Morning wasn't real here, but the light pretended anyway.
Noah sat cross-legged on the thin mattress, book open on his knees, the inked sigils looking like a cartographer's fever dream. The false sun pressed through the bone-lattice window in soft bars, turning dust into slow constellations. Across from him, Abel was all broad planes and quiet breath, watching without comment the way he always did when Noah was about to do something reckless and sacred at the same time.
"Okay," Noah said, because if he didn't speak, he'd hear his own pulse. "Protection spell. Higher tier. It anchors memory against intrusion. It's a little different when I do it to others, so this means it needs a vow and… consent." His cheeks heated on that last word for absolutely no reason. "From both of us."
Abel's mouth tilted. "Consent," he echoed, as if tasting it. "You have it."
Noah coughed, because apparently his throat had evaporated. "Right. Good. Great. Don't say it like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you know it's going to make me forget how to breathe." He fumbled a page, then forced his hands still. "You sit—there. Close enough I can put the threads around you. And, uh, maybe put your hands on mine. It stabilizes the weave. Not because I'm needy."
Abel did exactly that, settling on the edge of the bed so his knees bracketed Noah's, big, steady hands covering Noah's smaller ones. Warmth climbed Noah's arms like a slow tide. He did not squeak. He did not.
"Breathe," Abel murmured.
"Right," Noah said faintly. "Breathing. Sure."
"Why is it different from when you did it to yourself?"
"Well, because the spell is long-lasting and it kind of connects the mind to the caster, for protection, which means it connects me to your mind, so it doesn't get changed again. Now stop distracting me!"
"Mm."
He closed his eyes and reached—down the familiar not-path in his mind where faith ran like an underground river. Threads of pale light stirred, spider-silk fine, shy at first and then gathering—pulled by the words he whispered and the heat of Abel's pulse under his fingers.
"By chosen bond," Noah intoned softly, "by vow freely given, by witness of two who remember: let the mind be a harbor, not a net. Let what is ours remain ours."
Light brightened, timid threads curving outward to circle Abel's temples, his throat, his heart, before linking back to Noah and knotting themselves between their joined hands.
A shiver went through him. Not pain—weight. Cost.
Noah opened his eyes into Abel's gaze—pale, steady, so close the false sun made gold flecks in them. The threads were barely visible now, only a sheen when the light hit, like oil on water.
"You okay?" Abel asked, voice low.
"Define okay." Noah cleared his throat. "I just tied our brains together with affection and willpower. If I start reciting poetry, you hit me."
"I'd rather not."
"Oh," Noah said, eloquent as a brick. Heat lit his face again. "Right."
Abel's thumbs brushed along Noah's knuckles, a thoughtless, devastatingly gentle stroke. "Thank you."
Noah's heart did something undignified. "Don't thank me yet. You might hate the side effects."
"What side effects?"
"Enhanced appreciation for my charm and devastating beauty." He tried for a smirk; it wobbled. "Terrible burden."
Abel actually smiled, small and private. "I'll endure."
They sat like that for a long breath, the quiet full, the anchor humming between them like a second pulse. Then Noah leaned forward, barely, until his forehead met Abel's. The kiss was easy—no rush, no hunger, just the soft press of two people holding the same line. It steadied him more than any spell.
When they parted, Noah coughed again because his life was a series of coping mechanisms. "Okay. Mission time before I combust. We go see the priestess. We tell her what we know. We plan a way into the palace. The basement may be unguarded, but the palace isn't."
Abel rose first, a hand out. Noah let himself be pulled up, ankles wobbly and pride pretending otherwise.
"Your face is red," Abel observed, maddeningly calm.
"It's the… light." Noah gestured vaguely at the window. "Terrible for my complexion. Also, you're rude."
"Mm."
"Stop mm-ing at me."
He didn't.
They kept their route narrow and ordinary—past market ribs where sellers laid out bowls of ash-powder and ribbon charms, past a bone arch that smelled faintly of smoke and salt. Noah felt the anchor thrum against the base of his skull whenever a patrol passed. The sensation was odd—like the threads lifted their tiny heads and sniffed the air, then sank again once danger moved on.
"Eyes down," Abel murmured as two Kindled crossed their path, bucket-balanced, faces painted with bone dust.
"I'm the queen of unobtrusive," Noah whispered. "No one ever notices me."
Abel's glance said everyone notices you so loudly Noah almost tripped.
The temple plaza held its usual choreography—worshippers drifting like tide water, incense climbing in blue coils. The priestess stood at the sanctuary's threshold speaking to a woman with a child on her hip, the silver in her braids catching thin sunlight. Something in Noah unknotted at the sight of her and then, immediately, snagged again. Her eyes were clear. Her smile was warm.
But a wrongness hung around her like mist.
Noah tucked it away and went to work. He kept his expression bright with the kind of bland earnestness no one suspects.
"Reverend," he said, bowing just enough. "We hoped to steal a moment about the festival logistics you asked us to assist with—the… schedule, offerings, all that. Privately, so we don't ruin the surprise."
Her pause was small, no longer than a blink. Then she searched his face with cordial puzzlement. "Festival?" she repeated, pleasantly apologetic. "Forgive me—what festival do you mean?"
Noah's stomach dipped. "The… one you mentioned yesterday," he said lightly. "Big to-do. Lots of ribbon. You said we'd be a great help."
A crease touched her brow. Her gaze flicked to Abel, calm and unreadable as a cliff. "I don't recall arranging that," she said slowly. "But we can certainly discuss… ideas."
