The next morning began with another letter.
It lay neatly folded on the tray outside Silver’s room, tucked beneath the morning tea as though it belonged there—as though apology could be made part of a routine.
He knew the handwriting before he even picked it up.
Celeste.
Of course.
For the past few days, she had been sending them with miserable consistency. Some arrived as proper letters, carefully folded and sealed. Others were barely more than notes, written in a hand that looked as if she had hesitated over every word.
Silver had stopped opening them after the third.
There was no point.
He had no interest in apologies.
Not really.
Apologies were soft things.
Meant to soothe.
To mend.
What he wanted was not soothing.
What he wanted was retribution.
His jaw tightened as he turned the letter once between his fingers. Then, without reading a word, he crossed to the writing desk and slid it into the drawer with the others.
It landed atop the growing stack with a papery whisper.
A graveyard of regret.
He shut the drawer firmly.
For a moment, he just stood there, one hand resting against the polished wood, staring at his own reflection in the darkened window. Morning light was only just beginning to creep over the town outside, pale and watery, turning the half-built rooftops below into shapes of gold and grey.
Then he remembered the data chip.
He retrieved it from his coat pocket—the one Lysander had given him in the ruins of Sweettooth Headquarters—and slotted it into the reader on his desk terminal.
The screen flickered.
A set of files bloomed into view.
Silver frowned almost at once.
This was not what he had expected.
Trade manifests.
Shipping routes.
Inventory tallies.
Tedious, sanitised nonsense.
Sweettooth paperwork, yes, but the wrong sort.
No mention of Celeste.
No medical irregularities.
No restricted files.
Nothing that resembled the kind of information Lysander had implied he had found.
Silver clicked through folder after folder, his irritation hardening with every second.
Wrong chip.
Either Lysander had made a mistake—
or someone had made one for him.
That thought settled coldly in his stomach.
He was already reaching for the comms device when a more poisonous possibility rose behind it.
Gideon.
Silver keyed in Lysander’s private line.
It rang twice.
Then—
“Silver.”
Lysander sounded composed, but not naturally so.
Too quick.
Too flat.
Like a man holding a door shut with his back.
“The chip you gave me was wrong,” Silver said without preamble. “I assume that wasn’t accidental.”
A pause.
“Probably a mix-up.”
Silver’s eyes narrowed.
“Lysander.”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
When Lysander spoke again, his voice had gone quieter.
“It is being handled.”
That was answer enough.
Silver straightened.
“Gideon?”
He heard the faint exhale on the other end.
Not surprise.
Confirmation.
“What does he have on you?” Silver asked. “Tell me, and I’ll help.”
“It’s fine.”
“It clearly is not.”
“It is handled,” Lysander repeated, sharper now, though the strain underneath it only made the edge more obvious. “Do not involve yourself.”
Silver’s grip tightened around the comm.
“Lysander—”
But the line went dead.
He stood very still after that, staring at the silent receiver.
The room suddenly felt too warm.
Downstairs, the morning had already begun in earnest by the time he descended.
The lower hall of the Egg Tree smelled of toasted sugar-bread, machine oil, and damp timber warmed by dreamshard heat. Sunlight streamed through the spiral windows, catching on hanging tools, scraps of cloth, and the drifting dust of a place that was somehow both home and construction site all at once.
“Bore da, Silver!”
Bonbon’s voice rang through the room before he had even reached the last step.
The little panda looked unbearably pleased with herself, perched on a chair that was clearly too large for her and swinging her legs with great dignity.
Silver blinked once, then gave a faint, tired smile.
“Good morning to you too.”
Bonbon beamed as though she had personally negotiated a peace treaty.
Arcade was already at work at the main table, sleeves rolled up, hair a mess, several wires and cracked screens spread around him in a chaos only he seemed capable of understanding.
C.H.I.P. hovered nearby, projecting lines of data into the air with a cheerful little hum.
“I assume none of you believe in breakfast before conspiracy,” Silver murmured.
“Breakfast is part of the conspiracy,” Arcade said without looking up.
“That explains the texture of the toast.”
“Rude,” said C.H.I.P. brightly. “Accurate, but rude.”
Ray snorted from where she sat with her boots kicked out and a mug in hand.
Pitch lingered near the far wall in his usual patch of half-shadow, silent but listening.
Mezzo was somewhere near the window, halfway through eating something he had almost certainly stolen from the cooling rack.
