Lumina sat two seats down from him, swinging her feet slightly above the floor.
She kept glancing at Silver.
Then at Celeste.
Then back at Silver.
Finally, she leaned toward him.
“Are you still angry?”
The van went quieter by half an inch.
Silver’s gaze shifted from the window to her.
For a moment, Celeste tensed.
But Silver’s expression did not sharpen.
It softened.
Only slightly.
Only for Lumina.
“That depends,” he said. “At whom?”
Lumina frowned. “Everyone.”
“A broad target. Inefficient, but emotionally traditional.”
Lumina considered that as though it were a serious answer.
“I don’t like it when everyone is angry.”
“No,” Silver said. “I imagine you don’t.”
His voice had none of the knife-edge he used with Celeste.
It was dry, yes.
Polished, certainly.
But almost gentle.
Lumina’s shoulders lowered.
“Celeste gets sad.”
Silver’s eyes flicked very briefly toward Celeste.
Then away again.
“Celeste is frequently sad.”
“She tries hard.”
“So I have been told.”
Lumina frowned harder. “You say things weird.”
“That is because I am educated.”
Arcade snorted from the front.
Silver ignored him.
Lumina looked down at her hands. “Do you think the Church will be scary?”
Silver studied her for a second.
Then reached into his coat and produced a small wrapped sweet from one of his inner pockets.
“Probably,” he said, offering it to her. “But most frightening institutions rely heavily on people being too impressed to notice the staff are merely clerks with better hats.”
Lumina took the sweet carefully.
“So we shouldn’t be impressed?”
“Exactly.”
She unwrapped it, looking a little brighter.
“What if they have really good hats?”
“Then admire the hats,” Silver said. “Not the institution.”
Lumina smiled.
Tiny.
But real.
Celeste watched them, startled and aching all at once.
Because there he was.
Kind.
Not soft, exactly.
Silver was never soft.
But careful.
Patient.
A little funny.
The Silver she kept believing was still in there somewhere.
Before she could stop herself, she leaned forward.
“That’s actually a good point,” Celeste said, trying to smile. “Some hats are very intimidating. There was this one councillor once with a hat so tall I thought it had its own weather system, and I couldn’t stop staring, which was rude, but also it had feathers and a little clock in it, so I think staring was probably expected—”
Silver’s face closed.
Instantly.
“Celeste.”
The word cut clean through her ramble.
She stopped.
Her ears dipped.
“I was only—”
“I wasn’t speaking to you.”
The van went still.
Lumina looked between them, sweet half-raised to her mouth.
Celeste’s smile faltered.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Silver turned back to Lumina as though Celeste had simply ceased to exist.
“As I was saying,” he continued, voice pleasant again, “power likes costumes. Crowns, robes, sacred armour, absurd hats. Remember that. It helps.”
Lumina’s brow creased.
“Helps how?”
“If you can see the costume, you can remember there is a person inside it.”
He glanced toward the front of the van, toward the distant spires beginning to rise between the broken streets.
“And people can be frightened. Bribed. Misled. Embarrassed. Occasionally reasoned with, if one is desperate.”
Lumina nodded slowly.h
“So they’re not bigger than us.”
“Precisely.”
Celeste stared down at her lap.
The contrast hurt worse than direct cruelty.
Silver gave Lumina another small sweet.
“For courage.”
Lumina took it, but she looked less happy now.
Her eyes moved to Celeste again.
Silver noticed.
His mouth tightened.
“Eat it before Topsy sees it.”
That distracted Lumina enough to make her hide the sweet quickly in both hands.
Topsy’s head snapped up from the other bench.
“I heard sweet-adjacent behaviour.”
“No, you didn’t,” Lumina said, clutching it tighter.
Topsy narrowed her eyes. “Suspicious.”
For a moment, the van almost recovered its earlier rhythm.
Almost.
Then Celeste glanced at Silver once.
Then again.
“When I become Caedrix,” he said to Celeste, “I suggest you pray I have forgotten all of this.”
Celeste went very still.
Silver smiled faintly.
“Because if I haven’t, I can make life for the Knights extremely difficult. Bureaucracy is a dull instrument, but surprisingly effective when applied with enthusiasm.” He tilted his head. “So for everyone’s sake, I recommend you stop this tiresome little campaign for forgiveness and let the matter die.”
