Night had teeth that evening. Aurelia walked without guards because fear hates witnesses. Curze arrived the way nightmares do: already there. Cloak like a cut from shadow; eyes like distance.
"You are a child in a city of knives," he said. His voice made mercy sound like a mistake.
"Only if I agree to bleed," she said. "What would you have been if someone had loved you before you broke?"
He tried to make her see him as he named himself—a monster that chose necessity for the greater good. He listed the ledger of terror he called mercy and the future he swore only fear could buy. She did not move. She was not afraid—never—and she refused the lesson. "Ruling by fear is a tax the innocent pay," she said. "I will not collect it."
They stood on either side of a chasm made of belief. He could not drag her to his edge, nor could she pretend his edge was not there. That was what unsettled him: she would not despise him, would not accept him, and still would not flee.
"Rest," she said at last, sitting on the step. Her halo dimmed to a hush. After a long moment that felt like a wound choosing whether to close, Curze lowered himself beside her, then—impossibly—let his head find her lap. Nightmares circled and found no purchase. For once, there was no vision, no sentence, no scream. There was simply nothing.
For the first time in a long time, Night Haunter did not know what to do with a question—or with peace. He left the way he came—like a decision unmade. Later, in a different dark, he would remember the tone of her voice and hate it for being gentle, and fear the ease with which she had given him sleep. A roof tile, forgotten by any report, bore the imprint of his pause.