Celeste sat at the end of the table with her hands folded around a cup of tea, posture careful and quiet.
She glanced up when Silver entered.
Only for a second.
Then she looked back down.
The silence between them was brief enough that no one else would have noticed it.
Which, in Silver’s experience, usually meant everyone had.
Arcade tapped at the screen.
“Still scrubbing the footage from last night’s data pull. It’s filthy. Whoever hid this knew what they were doing.”
“They didn’t know me,” said C.H.I.P., and then brightened. “Wait. Oh. Oh, that is interesting.”
Arcade paused.
“What?”
The little robot projected a new set of files across the table—layered underneath the original upload, buried beneath corrupted video timestamps and false metadata.
“Well now,” Arcade said, sitting up straighter. “That’s sneaky.”
Silver moved closer despite himself.
“What am I looking at?”
“The video,” Arcade said, pulling one file free.
The grainy frame appeared in the air: a figure begging for help, frightened, half-hidden, somewhere dim and echoing.
“We thought it was uploaded from a Church relay. It was tagged that way too.”
C.H.I.P. overlaid another line of code, this one blinking red.
“It wasn’t,” the robot said. “Original upload source traces back to Godiad.”
The room changed at once.
Ray lowered her mug.
Mezzo stopped chewing.
Even Bonbon went still.
Arcade swore under his breath.
“So the Church and Godiad are definitely connected.”
“Or one is using the other,” Pitch said quietly from the wall.
“Either way,” Ray said, rising to her feet, “it’s a lead.”
Arcade nodded.
“A proper one.”
“We should check it out,” Mezzo said at once. “Today.”
Celeste nodded slowly, already thinking.
Then her gaze drifted toward Pitch.
“Pitch?”
He lifted his head slightly.
“Mm?”
She hesitated, then asked gently, “When we’re on missions… why do you sometimes shadow-jump away?”
Pitch went very still.
The room’s attention shifted toward him.
Celeste quickly raised both hands.
“I don’t mean that badly. I just mean—it would help if we knew why. Then we could arrange around it.”
Her ears flicked.
“If you need space, or if it’s tactical, or if there’s a pattern, we can work with that. I’d rather know than accidentally put you somewhere you don’t want to be.”
Pitch stared at her for a moment.
Then leaned back into the shadowed wall again.
“Sometimes I want a better vantage point.”
His voice stayed even.
Quiet.
“Sometimes there are zombies moving where the rest of you can’t see.”
He shrugged.
“So I go.”
Celeste nodded, accepting that at once.
“That makes sense.”
Silver made a soft sound into his tea.
“Or perhaps he is sensibly avoiding your swords. They do occasionally travel in directions no civilised weapon should.”
Celeste blinked.
Then, surprisingly, smiled.
“Oh, yes, that’s fair. I mean, I have got better, but there was that one time I nearly hit the ceiling instead of the zombie, and then the sword bounced off the pipe and Arcade said I had invented vertical ricochet fencing, which sounded impressive until I realised he was making fun of me, and then—”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Silver cut in.
The smile dropped from her face.
Only a little.
But enough.
Pitch’s head turned.
Slowly.
He looked at Silver.
Not sharply.
Not dramatically.
Just long enough to make the temperature of the room seem to change.
Then he looked back at Celeste.
“Your swords are fine, kitten.”
His voice was calm.
“I’m just scouting.”
Celeste’s shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Oh. Good.”
Skye, sitting near the end of the table with his cards held close to his chest, watched Pitch carefully.
He did not say anything.
But his ears dipped slightly.
Something about the answer did not sit right.
Not a lie exactly.
But not all of the truth either.
Skye lowered his eyes to his cards and kept the thought to himself.
Silver’s gaze slid toward the nearest window.
Beyond the curved glass, the town below was stirring fully awake. Workers crossed muddy paths carrying beams of salvaged candywood and sacks of supplies. Children darted between half-built homes. Smoke curled from cookfires. What had once been a temporary encampment was beginning, alarmingly, to resemble something permanent.
That, he thought sourly, was precisely the problem.
He folded his arms.
“You are all aware, I hope, that none of this is technically sanctioned.”
Ray turned.
“What?”
“This.” Silver gestured toward the window, toward the growing settlement beyond it. “The expansion, the structures, the wall markings, whatever delightfully unlawful thing Topsy is doing with that roof.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“The Council has not granted planning permission for any of it.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Ray stared at him as if he had announced a personal grudge against oxygen.
