The first filament of power slid through the fake sky like silk through a ring. It stopped a hand's width above the roof, pausing as if it were deciding whether we were worth its time. The air, which had just begun to taste of clean metal and rain, was suddenly thick with the scent of perfume and knives.

"Hold center," Lucifer said, his voice losing its easy tone. His twin crowns, one of pure white, one of absolute black, began to glow just enough to make the ceiling behave. He traced two small, sharp sunbrands along the main brass seam of the roof. The structure remembered its job was to stay up.

"I am," I said, planting my feet.

My new High Radiant power, my Sword Accord, sat quietly in my wrists and ankles. My Lucent Harmony, now vast and steady, lived in the room—in the walls, the floor, and even in the quiet, cooling body of the Archduke inside Erebus's cold ring of containment. The Grey flattened two plain, ordinary squares under my boots, so the floor would stop trying to have an opinion.

The filament of Lust's power pressed down with a polite kind of arrogance. The air in the room tried to kneel. My Harmony turned that conceptual command into simple air pressure, and then into a harmless number. Numbers do not kneel. A second filament slid in behind the first. The brass ribs of the tower hummed a high, nervous note.

'Do not say your name,' Erebus murmured. 'If she asks, let silence be your only answer.'

The urge to introduce myself, a deeply ingrained habit of polite society, crept up out of my hindbrain. My Harmony identified the urge, set it outside on a metaphysical balcony with a glass of water and no shoes, and shut the door.

The silk-like energy reached for Valeria. It was an act of pure attention, not physical weight. The kind of attention that can steal jewelry without ever touching the skin.

Valeria purred in my hand. "Flattered. But they can put me down on the list with everyone else."

I didn't try to swat at the filament. You don't swat at the weather. I simply shifted the air around Valeria's guard—barely a nudge, a tiny Aegir trick—and the divine attention slipped off, finding nothing delicate or vain to pick at. Irritated, it clicked to the next trick: it tried to open a path through me. I could feel it testing the Empyrean Order lattice in the tower's spine, looking for a way to turn Julius's old signature into a doorway.

I kept my own work local and boring. Harmony calmed the room. The Grey laid two dull pages of ordinary where the silk wanted a hinge. I used Mythweaver to write three tiny, invisible labels where only the moment could read them: 'This is a room.' 'We are standing.' 'The floor keeps its promise.' They weren't grand proclamations. They were drawer labels for reality.

The filament pushed again. It met my boring defenses and found no convenient handle to grab. Somewhere deep in the tower's structure, the building tried to bow to a power it recognized as superior. Lucifer pressed a third sunbrand into the seam, and the roof decided not to grovel.

"I can hold the ceiling honest for two more heartbeats like this," he said, his voice flat. "Any more, and this turns into a fistfight I can't win."

"Two is plenty," I said. "Spend them well."

The silk thickened, ready now to force a partial descent. A heavy, cloying perfume slid down the line like a bad decision taking physical form. And then the air answered with a different kind of rude.

A second thread—narrow, sharp, and hungry—came in sideways through the same seam in the sky and bit into the silk as cleanly as a needle through cloth.

"Alyssara," Valeria said, her voice filled with a delighted sort of dread. "New invoice."

She stood at the edge of my sight, as if she'd been there the whole time—pink hair in a low braid, a simple black jacket, jeans. Her jade eyes were bright and possessive. The room got colder anyway. She didn't look at Lucifer. She looked at me, at my steady hands, at the new, open door behind my heart.

"High Radiant suits you," she said lightly. "Don't get proud. You owe me a better dance than this."

"Book it with my assistant," I said.

"I fired her in my head," she replied. "She was terrible at scheduling destiny."

Lucifer's expression didn't change, but his shoulders did, settling into a stance that was less about balance and more about containment. "If you two make a mess over my city," he warned, "I will become unfriendly."

"I'm not here for a scene," Alyssara said, and raised her right hand. A thin, dark coil of her own power unspooled from her palm and twined itself around Lysantra's filament. It sank in and stayed, not a leash so much as a vein stealing from another vein. "I'm here for a sip."

"Stop," I said.

"Make me," she answered sweetly. To the air, she added, "You took something of mine." The coil tightened. The divine filament bled—not blood, not light, but something that made flowers wish for a different gardener.

