VI

The water was too hot.

Elyris didn’t flinch. She never did. Steam curled around her throat like silk, beading along her collarbones as she twisted her hair into a shimmering coil of gold, set the pins tightly. Every motion deliberate. Exact.

Her robe — rose-pink and perfectly fitted — settled past her shoulders in one fluid motion as she smoothed the folds at the chest once. Twice. Too many times.

The mirror didn’t speak, yet she could feel its eyes — her own — the entity of her reflection glaring daggers. Two parts, split, scrutinizing each other in identical parallel. You’d think with 4 eyes between her, all the crooked seams would be righted, all blemishes picked and torn away. But it just doubled her faults — multiplied them, split through a kaleidoscope of wrong.

Downstairs, her shop gleamed.

Sunlight poured in through the stained-glass window above the display window, casting polished counters and dusted crystal jars within an arched frame of warmth. Every shelf stood in order. Every bolt of cloth was precisely aligned. The air smelled of lavender oil, parchment, and the faintest trace of ash she could never quite scrub out of the beams high above. The light that caught within the glass fractured like prisms.

For now, she worked. Without hesitation — threading needles, measuring out lengths of bone-white silk — turning through the shop with mechanical movements, hands guiding body. Her mouth moved sometimes. Whispering things not for herself, not really for anyone. Thoughts that spilled through tight-latched teeth.

She glanced up at the mannequin again, assessing.

The cloth pinned on the tall doll sat half-formed, still. Ivory tulle, silver veining through the bodice like frozen lightning — uneven with intention. Sleeves shapeless, a mere suggestion, sketched onto the open page of her overflowing notebook. The silhouette of her workbench like an explosion next to the neatness of the shop foyer.

“You would’ve hated this neckline,” the woman muttered, tilting her head. It was a sheer thing, the dress, low cut against the backdrop of a slate-colored doll. Something that mimicked support only in theory, but in truth withstood nothing. Thin fabric, shaped only for the eye. “Unless you wore it backwards.” A pause. Her jaw tightened. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

The needle snapped in her straining fingers, like thunder in the quiet. There wasn’t so much as a twitch from her fingers, not a blink passing her face. Instead, her hands swept across the fabric, flicking away arcane pins with a fever. They clatter off the form like rain, bouncing across rosewood floors as she bit back the bile in her throat. It all came undone again. All her hours, unwound at a simple touch. A certain relief in that, as the mannequin returned to its former, unfinished state. The fabric across it more of a dream than truth. A familiar ritual. Punishment. She turned to the foyer, collected her things, and left.

The market was already awake by midday.

Carts rattled past her. Bread stalls hissed steam, and butchered fish glistened under salt. Elyris walked through it all untouched. Nodding. Smiling. A porcelain ghost in fine silks.

“Lady Roseveil!” a baker called, doffing his cap. “You have been sorely missed.”

Her smile was perfect.

“I was only finishing a commission,” she lied, gently. “It’s good to see you, Amerill.”

They laughed. She moved on, quickly. Politely.

She bought too many plums at the fruit stand. Overpaid for redberries she wouldn’t eat. She touched fabric out of habit. Cobalt silk. Coarse linen. No color stayed long in her mind.

Her hands moved without thought—but paused on a bolt of amethyst silk. Deep violet, cut through with a shimmer like wet stone. The color caught her breath for a moment, held it still.

Not because it was beautiful. Because it was familiar.

A shade she hadn’t touched in nearly a year. Not since—

She looked away. Paid for it anyway.

The florist’s stand was overrun with climbing greenery and tiny white blooms tucked between glossy leaves. The air smelled soft—sweet soil, crushed mint, as unblemished and immaculate as the rest of the golden city.

Elyris paused beneath the awning, touched by the faintest mist from a watering can being turned over into a planter by magic.

“Lady Roseveil,” the florist greeted her. A young woman, sun-freckled, her arms dirt-streaked and bare to the shoulder. Something wilder and warmer in her smile that had always touched Elyris in a quiet way. “You’ve come on the right morning—my lilies bloomed all at once. I can’t explain it.”

Elyris smiled, gentle. “Some things know when they’re needed.”

She said it without thinking. The words landed heavy, her throat bobbing past the ill-chosen words.

The florist didn’t notice. “Would you like a pot for your window again? I remember the last ones — you liked them, yes?”

She did. Aurett adored them. She would trace the petals absently with the tips of her fingers, nose crinkling at the scent. Something faintly related to delight and disgust, all at once. That plant had died not long after she vanished. Elyris hadn’t replaced it.

Her gaze landed on a sprig of Phoenix Fire—a trailing vine, leaves the color of wine with a heart of bright gold, curling like ribbon. “That one,” she said. “Please.”

The florist beamed and wrapped the pot in rough cloth. “For luck,” she said, handing it over.

