Dawn gathered itself along the river like a blade finding its edge. Mist clung to the arches of Starfall Bridge, veiling the city in a hush that sounded like breath held between one choice and the next. Elara set her palm to the cold stone, feeling for the oldest lines beneath mortar and legend. The bridge remembered kings, caravans, rebellions—and queens who crossed when no one watched.
Kael stood at her shoulder, cloak lifting with the wind. Below, water rushed in a steady roar that threaded through the quiet like low thunder. "Last chance to decide you prefer parley somewhere with fewer opportunities to die dramatically," he said.
"I don't intend to die," Elara said, and the Starforged hummed at her hip, as if in agreement—or warning. "I intend to ask a better question."
"What question?"
"Who taught the Night Regent to knock," she said. "And why the door answers."
They walked to the bridge's crown. The figure waiting there turned with a grace that made the air seem to lean closer. No mask. No hood. The Night Regent's face was neither young nor old, handsome the way a stormfront is handsome—shape shifting, light-bent.
"Queen Elara," the Regent said, voice a chord of many notes. "You chose the wind."
"I choose ground I know," she replied. "And names when I can get them." She lifted her chin. "Will you give me yours?"
The Regent's smile was a cut. "A name is a door. You of all people should know better than to ask for the key to the house you mean to enter." Their gaze flicked to the Starforged. "You brought the question I sent for."
Elara didn't touch the hilt. "I brought an answer."
They paced, a measured circle, equals at arm's reach of impossible. Kael remained three steps back and half a breath ready, the invisible hinge on which the meeting could swing to violence.
"Malachar was a symptom," the Regent said. "Your court rotted by degrees, as all living things do without pruning. I offer a knife that cuts only what must be cut."
"And who decides 'must'?" Elara asked.
"Whoever pays the debt when the tally is wrong," the Regent said lightly. "I have paid. More than once."
Elara let the river speak for a handful of heartbeats. "You marked me."
"I didn't," the Regent said. "One of mine did. A sin of impatience. Consider it balanced by the fact that you still breathe."
"Not a compelling apology," Kael murmured.
The Regent's eyes warmed, amused. "Not meant as one." They returned to Elara. "You hold a key that was forged to answer a lock made from a name. Break the key, and it will fit. Speak the lock, and the door opens."
"What locks?" Elara said. "What door?"
The Regent glanced toward the eastern horizon, where the sun's rim threatened the gray. "The door your mother opened when she refused to let a knife decide the end of a dynasty."
Elara kept her face still. "You know of the Moonwrought."
"I know your mother, child." The word wasn't diminishment; it was precision, a line drawn in the sand of years. "She has always been better at keeping doors than keeping rooms."
"Then say the name," Elara said. "If you want this done. Tell me what I am supposed to break."
The Regent's gaze slid to Kael and back, as if measuring weight and pivot. "I could. But locks spoken by strangers do not open cleanly. The name is yours to recall."
Wind lifted, tugging at hair and cloak and the edges of declarations. Somewhere to the south, a gull screamed like a hinge. Elara felt the world's attention tilt.
"Tell me your price," she said.
"A city that does not burn for your coronation," the Regent said. "A generation that does not learn your name as a curse. And, perhaps, one small thing for myself."
Elara waited.
"A single audience, in the place where the old crown was first weighed and found wanting. Bring the blade. Bring the truth you are afraid of."
"You want me to walk into your hall with my throat bared and a weapon I barely understand," Elara said. "And you call that pruning."
"I call it trust," the Regent said. "The only coin worth spending between enemies who might become something else." Their gaze softened. "You think I want your throne. I do not. I want a queen who does not make me necessary."
For a beat, Elara forgot to guard her face. The honesty in it—it rang like stone struck true. "And if I refuse?"
"Then I keep cutting," the Regent said, and the morning light caught on the blade at their hip like a prophecy. "And one day, when you ask for mercy, I will give it—and end you."
Kael shifted forward, fury leashed. Elara lifted two fingers, and he stilled.
"An audience," she said. "Not today. Not while my house is being ransacked by your least patient disciples. You will call them off. You will let my people breathe. In return, I will come to the place you ask at moonrise three nights from now."
The Regent considered. A gull wheeled, the river muscled itself between banks that had held it for centuries, and time did what it always does when two stubborn things meet: it bent.
"Done," said the Night Regent. "Three nights." A half-smile. "Bring the question you fear."
They stepped backward, cloak never stirring, and in three paces were gone—no smoke, no trick of light. Simply absent, the way a truth does not need to linger to be undeniable.
Silence pressed close. Elara let out the breath she'd been saving for her death and found it still hers.
Kael exhaled too, slower. "You believe them."
"I believe in knives that cut," Elara said. "And in seeds that sprout where blood falls. We need to move."
They left the bridge by the inner stair, taking the narrow lanes that stitched the old quarter together like sutures. By the time they reached Candle Street, the city was yawning into day, unaware or unwilling to see the scythe that had passed through its night.
Rin waited in the herb-keeper's doorway, a mug of something steaming between trembling hands. The old man scowled at Kael until he relented and took bread. At Elara, he did not scowl. He nodded once, deeply. "Winter of firewood," he said. "I'll collect."
"You will," Elara said, and the old man's mouth twitched like a smile that had forgotten how.
Rin's eyes darted. "They're angry. The ones in gray. Some are leaving. Some… aren't."
"Good," Kael said. "Division breeds mistakes."
Elara crouched to the child's height. "You said the lock is a name. Do you know whose?"
Rin shook their head, then hesitated. "The one who taught me letters—she said it was the first name you forgot."
Elara's heart gave a slow, painful turn, like a key forced the wrong way. "Thank you," she said. "Stay with the herb-keeper. If anyone asks, you're his apprentice."
They moved again, back alleys and archive tunnels and an hour stolen from pursuit by a mother made of moonlight. In the west library, the air had shifted: the thread Maera held tugged, strained, then steadied. Elara touched her own wrist and felt the mirror's pull still drawing eyes to an empty corridor.
Kael set his hands on the table where the oldest maps were kept. "Three nights."
"Three names," Elara murmured. "First I forgot." She closed her eyes and let the room fall away. Memory is not a library; it is a city at dusk, streets blurring into shadow, doorways holding both danger and safety. She walked it the way she had learned to walk courtyards—head up, pace steady, willing the echoes to lead.
"A lullaby," she whispered. "A game with stones. A scar from falling off the garden wall. A—"
The image struck with the weight of a bell: a summer storm, thunder counting miles, and her father's voice saying, Tell me your first name, star-spark, the secret one your mother gave you when you were born under the comet.
Elara opened her eyes. The room seemed larger, or she seemed smaller, and the blade on the table breathed once in recognition.
"I think I know the lock," she said.
Kael's gaze searched her face. "Do I ask?"
"Not yet." Her voice was steadier than the ground beneath it. "If I'm wrong, saying it out loud might break more than a key."
A tremor moved through the stones—a distant boom that came not from the city, but from beneath it. Dust sifted from the ceiling like startled snow.
Kael's hand went to his sword. "That wasn't the Regent."
"No," Elara said, each word a step toward a cliff she couldn't see the bottom of. "That was the Moonwrought."
He looked at her. She looked at the blade. The floor shuddered again, stronger. Somewhere above, a bell began to ring—not the alarm, not the hour. A third song, older.
"Elara," Kael said. "We need to—"
The chamber door blew inward on a wind that smelled of salt and cold iron. The lamps went out in a breath as the Moonwrought's tide came roaring through the library, and the last thing Elara saw was the Starforged answering with a light that was not light at all—before the world turned to silver and the floor vanished beneath her feet.