me. “No one is safe in a pretty house. Pretty houses eat daughters first.”
My polar bear rose under my skin, not to attack but to survive. I kept it contained. Fur would frighten Kess. Size would challenge her. Teeth would make the room choose violence. I breathed through the shift-instinct until it settled low in my bones.
“Kess, let go.” Kess’s grip tightened. Pain flashed bright. I did not pull away. Pulling would tear skin, and blood might trigger worse. I let my free hand move slowly toward Kess’s face, stopping when her pupils flicked to track it.
“Naomi,” Kess whispered, and for a second she was there, horrified. “I can’t—”
“I know.”
“I can’t open my hand.”
“I know.”
Kess’s breath hitched. “I’m hurting you.”
“Yes.”
A tear slid down Kess’s cheek. “Make me stop.”
“No.”
“Make me.”
“No.”
Kess’s teeth bared. “Why not?”
“Because I am not taking your body from you.” The words hit harder than I expected. Kess made a broken sound, and her fingers spasmed. The claws nicked my wrist before the grip loosened. Blood welled in three thin lines. Kess stared at it. The room went violently bright.
I moved then. Not away. Toward. I caught Kess’s face between both hands before she could fling herself back or claw herself open trying to escape what she had done. Kess thrashed once, sharp and panicked, and I took the hit to my shoulder with a grunt.
“Look at me,” I said.
Kess’s eyes darted everywhere but me. “Blood on the snow. Blood on the little white bear. Bad cat. Bad cat. Bad—”
“Look at me.” Kess’s gaze snapped to mine. I put every piece of command I had ever owned into the next words, not the command that took choice but the kind that built a floor under someone falling. “You are Kess. You are in Starveil. You scratched me. You did not kill me. You are coming back.”
Kess shook her head, but her eyes stayed fixed on mine. “I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“You do. Listen to me breathe.”
Kess made a sound like she hated me. Good. Hate was present. Hate had edges. I inhaled slowly, then exhaled. Kess’s breath shuddered, stumbled, failed to match. I did it again. The wards hummed. The window tapped once more, and Kess flinched so hard her teeth clicked, but she did not look away.
“That’s it,” I said. “Again.”
Kess inhaled. It broke halfway, and I kept my hands steady while the wardlight trembled around us. “Again.”
Kess breathed, and the silver light dimmed by a fraction. “Again,” I said, and this time Kess followed me all the way down into the exhale before collapsing forward against my chest.
I held her. I did not know if that was wise. I did not care. Kess shook so hard the bed trembled, claws catching in my shirt, face pressed to my collarbone as if she could hide inside the place she had almost hurt.
“I scratched you,” Kess said.
“Yes.”
“I told you to make me stop.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
Kess’s voice went small and awful. “You should go.”
I looked at the blood on my wrist. The cuts were shallow. They stung. They would heal. That was not the point and never had been. “Yeah,” I said.
Kess went rigid. I rested my chin lightly against her hair. “I’m not going.”
A sob tore out of Kess so suddenly it sounded like pain, and maybe it was. I held her through it, one hand spread over her back, the other cradling the base of her skull. Kess cried like she fought: ugly, furious, resisting every second of it, as if grief were an enemy she could outlast by refusing to breathe. My own eyes burned, but I did not cry. Not because I was stronger. Because someone had to keep watch, and tonight that someone was me.
After a while, Kess’s body went heavy. Not asleep. Not fully. Just exhausted enough to stop shaking. “I asked about Mira again.”
“Yes.”
“I forgot again.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll ask tomorrow.”
“Probably.”
Kess laughed once, wet and bitter. “You’ll tell me tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“And the day after?”
“Yes.”
“And when you hate me?”
I closed my eyes. “That one might take longer.”
Kess made a small wounded sound. I opened my eyes and tightened my arm. “Because I’m not planning to start.”
Kess went quiet against me, and when she spoke again, the words were muffled into my shirt. “Mira can’t come because I’m dangerous. Because she has the baby. Because Cassie would turn into shadow murder husband if I twitched wrong.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitched. “Something like that.”
Kess scrubbed at her face with the heel of one hand. “Sire-brained alpha fae mated male bullshit.”
“That is also a factor,” I said.
Kess snorted weakly. “Cassie would hate being called a male.”
“Not if you said it like an insult,” I replied.
Kess breathed something that might have been a laugh. “I miss them.”
“I know.”
“I miss me.”
I stared at the dark ceiling, at the veins of silver light slowly returning to their gentle pulse. “I know.”
Kess’s fingers loosened in my shirt. “Don’t let me hurt the baby.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t let me hurt Mira.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t let me hurt you.”
I’ll try.” “That’s a bad answer.” “It’s the honest one.” I did not answer quickly enough. Kess lifted her head, eyes red, face too open. “Naomi.”
“I’ll try.”
“That’s a bad answer.”
“It’s the honest one.”
Kess looked at the scratches on my wrist and flinched. I saw the spiral starting again and covered the cuts with my sleeve before shame could find another door into her body.
“Hey,” I said. “Stay here.” Kess blinked. “With me,” I added.
Kess looked at me for a long moment. “Bossy bear.”
“Always.”
“Pretty bear.”
“Sometimes.”
“Mine?”
My breath caught, but I kept my voice steady. “If you want.”
Kess’s eyes drifted toward the window, where the forest moved in moonlit silence. For a second, I thought she was slipping again, but then she tucked herself back under my chin with a sigh that sounded almost alive.
“Want,” Kess whispered.
I held her while the wards softened around us. Somewhere beyond this chamber, life in Starveil kept moving. Healers changed shifts. Courtiers whispered. Guards walked their routes through silver-lit halls. Mira was somewhere in the palace, and Cassie was almost certainly nearby. The world did not stop just because this room had.
Inside it, Kess relearned breath by breath how to remain in her own body. I had wanted her back with a violence that had scared me. I had begged anyone listening to give her back. Now Kess was here, warm and shaking in my arms, dangerous and wrong and beloved, asking questions I would probably have to answer again tomorrow because some things still slipped away from her.
I pressed my lips to Kess’s hair. “I’ll tell you again tomorrow,” I murmured. Kess’s breathing slowed. “And the day after.” The wards dimmed to a soft silver glow, and the room settled into silence.