Elyris cradled it in both hands. It was the first thing she’d chosen for herself in months.

The jeweler’s shop was nestled between two tea merchants with a blood feud as old as the district itself. Its windows glinting with the warmth of polished bronze, coiling patterns over the clear glass. Elyris ducked inside, her footfalls softened by worn velvet runners.

The man behind the counter — Jorin — had a craftsman’s lean hands and the quiet of someone who had seen too much and said too little. He recognized her at once.

“Ah. The Lady returns.”

“I’m not a lady anymore, Jorin,” she replied, voice even. “But thank you.”

He nodded. “I finished your commission.”

From beneath the counter, he produced a narrow, cloth-wrapped box. Unrolling it revealed two rings. One gold, kissed with carved patterns like light-dappled leaves. The other, silver etched with black glass dust, catching the light like broken stars. Perfect opposites. Meant to be a pair. And her jaw moved tightly, hand reaching forward — hovering over them, but never touching.

“They're beautiful,” she murmured. “They would’ve suited us.”

“Would have?” he asked, gently.

She blinked. The edges of her control were starting to fray.

“Ah,,” She amended, smile a bit crooked. “She is — gone.” Elyris said, quiet. “Left, or taken. I never learned which.” She lied.

“I’m…sorry.”

She straightened, fixed her shoulders as if stitching herself back into place. Poise slithering back up her spine like an old friend. This conversation had to end. There were no further questions, no further probing, she could answer to satisfaction.

“I’ll take them anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded with something wounded in her eyes. “Yes. Some things deserve to be — even if they’re never worn.”

He wrapped the box slowly. Not a word more.

As she turned to leave, her reflection flickered in the glass of the display case: immaculate, luminous. But her eyes didn’t match her face.

Outside, two children darted between stacked crates, chasing each other in a flurry of shrieks and stifled laughter as she emerged from the jewelers shop. One of them—a boy with hair tousled by the wind—laughed like silver bells, clear and bright. His eyes caught the afternoon light: a vivid, impossible magenta, glowing like fire through crystal.

The color struck her mind like a whip.

Too vivid. Too close to something remembered, not imagined.

Her steps slowed. For a moment — no more than that — her smile was real. Small. Entirely unguarded. The child pressed into the light crowd, swallowed by the shape of taller bodies. The laughter echoed, lingering like the scent of something sweet that passed too quickly. Once the child was gone, so did everything else.

She stood motionless, maybe 10 feet from her front door. The flowers and food floated in neat order behind her, cradled by the quiet tug of spell-work. But the amethyst fabric folded beneath her arm seemed to weigh double, heavier than its weave should allow. She stared at the figure ahead, the sky was turning burnished gold at the edges — sun veiled by towers of marble. The street in front of her shop was blissfully quiet, as it had always been. Undisturbed, except for the figure standing there like a solitary rose.

Sol’rel.

She was golden-armored, a sentinel at the threshold — taller than Elyris remembered, broader through the shoulders. A commanding presence that had only sharpened with age. Though, not much had changed — not in the way of her soul. Her hair was longer now, cut evenly, a single strand of copper loosened from behind her ear and shifting in the afternoon light. Her face, fuller than before, had softened into itself—settled, took the shape of something true to her nature. A woman, unmistakably so. And still, her eyes—amber like twin suns—held less warmth than Elyris recalled. Not cruel. Just fierce. Not the fire of a hearth, but that of a desert. A retribution that illuminated the way, and scorched the earth.

A changed girl. But still Sol’rel.

Elyris felt the shadow of it all pressing against her ribs, coiling inside her like thorns in flesh — the cost of that becoming. The weight of things lost, left, scarred over. It hollowed out something deep and tender in her chest. The little girl she remembered carrying through family gardens, dandelion-crowned and stubborn, poking wooden swords into her sides until she bruised over. That girl was gone from her eyes. But maybe—so was the one Elyris used to be.

In that, they were equals.

Her cousin’s armor caught the sun in muted tones as she turned —less brilliant than gold should be, smoked by ash. She stood straight, hands still, the letter held loose between her fingers like something she didn’t mean to use as a weapon, but knew how to wield. Elyris’s gaze—sharp and green as a cut stem—caught on the folded letter instantaneously. It stopped her mid-step, snagged. A small thing, but cruel in its precision. She didn’t need to see the sigil of that seal to know.

She lingered on the last stair, not yet ready to cross. The duelist at her back said nothing. Needn’t. They both already understood the contents of that letter.

“I thought you were on assignment,” Elyris said.

“I was.”

“And?”

“It’s done.”

Of course it was. Sol’rel had always been efficient. Precise. Elyris, in a different language. The clarity of a soldier. The older preferred what tailoring had offered her. But Sol'rel wasn’t one to lay down her weapon—not until vindication found her.

