41. Call it whatever pretty word you want

Chapter 41: Call it whatever pretty word you like

Morning light came thin through the curtains, striping gold across tangled sheets, and Mikaela woke slow with her cheek against his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heart under her ear before either of them said a word.

Neither of them rushed to move. The quiet between them sat easy, comfortable in a way that didn't ask for talking to fill it, and when they finally did rise and dress it was without hurry, without a single word needed to coordinate any of it. She handed him his shirt before he reached for it. He passed her boot back when it rolled under the bed out of her grasp. Small things. Things that came from knowing a person down to the bone.

They went down the stairs together, and the moment Mikaela's boot hit the bottom step the entire common room went quiet.

Every head turned. A dozen conversations died mid sentence, forks paused halfway to mouths, and the silence that followed carried in it every flavor of reaction a room full of strangers could manage. Amusement on some faces. Admiration on others. A red faced young woman near the door studied her porridge like it held the answers to the universe.

Behind the bar stood a woman Mikaela didn't recognize, weathered and broad shouldered, silver threading through dark hair pulled back tight, a rag in one hand that she wasn't using for anything. She was just watching them, grin stretched wide enough to be indecent.

"Well, well." Her voice carried easy across the whole room. "Look who finally decided to join the land of the living. We were starting to wonder if you two had died up there. Or fucked yourselves to death, one or the other."

A few patrons snickered outright. An old man in the corner shook his head, muttering something about young people these days into his ale. A merchant near the window raised his cup in an actual toast.

"Don't be shy about it," he called. "We all heard. The whole street heard, if I'm honest. That was without question the loudest, most enthusiastic, most persistent display of passion I've witnessed in twenty years of traveling this continent, and I have witnessed plenty."

Mikaela felt heat rush up her neck into her face, but it wasn't shame driving it. She lifted her chin, met the eyes still lingering on her, and crossed to an empty table near the window like she owned the whole room. She didn't apologize. She didn't hide. Why should she.

Eto followed without so much as a change in his expression, sat, and turned his attention to the menu board like the letters on it might rearrange themselves into something he could actually read. They didn't. He didn't care. He knew what he wanted regardless of what the board said.

Meat. All of it.

The woman behind the bar, Madam Suika, brought their breakfast out herself a few minutes later, two plates that couldn't have looked more different sitting side by side. Mikaela's was modest, eggs and bread and a bit of fruit. Eto's took up half the table on its own, sausages stacked three deep, a full rasher of bacon, a mountain of roasted potatoes, cheese sliced thick, and something that could only be described as an entire chicken leg balanced precarious on top of the whole pile.

"Erik said feed him like he's three men," Suika said, setting it down with a grunt. "Didn't say why. Figured I'd trust him on it."

Eto didn't wait for translation. He picked up the chicken leg and started eating, methodical, silent, working through the plate the same relentless way he approached everything, and the patrons nearest their table had gone quiet again, this time watching him with something closer to awe than judgment. A man built like that, eating like that, moving with that kind of efficiency even in something as small as breakfast, it was hard not to stare.

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Mikaela ate her own smaller portion slower, content in a way she hadn't let herself feel in longer than she wanted to admit, watching him work through the mountain of food across from her. Safe. Wanted. Something close to home, even sitting in a rented room above a tavern in a city that had tried to hang him for murder less than a day ago.

The door swung open hard enough to rattle on its hinges, and Freya came through it first, uniform sharp, posture sharper, purpose written into every line of her. Alaric followed a step behind, looking like a man who hadn't slept, dark circles carved deep under his eyes.

Neither of them sat. They stopped at the table, and Freya spoke before either Mikaela or Eto had finished swallowing.

"The children and caretakers have somewhere for now. Old barracks annex near the guardhouse, Knight Commander approved it last night. Not much to look at, but it's warm, it's dry, and there's guards posted round the clock. They're being fed. They're being watched."

"And Nora?" Mikaela's fork had gone still. "The others like her?"

"No change." Freya's jaw tightened. "Not worse. Not better. They're just, stuck. Waiting on something none of us understand yet."

Eto kept eating, but his eyes had come up now, tracking every word even through the layer of Rostalian he couldn't parse on his own.

