A thick haze of mist hung low over the harbour. Saoirse’s building was tucked away between the docks and nearly impossible to find in the dark. The old, rundown buildings all looked the same in the night, especially with the mist covering any discernible features. The smell of wet, rotten wood hung in the air, mixed with the salt winds from the sea. A clear sign that these buildings were as forgotten as the people living inside them. These blocks had been abandoned by the city before I was born. The people left living in these parts had to fend for themselves. Mostly fishermen and poor students who didn’t have their late parents' business to rely on. Thankfully, the area was peaceful enough; the criminals who tried to set foot on the perpetually wet cobblestone streets were quickly “dealt with,” in Saoirse’s words.

  Everyone knew that this part of town belonged to The Wretched. A small-time gang that was quickly rising through the city’s underbelly. Not that I knew much about it, all I had heard was from Saoirse’s first-hand accounts, her being part of it herself. She never spoke much of it, not even to me, and I would consider myself the closest with her out of our little group. All I got were brief explanations for bruises and cuts when she showed up at my door needing healing after a fight.

  How she ended up black and blue was beyond me. A gunslinger wasn’t supposed to end up in close quarters, even I knew that much. It’s easy to get lost in thought when walking down these streets. My mind wanders, imagining what could be happening in the darkness of the alleys, behind every door. I don’t want to know, but still I can’t help wondering. Morbid curiosity.

  When Saoirse’s door came into view, I picked up my pace. Getting inside was a welcome respite from the wet cold. The half-rotten, wooden door opened with a screech. Of course, it wasn’t locked; it never was. I doubt anyone living in the building is scared of having any valuables stolen; locking a rotten door wouldn’t stop a determined thief anyway. I made my way up the creaking stairs to where she lived on the second floor. The dimly lit hallway reeked of mold and urine, making my nose scrunch as I stood outside her door. I was expecting it to be silent. She was a private person who didn’t want people knowing where she lived, so hearing another voice from inside made me uneasy. Saoirse never kept her door locked. Something about not wanting to lock the spirits she believed in, out. I pressed the handle down, not bothering to knock. The moment I stepped inside, the warmth hit me first. Then the voices. Not raised. Not arguing. Just… two people talking low, like they’d been doing it for a while. I froze in the doorway with my hand still on the knob, which was ridiculous, because I’d been in Saoirse’s place a hundred times. Except this time, her boots weren’t dumped by the door.

  Someone else’s jacket was hanging beside hers. A long coat, dark, worn at the cuffs. My stomach did this awful little dip. I told myself it was hunger. It wasn’t. Light spilled out from the living room. I heard Saoirse mutter something under her breath, followed by a soft snort that definitely didn’t belong to her. Male voice. Low. Rough at the edges like he gargled gravel for fun. I took a few steps in, forcing my shoes not to squeak on the warped boards.

  The air smelled like antiseptic. Saoirse only used that stuff when she’d been hurt bad enough to stop pretending she wasn’t. I rounded the corner and finally saw them. Saoirse sat on the small table she called a counter, shirt half unbuttoned, one shoulder bare. A fresh gash ran down her arm, angry red under the lamplight. And standing in front of her, sleeves rolled to his elbows, was a man I’d never seen before. Tall. Dark hair pulled back. A scar along his jaw. He held a stained cloth like he owned the room, like tending her wounds was something he’d done a hundred times. He didn’t look surprised to see me. He looked amused.

  “Friend of yours?” he asked her, voice warm in a way that made my pulse spike for no good reason other than I hated it.

  Saoirse glanced over. Not guilty. Not startled. Just a quick, tired smile like this was all normal. “Basin. Need something?” She asked with a sigh. I stood there like an idiot, satchel hanging off one shoulder, rain dripping from my hair, realizing I had walked into something I didn’t have the context for but was absolutely trapped in now. The man wiped his hands on the towel, eyes still fixed on me with that too-knowing expression. “Name’s Rhett.”

  I managed a nod at him. Or something approximating a nod. My neck felt too stiff. “Basin,” I said, because apparently my brain decided introductions were the priority here. “I, um… yeah. Hi.”

  Rhett’s mouth pulled into a smirk that was definitely not friendly and definitely not hostile either. Just… entertained. He tossed the towel onto the counter and leaned back against it with the casual confidence of someone who absolutely didn’t care that he was bleeding onto Saoirse’s floorboards.