Elyris had long since stopped believing in such a thing. But there had been a time when they used to write to each other weekly. She would initiate, inky script and heartfelt notes. Sol’rel would reply in concurrent dispatches, routes, assignments. The letters stopped not soon after.

Now she was here, standing on her threshold with that finality that only blood relatives could carry.

The golden haired woman stopped halfway up the steps, silent that stretched. Her cousin stood, waiting with that expectation in her steady gaze that she so hated.

“Don’t say it’s from them,” Elyris said, the words thinned sharp with strain. Not anger. Something older. Brittle, and tired.

“Then I won’t,” Sol’rel returned.

No hesitation. No doubt. The kind of steadiness that kept her up at night. She hated it now. Hated how it made her throat ache. Sol’rel was a wildfire that refused to be tamed, even as it cost her. Especially because it cost her. Defiant and blunt in the very city of trickery. She stepped into fire when it rose. Elyris bent around it. An artist’s disposition. To soften her voice, smooth her edges, never let the blade show before it was time to let blood.

The seamstress turned without another word and unlocked the door. The wards shivered faintly as they passed through, a curl of Cinderglow perfume brushing against Sol’rel’s armor like a sigh. She paused, just for a heartbeat, as if to let the space remember her. Then stepped inside.

The shop was as pristine as memory served—rows of soft-toned silks, threads hung like delicate vines, bolts of fabric tucked away with near-military order. No dust. No life. She always worried it would curl up and disappear when she looked away. It hadn’t this time.

Her cousin moved through the space like someone who didn’t want to intrude, but knew she already had. A clawed hand of gold drifted over a counter by the entrance, disheveling one of the fabrics there. Then she placed the letter on the worktable — right between a coil of silver thread and a bowl of fresh, untouched redberries. Elyris set the assortment of her purchases down without sparing a glance.

“I’m not here to press you,” Her cousin adds. “Just… to see.”

Elyris didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked once toward the folded paper, then flickered away.

“When did you start carrying their messages?”

“I don’t.”

“You did today.”

“No,” Sol’rel said, calm. Her ungloved hand picked one of the berries, snapping the stem. “Today, I came because I heard not a word from you in ten months." The taller turned, leaning her hip into the counter while scrutinizing the fruit.

“I came because my cousin isn’t tardy. Yet not a word. Not a single letter.”

There was a long breath. Elyris stood perfectly still, hands resting lightly on the edge of the table—like a dancer, poised and frozen in time. Her voice, when it came, was ice.

“Don’t lie to me. If they used your return as leverage, say so.”

“They didn’t.”

“Then why are you holding that letter?”

Sol’rel met her eyes.

“I care if you’re living, Ely. Not breathing. Living. They don’t. That’s the difference.”

The words hung in the room like the scent of jasmine left too long in the sun. Sweet. Suffocating.

Elyris laughed, but it sounded more like air catching in her throat. She turned away, placing the fabric with precision. Adjusting the breadbasket to line it up with the desk before her, needlessly. Her tone softened, but only slightly.

“I’m fine.”

Sol’rel didn’t challenge her. Not immediately. She watched her kin’s back—shoulders still too straight, spine too locked. Finally, she stepped forward, voice low and even.

“You know,” the soldier said, “you can talk about them. Or Talden. Or neither. But you can’t keep pretending this place is whole.”

Elyris froze.

Across the room, just behind that oak door, the wedding gown stood like a monument to failure—barely-pinned, bodice undone — nothing more but a heap on the floor, bisected by the glare of the window and shadow of the shop. Sol’rel lingered only a moment more, then turned. She left without fanfare—direct and quiet as she came. The door clicked and hinges shrieked with a sound too final to be kind.

She did not light the lanterns.

They swayed coldly in the wind — a matching pair across all homes. The sun lingered low, refusing to fall, even as the city outside turned to soft purples and rusted gold, casting long shadows through the bronze lattice of Elyris’s shopfront windows. Somewhere, temple bells rang — distant, ceremonial. Commemorative.

Across the city, the rare few lanterns that did burn looked more like fireflies than light—brief, flickering signs of life, trembling against the encroaching twilight. Wavering lights behind windows, on doorsteps, nestled between flowerboxes. Not celebratory. Just quietly glowing — like breath drawn and held.

Among sun elves, light was never just for illumination. On nights like this, lanterns like that, were a message. A wordless signal that someone was home. That the house was not empty, not abandoned. Their vhal’sari  — the inner sun — not a dying flicker, but an enduring fire. Either the inhabitants were spared of loss, or nourished by the tinder of others that decided to stay with them, share the weight of that grief. An old tradition, instinct passed from generations who knew how long winter nights could last. That warmth thrived in closeness. It wasn’t just their magics and moods that waned with the sun, but a matter of the soul. That light was always brighter when combined. That the vhal’sari  —  soul, hope  — going out, was the True Death of any dawn elf. There would be no returning to the sun. No continuation. Only absence.