“Planning permission?” she repeated. “Silver, people were sleeping in wreckage.”
“In legal terms, yes, which is often where the interesting problems begin.”
“The Warrens are overwhelmed,” Ray shot back, stepping closer. “Zombies keep pushing people out, and there’s nowhere left to send them. What were we supposed to do, ask the Council to schedule a committee?”
Silver opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Because annoyingly, horribly, she was not wrong.
Outside, someone laughed.
Somewhere else, a hammer rang against stone.
The town kept moving, indifferent to law, rank, and the tidy language of Council procedure.
His expression tightened.
“Fine,” he said at last, each word sounding as though it had cost him something personally. “Build your illegal little utopia.”
Ray’s grin flashed sharp and triumphant.
“Knew you had a heart.”
“Do not spread that rumour.”
A few of the others laughed under their breath, and the tension in the room loosened by a fraction.
Silver let it pass, then said, more seriously, “As for Sweettooth—I found nothing.”
Arcade looked up.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing useful,” Silver said. “And I think we should drop Lysander as a suspect.”
That landed less gracefully.
Ray’s face hardened at once.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“Because he’s your friend?”
“Because Gideon is blackmailing him.”
That gave the room pause.
Silver held their stares without flinching.
“I spoke to him this morning. He’s involved in something, yes, but not by choice. Whatever Gideon has over him, it’s enough to keep him compliant.”
Ray folded her arms.
“And you just believe that?”
Silver’s expression cooled.
“I know him.”
“You want to believe it,” she said. “That’s not the same thing.”
He did not answer immediately.
When he did, his voice had gone quieter.
Less polished.
More honest than he likely intended.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
Ray blinked.
Silver looked past her, not quite at anyone.
Arcade leaned back in his chair, one brow lifting.
“Well, that’s not exactly shocking.”
Silver’s eyes slid toward him.
Arcade gestured vaguely with his stylus.
“You practically attend the same club for emotionally unavailable rich people with cheekbones and catastrophic family values.”
Ray snorted into her mug.
Mezzo made a strangled noise that sounded like he was trying not to laugh and failing honourably.
Silver’s expression did not change.
“Please,” he said smoothly. “The membership standards are far more refined than that.”
Arcade smirked.
“Are they?”
“Naturally. Bartleby is also a member. We have been friends since the Academy.”
Arcade tilted his head.
“Eh.”
Silver blinked once.
“Eh?”
“Bartleby is actually likeable.”
For a fraction of a second—
so brief no one but perhaps Skye would have noticed—
something in Silver’s face tightened.
Not anger.
Not quite.
Something smaller.
Sharper.
Hurt, quickly dressed in expensive clothes and shoved behind a locked door.
Then his smile returned.
Perfect.
Polished.
Deadly.
“How fortunate for him,” Silver said. “I shall alert the club immediately. They’ll be devastated by the administrative error.”
Arcade’s smirk faded slightly.
Maybe he heard it then.
Maybe he didn’t.
Silver looked away before anyone could decide.
“They wouldn’t understand,” he said, almost to himself, though his eyes flicked briefly toward the others. “Any of you.”
The silence that followed was not kind.
But neither was it mocking.
Celeste was the one who broke it.
Her voice was gentle when she spoke.
Careful.
“It’s not wrong,” she said softly, “to want to protect someone you love.”
Silver turned his head toward her.
She looked nervous the instant she had his attention, but she did not take the words back.
For one moment, something unreadable passed across his face.
Then his mouth curved into that charming, terrible smile of his.
“My dear Celeste,” he said lightly, “your talent for misunderstanding complex situations and reducing them to feelings continues to be almost impressive.”
The words landed neatly.
Effortlessly.
Cruel in a way polished enough to pass for wit.
Celeste went still.
Whatever she had been about to say folded quietly in on itself. She lowered her eyes to her tea again, fingers tightening once around the cup before loosening just as fast.
The room did not speak.
Even Arcade, usually first to fill silence with sarcasm, said nothing.
Silver turned away as though nothing of consequence had happened at all.
“Regardless,” he said, adjusting his cuffs, “the Church lead is the only viable thread we currently have. If Godiad is hiding behind holy walls, then that is where you’ll find your answers.”
Outside, the town of Hiraeth kept growing in the morning light—
illegal,
improvised,
alive.
Inside, the air around the table felt thinner than before.
And Celeste, quiet once more, said nothing at all.