  “Relax,” he said. “You look like you walked in on a murder.”

  Given the amount of dried blood on both of them, I wasn’t entirely convinced I hadn’t. Saoirse hopped off the counter with a wince she tried to hide. “Ignore him,” she muttered. “He thinks he’s funny.” Then her eyes narrowed a fraction as she focused on me properly. “What’s wrong?” There it was. The instant shift. Concern disguised as irritation. Classic Saoirse.

  “I, uh…” My words tangled. No surprise there.

  “We need your help. Yann?k’s back. Sort of. And we… we have to get him into the city without being seen.”

  Rhett’s brows rose, slow and deliberate. “Smuggling an infernal past the wardens? That’s bold.” He looked far too impressed. “Or stupid.”

  “I’m leaning toward both,” Saoirse said.

  I let out a pathetic breath. “Look, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious. He’s sure Leonora survived the fire. He wants to find her.”

  Saoirse’s expression sharpened. She grabbed her coat from the back of a chair. “Alright, let’s go.”

  Rhett pushed off the counter, cracking his knuckles like he’d just been invited to a game. “Guess I’m coming too.”

  I had no idea why that statement made my stomach twist, but it did. Something about that man made every warning bell in my head ring like a wedding in the grand cathedral.

  Saoirse groaned in Rhett’s direction. “You’re barely stitched together.”

  “And you’re walking,” he countered. “Barely.”

  They stared each other down like this was just another Tuesday for them. Sharing a look that told me they had more at stake in this than they were letting on. I stood there wishing I were anywhere else.

  Saoirse hobbled down the stairs, doing her best to hide the effects of her clearly wounded leg as she chugged down a healing potion. Whoever this Rhett character is, he walked behind her, keeping a protective hand on her back. Ready to catch her the second she stumbled.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Something about him threw me off. The difference in the way he looked at Saoirse and me, like I was a threat. He didn’t say anything. I didn't need to. The weight of his stare lingered on me long enough to feel deliberate, like he was cataloguing me, slotting me into the part of his brain where “problems” lived. Saoirse didn’t seem to notice. She’d always been good at ignoring things until they were directly on top of her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, winced, and kept moving toward the bottom of the stairs like nothing was wrong.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered to no one in particular, probably ahead of whatever comment Rhett was about to make.

  “You’re not,” Rhett said, voice low but sharp enough to cut. He kept that hand hovering at her back, the kind of touch that wasn’t really touch, comforting for her, somehow invasive for me. “Your leg’s barely holding.”

  She shot him a glare over her shoulder. “I’ve held through worse.” “I know” he sighed.

  Their bickering was familiar, practiced, the rhythm of people who’d argued through pain before. I wasn’t part of that rhythm. I was the extra note, throwing everything off. And Rhett knew it. He finally tore his gaze away from Saoirse long enough to look at me again. This time I felt it in my spine. Not anger. Not jealousy. Assessment. Like he was measuring the distance between us, the strength of my bones, whether I would break before I caused trouble.

  “Basin, right?” he asked, voice flat. I nodded. He didn’t smile.

  “Good. Stay close. And don’t get in her way.”

  Saoirse scoffed. “He’s not useless, Rhett.”

  “Never said he was,” Rhett replied, eyes still locked on me. “Just making sure he knows the rules.”

  Rules. As if I’d walked into some arena instead of Saoirse’s building. As if he were already preparing for a fight no one had announced yet. Saoirse reached the bottom step and let out a slow breath, the kind that meant the pain was catching up with her.

  “Let’s just go,” she said.

  Rhett stepped ahead of her, checking the hallway like he expected an ambush. I followed, feeling smaller with each step, the echo of his warning hanging in the air between us. Not useless. Just… unwelcome.

  No one said anything after that. Not Saoirse, not Rhett, and definitely not me. The three of us just moved through the hallway like we’d all agreed silence was safer than whatever might slip out if we tried talking. The only sounds were the uneven tap of Saoirse’s limp, the faint scrape of Rhett’s boots behind her, and my own heartbeat thudding way louder than it had any right to. At some point, the air changed, colder, thinner, and Rhett pulled his hood tighter without breaking stride. Saoirse adjusted her grip on the empty potion bottle. I kept my eyes on the ground so I wouldn’t accidentally meet Rhett’s stare again. Sometime after that, the world outside swallowed us whole.