She did not light the lanterns.

Inside, the shop was hushed. The sunlight had gone from the upper panes. Warm, diffuse. It softened the sharp corners of the shelves, bathed the floor in dying amber. She turned back to her worktable, the soft spill of windowlight catching on the folded silk in bruised shades of violet. Her hands moved over it without purpose—touching, smoothing, folding without thinking. She hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t noticed.

She stitched a seam crooked. Stared at it. Unpicked it without blinking. A strand of hair slipped from her pin, curling against her cheek. She didn’t move to fix it.

The thread slipped. A small thing. Barely noticed. But Elyris stilled. One breath, two. Then she blinked down at the seam beneath her hands.

Crooked. Again.

Just slightly. Just enough to ruin the line.

She stared, unbreathing. Then again. Her fingers hovered above the error.

She hadn’t made a mistake like this in years.

Slowly, she rethreaded the needle. A breath drawn through her teeth. She tried again, guiding the stitch to its mark. But her fingers had gone clumsy—her hand jerked, her grip too hard—and the needle snapped.

It didn’t make a sound. Only a tiny, sharp crick in the silence. Half of it dropped to the floor. The other drove into the heel of her palm. The blood welled fast.

She exhaled, a short, punched breath.

For a moment, she simply watched it rise, red and bright against the pale of her skin. The kind of red she had forgotten how to name. Such a familiar element, blood. She’s studied it all her life, as much as artistry and courtship. How to bend it. How to command it. To draw and drown in it. She had not dealt in the life essence since—

She didn’t seal it.

Instead, she turned from the mannequin — still draped in a half-pinned gown, stitched with ghosts — and walked briskly to the kitchen basin, washing the blood from her hand without looking. Veins unspooling in water. The sting barely touched her. She kept her eyes from the mirror, even as she felt it — the reflection, daring her to meet it in the glass. She knew what she’d see. Pale lips. Dilated eyes. A face gone hollow in places only she would notice.

And that look. The one she had in the war—after too many days, too little rest, too much loss. When the rush of magic began to fray at the edges of her mind. There had been a time when the cut of her skin meant power. A rite. A ritual. Blood, never drawn in loss — purpose in every wound and every pain, no matter how much it ached. Her sigils—bright, ornate things—would bloom in the air like burning comets, brushstrokes of red. Crimson one second, fire the next. Like setting parchment ablaze. Beautiful. Terrible.

She had never hated it. How could she grow to hate something as vivid and alive as that. It belonged to a different time. A different woman.

She returned to the table, wet cloth still wound around her palm. The mannequin loomed across from her in the hush, half-dressed and eyeless. A figure waiting to be someone else.

Elyris sat slowly.

She picked up a plum, turning it once in her good hand. The skin had gone soft, bruised along the side.

The candle beside her had burned low. Wax pooled, forgotten. Shadows draped over her workbench, long and soft. She didn’t look at the wall to her left. Didn’t glance at the massive frame hung there like a window to another time—gilt and haloed with a light from within it. The phoenix depicted didn’t stir. R’enndaris slept.

Or rather, watched.

The magic that bound him to the portrait was old, deeper than most in the city would dare to use anymore. Pure sunborn spell-craft, the kind passed down through noble lines like theirs.

R’enndaris, her brother’s familiar — bright as midsummer, circling above their heads like a living flame. To enemies, the creature was nothing but a beautiful, deadly blaze — a glorious inferno that streaked across the sky like water, his fire searing through magic and steel alike. A brush of wings, leaving nothing but ash.

But to Elyris — to the girl she'd been, trailing after her brother with grass-stained boots and skinned knees — R’en had been something else entirely. Not weapon, but hearth. A warmth she’d curl into, nuzzling her shoulder with a beak of molten gold, pressing flickering warmth to her cheek like a caress. She remembered his fire not as destruction, but as play — licking up her arms like puppy-slobber, never burning, only teasing. She hadn’t even reached his shoulder back then, and still, he'd crouch low for her to clamber on.

He’d let her fall asleep nestled against the cradle of his wings, once. Once, when Talden still laughed.

And now, he was here.

A gift, they had called it. An — early legacy. Her duty. To step up, take her brothers place.

She’d have burned their entire house to ash if it meant Teldan was the one to report back. Not she. It should have never been she.

Then—a sharp knock against the front door.

The chair rattled as she jumped. A thin cry echoed faintly through the plaza — laughter, maybe, or a gull disturbed in the dark. Elyris blinked hard. The fire within the hearth had burned low, casting the shop in long, flickering shadows that snapped like teeth against the shelves.

She rose, hands clasping tight to still the shaking. And when she opened the door, it was cool evening blue spanning behind the silhouette of gold and copper.

"We're leaving." Sol'rel said. No preamble. "Pack for snow."