Alaric was the one who delivered the rest, and his voice had gone heavy in a way that made the whole table brace before he'd even said it.

"The City Lord's denied the whole thing exists." He said it flat, like saying it any other way might make it worse. "Refused resources for a hunt. Called it superstitious nonsense, a fairy tale, told me in no uncertain terms to focus on real crimes and leave the ghost stories to old women in the slums."

"He saw the evidence," Mikaela said. "Didn't you tell him what we found?"

"I told him everything. Kael, Lyra, the cellar, the bodies floating in the dark. Doesn't matter." Alaric's hands had curled at his sides. "He hates the slums. Always has. Calls it a blight on the city, a stain he'd tear down tomorrow if the council would let him. He's tried before, been blocked before, but he hasn't forgotten and he hasn't given up. He doesn't care about the creature. Doesn't care about the children living there. Only cares about his own plans for that district."

"That's not quite fair," Freya said, quiet but firm. "What I've heard is he wants to redevelop it. Fold it properly into the rest of the city, bring in real infrastructure, proper housing. Progress, in his words."

"Call it whatever pretty word you like." Alaric's voice had an edge to it now. "Same outcome either way. People get displaced, the ones who can't afford to matter to him get shoved aside, and a creature that's actively killing children gets ignored because acknowledging it exists would mean admitting the slums are worth protecting in the first place. He doesn't care about the Feyra. He cares about his legacy."

The table went quiet. Around them the common room had returned to its usual noise, but at that particular table the silence sat heavy enough to feel.

Mikaela turned to Eto and began translating, slow, careful, making sure every piece of it landed the way it needed to. The City Lord. The denial. No hunt, no resources, no help from the top. They were on their own.

Eto listened without interrupting, hands still, breathing even, eyes locked on her the whole time she spoke. He took it in piece by piece, and when she finished he sat with it a long moment, long enough that the whole table seemed to lean in waiting.

"We do us," he said finally.

He looked at Alaric, and there was nothing hot in his eyes when he said the rest, no fury, no raised voice, just flat, absolute certainty.

"You hunt. Find. Tell me. I kill."

Mikaela translated it exactly as he'd said it, no softening, no padding, and the words landed across the table like stones dropped into still water.

Alaric didn't answer right away. Something worked behind his eyes, duty pulling one direction, conscience pulling another, and Mikaela could see the exact shape of the fight going on in him, a good man bound by an oath to a bad decision, weighing his family, his men, his career against a truth he already knew but couldn't act on without risking everything he had.

"I have people who depend on me," he said finally, quiet. "I can't move against a direct order, not openly. But I'll share what I hear. I'll look away when I need to. That's what I can give."

Freya stepped in before the silence could stretch further. "I answer to the Knight Commander, not the City Lord. He's already seen enough to believe me, already agreed to back a proper search the moment the City Lord refused, because he expected exactly this. I'll take the hunt over myself. Full resources, full authority, no need for anyone's permission from the palace on this side of the city."

Some of the tension went out of Alaric's shoulders at that, relief plain on his face. "Thank you." He looked at Eto then, something apologetic in it. "And I'm sorry. For the cell. For the chains. I hope you understand I was only."

Eto didn't respond. Didn't nod, didn't wave it off, didn't accept it and didn't reject it either. He simply watched the man, patient as stone, and let the apology sit unanswered in the air between them.

Freya gathered herself to leave a moment later, promising to return once she'd confirmed the details with the Knight Commander, and the two of them made their way out through the common room, the door swinging shut behind them.

The breakfast crowd had mostly moved on by then, conversations resuming their normal volume, patrons no longer sparing more than a passing glance at the table by the window. Suika refilled their cups without being asked, twice, and the morning kept turning the way mornings did regardless of what got decided over breakfast.

Eto's plate sat empty. Mikaela's had gone cold, mostly untouched the last several minutes, her appetite lost somewhere in the translation.

He was watching the door. Not relaxed, not settled, something working behind his eyes that hadn't stopped working since the word kill had left his mouth.

Mikaela knew that look. It meant something had already been decided. It meant whatever came next wasn't a question anymore, only a matter of when.