Lysantra noticed. The pressure from above sharpened. The tower moaned like winter pipes about to burst. I stepped forward and set Valeria's edge directly under the warring threads.

"Don't you dare," Alyssara warned, her eyes flashing. "I'm spinning my straw into gold."

"I'm not cutting you," I said. I was keeping the roof on. I kept my work where it belonged. The Grey put a gutter in the ordinary air beside the threads—a neat channel for any spillover that didn't touch anyone's Gift. My Harmony pushed a soft, gentle drift toward that gutter, so whatever fell, fell away from the city below.

The filament from above pressed down harder. The roof of the tower bowed. Lucifer set one last sunbrand and held it with both hands, his black and white crowns burning together. "One heartbeat," he said, his voice strained. "Spend it like a miser."

The silk grew a hand made of perfume and knives. It descended, palm down, toward my face, adorned with rings that had never paid taxes.

"I don't recommend catching that," Lucifer said.

"Not catching," I confirmed.

Sword Accord is about the angles that the room allows without argument. I stepped not back, not forward, but across, and lifted Valeria into the crook between the hand's two fingers, the place where pretty hands stop being pretty. The hand tried to be in several places at once. My Accord made it choose one. Steel mattered. The ring-finger hissed and pulled back a fraction.

Alyssara laughed, a sound bright and jealous. "Good. Good. Get stronger."

"Stop rooting for me," I said.

"Never," she said, and sank her coil of power deeper into the divine thread.

The filament split. Half of it forced its way down, stubborn and divine. The other half was siphoned back through Alyssara's vein into her, turning her pupils into pools of blown glass. The brass ribs of the tower sang a high, keening note that hurt my teeth. Erebus's shadow lifted like a cat arching its back.

"The silk," Lucifer warned, his jaw tight, "is becoming a hand."

The hand above me changed shape, losing its jewelry and gaining history. It came down in the old, imperious motion that had made princes hit the floor for centuries. I stepped across again and kissed its main knuckle with Valeria—the one all the posture leans on. A small, exact, and deeply impertinent click of steel on divine will. The entire pose lost its leverage for one beat.

I spent it.

"Keep it open," Alyssara said through her teeth, her own body trembling with the sheer volume of power she was siphoning.

"I am keeping the roof on this city," I shot back.

"You are very boring when you're being responsible," she muttered, and pulled. The coil flared. The siphon took. Lysantra's attention, from wherever she was, focused like frost on a windowpane. It stretched across an impossible distance, tasted a city, a roof, Lucifer's brands, my Harmony, and decided—for now—not to spend a physical body on this argument. The silk trembled along its length and stepped back an inch. Then two.

Lucifer exhaled slowly. "There's the inch."

"Make it a yard," I said.

We did. He kept the ceiling honest with both his crowns burning together. I kept the room a room. Erebus bottled the stray sparks and swallowed the curses. The divine filament withdrew with a last, parting stroke that cut the air as if to say, remember me.

"I won't," I said.

Alyssara swayed on her feet. The coil in her hand tightened into a knot and then unspooled into nothing. Her pupils shrank back to a sensible size. She blinked once, like someone who had taken one sip more than she had planned.

"Greedy," Valeria said.

"I learned it from watching both of you," Alyssara said, and then her knees softened.

I stepped forward and caught her before the stone did. "Don't drop me," she murmured, her voice far away.

"Wouldn't dare." Her eyes rolled white. Her breath was steady, her pulse strong, but her mind was diving somewhere I had no ticket to.

'Coma,' Erebus diagnosed. 'Alive, malicious, dormant.'

Lucifer eased the last sunbrand out of the seam. The crowns above his brow dimmed to a gentle, bedside-lamp glow. "The roof is clear."

The tower groaned differently now. Less silk. More steel. The Lust-film peeled from the bones of the place like old wallpaper in a hot shower.

"That's gone," I said.

"For now," Lucifer said. "Don't celebrate."

I set Alyssara gently against the low wall under a brand-scorched brass rib. Unconscious, she looked almost kind. It made my teeth ache. The tower groaned again, a deep hum waking in its spine. Not Lust. Not Julius. It was a clock, clearing its throat.

"Arthur," Lucifer asked, his eyes narrowing, "do you hear that?"

I did. I looked at the roof, the city, the sleeping problem at my feet, the sword in my hand, and felt the door behind my heart ease one inch wider. "Yeah," I said. "I hear it."

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