You can only name a ghost if you knew them before they died.
Cerys stopped.
The ballroom—the crowd, the polished marble, the smoke drifting like breath from a dying flame—faded behind a single name. Her name. Spoken not in threat. Not in reverence.
But with certainty.
She'd trained herself for moments like this. When someone shouted, recognized, reached. Her body always moved first—blade in hand, aim to kill.
But she didn't move.
She watched him.
Darian Rathborne tilted his head slightly, eyes never leaving hers, and took a step closer. He hadn't raised a weapon. Hadn't called his guards. Hadn't even blinked.
"Still silent," he said softly, almost amused. "That makes this harder."
The prince—no, the man before her—was no longer the soot-covered boy who had crouched beside his burning nursemaid while soldiers stormed through the wreckage. But his eyes were the same. Gold-flecked. Too calm for someone facing death.
Too knowing.
Cerys's hand hovered near the blade sewn into her sleeve, but she didn't draw it. Not yet.
"How?" Her voice was quiet, flat, unused.
"You don't really think you're the only one who remembers the fire, do you?"
A noblewoman brushed past them, laughing as she spun away with her partner. The music swelled again, filling the space between them like a veil. No one around them seemed to notice the tension stretched taut as wire between their bodies.
Cerys took a measured step back.
"Call the guards," she said. "That's what you're meant to do."
"And what? Tell them I know the assassin's name?" Darian's smile didn't reach his eyes. "They'd ask how I know it. Then ask why I didn't sound the alarm sooner. Why I've been waiting for her."
He leaned closer. "Because I have been. Waiting."
She hated the chill his words sent through her.
Not because it frightened her.
Because it cracked something.
"You shouldn't know me," she snapped, harsher than intended.
"But I do."
Her mind raced.
Kael had never mentioned Darian knowing her. Thorne certainly hadn't. The Rebellion's network had promised the heir was arrogant, naive—barely aware of the knife circling his neck.
But he wasn't.
He was watching her now the way a falcon watches the wind. Poised. Patient. Lethal in his own way.
Cerys drew back farther, slipping into the edge of the shadow where the ballroom's glamour failed. The wards here were weaker, unrefreshed. She could vanish if she wanted.
Darian didn't stop her.
"If you run, I'll follow," he said.
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a memory."
She nearly vanished. Nearly disappeared into the corridors behind the palace's northern hall—where courtiers didn't wander and servants rarely lingered. But her curiosity, damn it all, was louder than her fear.
She'd survived so much worse than curiosity.
She waited until the music crashed into its crescendo, then beckoned him with a subtle nod toward the shadows. He followed without hesitation.
The Forgotten Hall was where they ended up—an unused gallery with half-covered portraits and a window cracked open to let in cold, unsanctioned wind.
Cerys turned first. "You said you remember."
Darian stepped into the moonlight spilling through the window. "The village. The fire. The girl standing where no one should've stood."
He met her gaze directly. "You were the only one not screaming."
She swallowed. That memory—the moment the raid on the outer province had gone wrong, when a hired killer's child stood among flames and corpses—wasn't something she'd ever told anyone.
"You shouldn't have lived through that," she murmured.
"Neither should you."
There it was again.
That unshakable calm. That maddening sincerity.
"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, voice sharper. "Why let me get this close? If you knew—"
"Because I wanted to see if you'd remember me, too."
Silence fell between them, thick and heavy. Cerys couldn't decide if she wanted to kill him or kiss him or disappear.
"You don't understand who I am now," she said finally. "What I've done. Who sent me."
"Kael Moraine," Darian said without flinching. "The rebellion leader who uses orphans like daggers."
She went cold.
"How do you know his name?"
Darian's eyes glittered. "Because I listen. And because one of my spies is closer to him than he thinks."
It was too much.
The memory of the fire. The naming. The rebellion's secrets.
And now this prince standing before her like he wasn't already bleeding from invisible cuts.
"You're not what they said you'd be," she admitted.
"Neither are you."
She turned away, meaning to vanish. But before she could fade into the stone, his voice caught her.
"You don't have to finish the job."
She laughed, bitter. "I don't have a choice. You think I walk into palaces for fun?"
"Then let me give you one."
She turned sharply, eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because I saw you once before the world made you this. And maybe…"
"...maybe I want to see what you become if you're given a chance not to be anyone's weapon."
Cerys stepped into the shadows.
She didn't answer.
Didn't promise mercy.
Didn't promise death.
But her pulse thundered as she slipped into the corridor—because she had come to kill him.
And now?
Now she wasn't sure what terrified her more:
Failing the mission.
Or not wanting to succeed.