  The city gate loomed ahead, tall enough to blot out half the sky. The lanterns above it burned weakly against the early fog, casting long, warped shadows across the stone. A pair of guards stood on either side, bored but alert in that way people get when they’ve seen enough strange things to stop ignoring them. Saoirse slowed. The pain was back in her jaw. Rhett noticed before I did, of course, he did, and stepped slightly in front of her, not touching, just… ready. I felt stupid being the one carrying the urgency, but someone had to speak first.

  “This is where we’re meeting them,” I said quietly, as if the stone might echo my voice the wrong way. Rhett’s eyes flicked to mine. Sharper this time. Calculating again. A cold wind pushed through the archway, bringing with it the smell of wet metal and something else, the faint trace of magic clinging to the ward-lines carved into the gate. And in that moment, standing in the half-light with only Saoirse, who trusts me and Rhett,who clearly trusts no one, the weight of what we were about to do finally settled in my chest. We were going to smuggle Yann?k, barely alive, barely human, past the most heavily monitored point of entry in the city. And we had to do it fast. Azure spotted us before we saw her, pacing in a tight circle around a cart, muttering, “Gate, bad. Wards, very bad. Guards, also bad. This is a lot of bad.”

  The gate loomed over us like it was judging our life choices, which, honestly, was fair.

  Saoirse leaned on the cart, jaw clenched. “We’re not leaving him out here.”

  Rhett scanned the walls, his hand drifting toward the dagger at his belt. “We can’t fight our way through. And we can’t drag an unconscious infernal past two guards and a ward-line without them asking questions.”

  Azure stopped pacing. “Okay. So what if we distract them? Like… really distract them?” Rhett frowned. “With what? We don’t have explosives.”

  Azure looked offended. “I wasn’t going to use explosives.” Saoirse snorted softly. “Then what?”

  I crouched beside the cart, checking Yann?k’s breathing for the fifth time in two minutes. “We need something believable. Something guards see all the time. Something boring.”

  Rhett nodded slowly. “If we look desperate, tired, and irritated, they’ll want to avoid dealing with us.”

  Azure brightened. “I can be irritating!” “Obviously,” Rhett said, deadpan.

  Azure poked him in the arm. “Rude!”

  Saoirse winced as she shifted her weight. “We could say we’re moving him to the infirmary. People get brought through sick, injured… unconscious.”

  “Not infernals,” Rhett countered. “Wards react to magic. And his blood isn’t exactly calm right now.”

  They all looked at me. It wasn’t even intentional; I just happened to be the only one not bleeding, panicking, or unconscious.

  I sighed. “I have no idea how the wards work.” Azure blinked. “Can’t we just lie our way through?”

  Rhett raised a brow. “Azure, we’re literally smuggling someone magical through magic-detecting wards.”

  “No, listen,” she insisted. “It doesn’t matter, we just… tell a version of the truth. If we say we don’t know what’s happened, which we don’t, we don’t need to explain why the wards would sense magic off him.”

  Saoirse nodded slowly. “That’s actually not terrible.” Azure pointed dramatically at her. “Thank you.”

  Basin rubbed his forehead. “Okay. So the ‘truth’ is: We found someone badly injured. We don’t know the full story. We need to get him inside. And we are tired and cold and miserable.”

  Rhett’s lip twitched. “That last part won’t be hard.”

  Azure perked up again. “And I can fuss over him really convincingly. People always assume I’m a medic when I fuss.”

  Saoirse braced both hands on the cart. “So the plan is: we act exhausted, overwhelmed, and irritated. We don’t avoid questions, we drown them in so much mundane misery the guards don’t want to deal with it.”

  Rhett nodded. “It’ll work if we commit.” Azure clapped once, excited. “I can commit!”

  I looked at Yann?k, then at the gate, then at the others. It wasn’t perfect. But it was doable.

  “Alright,” I said quietly. “Let’s do it.”

  Rhett stepped forward, adjusting his stance. “I’ll talk. Saoirse, lean like you’re about to collapse. Azure, hover, and panic helpfully. Basin, stay by the cart and look tired.”

  “I am tired,” I muttered.

  Azure squeezed my arm. “Perfect! You’re already method acting.” We moved into a messy, but position. Just five seconds of silence before we took the first step Saoirse exhaled. Rhett rolled his shoulders. Azure shook out her hands like she was about to perform surgery or juggle knives. I tightened my grip on the cart and braced for impact.