Chapter Twenty: The Dangerous Game

Silver mist slid off the canal rails and gathered in Arlo’s dark curls, beading there like tiny fallen stars before the rain shook them loose. We were high above the city on the upper bridges where lanternlight couldn’t quite reach, where the water below rushed black and cold and the stone beneath our boots sweated with damp. Valecrest glowed farther down in fractured gold and bruised shadows, a pretty lie wrapped around something hungry.

Arlo walked beside me like he was afraid the air itself might bruise him again. His sleeve was still torn at the shoulder, but the wound that had been raw and wrong earlier was gone-clean skin, no slick bandage, no angry red. Only the memory clung to me like a second pulse. The silver-gold Threadwork, the way it spilled from my hands as if it had been waiting for permission, the moment the pain in his body went quiet under my touch. The way my stomach had lurched afterward, not with fear of the magic, but with relief so sharp it almost counted as grief.

“I’m not thinking that loudly,” I said, more to keep my own hands busy than to argue.

Arlo’s gaze flicked to mine, then away, as if eye contact might be too much. “You do it when you’re trying to be brave. Like you’re chewing on something you don’t want anyone to see.”

“I’m not trying to be brave.” The words came out automatic, and then I hated how small they sounded under the rain.

He huffed softly, the sound lost in the mist. “Clemmy.”

That was all he said-my name like a tether. It made my throat tighten anyway. I looked down at his hands instead, at the way his fingers flexed once every few steps, rubbing phantom aches out of the air.

I wanted to tell him that the wound wasn’t the only thing that had changed. That the Threadwork had felt… intimate. Like it hadn’t just fixed flesh. Like it had reached for something beneath our skin and tugged. But every time I tried to find the right words, my tongue stumbled, because the truth was tangled with the part of me that was still blushing about hair touching.

We crossed another narrow bridge. A violin slipped through the rain somewhere to our left, thin and tender, then cut off when someone laughed too loudly in a nearby tavern. The music left a hollow echo in the fog.

Arlo’s shoulder brushed mine when we turned around a corner of stonework slick with algae. He didn’t move away. He just shifted closer until the warmth of him bled into my coat.

“I should’ve told you,” he said quietly.

My gaze snapped to him. “About what?”

He swallowed, throat bobbing. Raindrops clung to his lashes and didn’t fall. “About the Threadwork.”

I snorted, because if I didn’t, my nerves might find their way out through my ribs. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

Arlo’s mouth twisted. Not doubt-something more complicated. “No one knows they can do it until it happens.”

“Except me,” I muttered. “Because I’ve been living like a disaster with a heartbeat.”

His eyes softened, and the look in them was dangerous in a different way than the streets. “You don’t have to make jokes when you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.” The lie tasted like rain.

He didn’t argue. He just kept walking with that steady insistence that made my body believe him even when my mind didn’t.

We reached a stretch of bridge where the stone arch opened into a stairwell descending toward the older underways. The stairs were carved deep, older than the current city’s upkeep, and the air down there changed immediately-drier, stale with damp stone and old smoke. Somewhere below, voices carried, low and urgent, swallowed by the mist.

Arlo stopped at the top of the stairs. His head tilted like he was listening to a sound I couldn’t hear.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Someone’s watching.” He didn’t say it like fear. He said it like he’d already chosen what to do about it.

My skin prickled. The rain couldn’t touch me properly up here, but the cold in the air slid under my collar anyway. “From where?”

He pointed-not dramatically, just a small motion of his hand toward the shadowed edge of the bridge where a lantern should’ve been. A figure stood there, too still, too patient. Cloak pulled high. Face hidden by the brim. Even the way the rain ran off them felt wrong, like it was deciding not to bother.

My pulse kicked. “We could just-”

“No.” Arlo’s voice cut the word cleanly. He stepped in front of me without thinking, shoulder angled, body between me and the watcher. His hand hovered near my arm like he wanted to claim me but remembered he didn’t own me. Then he settled for touching the air close to my sleeve, a restraint disguised as care.

The cloaked figure moved. Not toward us-sideways, along the bridge railing, gliding like they were following a path only they could see.

Arlo’s eyes narrowed. “They’re not here for conversation.”

I tasted metal at the back of my tongue. “Then why are we stopping?”

“Because they’ll lead us,” he said, and his knuckles whitened. “Or they’ll try to force us where they want.”

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