The wrongness thickened. A little hum at the base of Noah's skull; the anchor threads tightened, then softened. He smiled brightly enough to crack. "Wonderful. We'd hate to bother you on the threshold. Perhaps your study?"
She hesitated a fraction and inclined her head. "Of course. Come."
The study was as they'd left it—shelves with jars of powder and bone figures, a low table, the crystal sphere that could lace silence into the air with a touch. Noah waited for her to set the wards automatically. She didn't.
She sat and folded her hands instead. "Tell me about this festival," she said, polite and curious and entirely lost.
Abel stood with his back to the door, a casual arrangement that made any entry point a mistake. Noah took the chair opposite the priestess and let his smile dissolve inch by inch.
"How long," he said gently, "have you been here?"
Her lashes dipped. When she looked up again, a flicker—pain?—crossed her face, so quick he could have missed it. "The temple keeps no calendars," she said carefully. "We serve as long as needed."
"It's needed a lot," Noah said. "You told me that. You told me you walked into the Womb so long-ago time stopped meaning anything. That you tried to leave and woke up back here. That you took the Saint's silks because chains with embroidery cut a little cleaner."
The priestess inhaled, sharp. Her fingers pressed the table, then curled as if gripping an edge that wasn't there.
"Stop," she murmured.
Noah didn't. He couldn't. He leaned forward, voice dropping. "You asked me for help. You said you've watched him make children out of grief, rewrite families until devotion stuck like scar tissue. You hoped someone would come who wasn't blind to the light."
Her breath stuttered. One hand lifted to her temple like she'd been struck. The wrongness Noah had felt cracked; the hum rose inside his teeth. Abel took half a step forward, weight shifting, ready.
"Reverend," Noah said, softer now even as his words sharpened. "I can anchor you. I can hold a line the Saint can't cut. But you have to let me. You have to choose it."
Her eyes found his. For a heartbeat he saw a blank mirror. Then something moved underneath—old and tired and furious.
She snatched the crystal sphere and pressed her palm to it. The shimmer leapt from glass to air, a translucent dome blooming out from the table's edge. Sound vanished. The temple's breath cut off. They sat in a bubble as clean and bright as a bell.
She exhaled, shaking, then straightened by inches. "He took it again," she said, astonished and broken at once. "He took it again."
Relief and grief collided in Noah's chest. He kept his voice level. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head, a hard little denial. "No. Thank you for pulling on the thread." The priestess closed her eyes, mouth flattening with hard-won control, and when she opened them her gaze was sharpened down to a needle. "Tell me what you know."
Noah didn't waste the opening. "The sun's core is in the palace basement," he said. "Not heavily guarded because why would he bother when he can fillet everyone's memory. It's tied to sacrifice—the dagger, the blood arithmetic. If we break the anchor, we cut his reach. I don't just want out."
"I want everyone to remember."
She absorbed that without flinching, which in itself told him enough about who she had been before the Saint carved pieces away. "Getting into the palace is the problem," she said. "There are sigils and songlocks on the inner doors. The basement is only 'unguarded' if you do not count the Kindled Ones."
"Of course," Abel said evenly from the door.
"You cannot simply kick the door and hope."
"Then we don't," Noah said. "We talk like people who are very interested in a festival, and we take the stairs that lead to the storerooms he's so graciously opened for preparations. You tell us which storerooms have a second door."
The priestess's mouth curved, grim and pleased. "You were always going to be trouble."
"Compliment accepted."
Her gaze dropped to his hands. "You said you could anchor me."
"I can," Noah said, and the honesty cost nothing. "It's expensive. It hurts. It needs your consent. And if you break the vow attached to it, it breaks. He can't cut what we choose to tie. He can only carve around it."
"Then tie it," she said immediately, like a woman stepping onto a ship mid-storm. "Before he looks at me again."
Noah swallowed, throat tight. "Say the word you're willing to keep." He lifted his hands, and she set hers in them, smaller, scarred at the knuckles, steady.
"Remember," she said. "Whatever else happens, remember."
Threads rose like dawn.
They curled around her temples and chest, around Noah's wrists and heart, knitting themselves with the precision of a tailor who had measured this body long ago. The anchor flared, bright enough to sting Noah's eyes.
The flare faded to a soft sheen, a second skin. Linnea's breath shuddered out of her; color returned to her mouth.
"There you are," Noah said quietly, not sure who he was saying it to.
"Here I am," she answered, and that small, fierce smile made something in him want to weep. She squeezed his hands and let go. "You'll need a route map and a distraction. I will get you the former." Her eyes flashed. "For the latter, I have ideas."
Noah stood on shaky legs, the book heavier in his satchel, the anchor humming like the low, patient note of a bell that refused to die. "Then we start now," he said. "Before he blinks and tries to make us new."
The priestess brushed her fingers over the crystal sphere, but didn't dispel the silence. "We start now."
Outside the dome, the temple kept breathing. The false sun kept lying. The settlement kept moving in practiced circles.
Inside, three threads held.
Noah looked at Abel and tried not to glow with how smugly proud and terrified he felt at the same time. "So," he said, voice cracking back toward the familiar, "team meeting later, small snacks, big heist?"
Abel's eyes warmed. "Big heist. Small snacks."
"Great," Noah said. "I'll bring the poor decisions."
"You already did," the priestess said dryly.
"Wow," Noah said. "Two of you now. I'm outnumbered."
But he wasn't, not anymore. Not where it mattered.
The dome shimmered. The vow held. And for the first time since the Womb had swallowed him, Noah felt something like morning that wasn't a lie.