The devastation on Celeste’s face was immediate and awful.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just the slow collapse of hope.
Her mouth parted as though she might try one more apology, but no words came out. Her eyes dropped to the floor. Her shoulders folded inward by a fraction, then another, until it looked as if she were trying to make herself physically smaller.
“All right,” she said at last, barely audible.
Silver turned back to the window.
The conversation, in his mind, was over.
For several long seconds, the only sound in the van was the low growl of the engine and the rattle of loose tools in the storage rack.
Then Hughes spoke from the back.
“Oi.”
Silver’s eyes shifted slightly.
Hughes leaned forward, arms folded, his expression flat as old stone.
“Less of the twat behaviour.”
The van went very quiet.
Hughes nodded toward the road ahead.
“We’re on a mission.”
Silver turned his head just enough to look at him.
It was not a glare exactly.
It was colder than that.
The sort of look that suggested, very politely, that Hughes should stay out of this if he valued the continued arrangement of his teeth.
Hughes did not move.
Did not blink.
He only leaned forward slightly, voice low and rough as gravel.
“And if you’re going to look at me like that, lad…”
His eyes narrowed.
“…you’d best bring something behind it.”
The van went very quiet.
Not shocked quiet.
Worse.
The kind of quiet that happened when everyone suddenly realised Hughes had just offered Silver a very clear opportunity to either back down or get folded in half.
Silver’s expression sharpened.
Hughes held his gaze.
Calm.
Flat.
Unimpressed.
“We’re on a mission,” Hughes said. “So less of the twat behaviour.”
Ray half-turned in the front seat, one brow raised.
“In fairness,” she said, “that was a twattish thing to say.”
Silver’s smile vanished.
He looked from Hughes to Ray, then back again.
“Pardon my language,” he said, voice smooth as polished glass, “but mind your fucking business.”
Arcade froze over his datapad.
Plum’s pen stopped mid-scratch.
Pitch slowly looked up from the rear bench.
Topsy, who had been sitting upside down with her tail wrapped around a strap, let out a loud, disgusted grumble.
“Oh stars, get over yourself.”
Silver’s eyes flicked toward her.
Topsy folded her arms as best she could while upside down.
“You’re not all that and a bag of chips.”
Mezzo made a sharp sound through his nose.
Almost a laugh.
Almost a warning.
Silver stared at Topsy for a long moment.
Topsy stared back.
Entirely unbothered.
The Gwennan hit a pothole.
Everyone jolted.
Topsy swung slightly from her strap and pointed at him.
“See? Even the road agrees with me.”
Celeste gave a tiny, broken sound.
Not quite a laugh.
Not quite anything.
But enough.
Mezzo shifted at once.
He leaned forward, all brightness gone from his expression now, and looked directly at her.
“Hey.”
His voice was much softer than usual.
“Come sit next to me.”
Celeste blinked.
“What?”
“I’ve got snacks.”
It was such a terribly obvious excuse that Plum actually looked up from her notebook with visible respect.
Celeste hesitated.
Mezzo patted the seat beside him.
“C’mon. Serious emergency-level snacks. Medical-grade. Possibly even illegal.”
A weak, confused little breath escaped her.
Not quite a laugh.
But close enough to prove she still remembered how.
She gathered herself and shifted from her seat to his, careful not to bump anyone. Mezzo handed her a packet of sweet crisps and a sugar-wrapped bun from his coat pocket as if this were a sacred rite.
“There,” he said. “Much safer over here.”
His eyes flicked past her to Silver.
It was not subtle.
Not friendly either.
A warning look.
Sharp and full of heat.
Silver met it.
For a moment, that polished noble mask almost cracked.
Then he smiled.
That same easy, infuriating smile.
As though none of this mattered.
As though cruelty were merely another language he happened to speak more fluently than most.
Celeste sat beside Mezzo, quiet and wounded, staring at the snack in her hands as the Gwennan rolled on toward Luminarch Cathedral.
Outside, the broken city gave way inch by inch to older streets and pale stone spires in the distance, where the cathedral rose against the sky like a promise or a threat.
Inside the van, no one joked for a while.
