The next day, she went to him and asked, for the first time, if she could one day be free to run her own tradehouse in the city. He agreed without even looking up from his desk.

“I’ll tell you when,” he simply said, and she left the office feeling like she finally had a purpose.

To avoid thinking of her failure, she stared out at the city. Kosín resembled a painting more than ever in her blurred vision, and she wondered from where the artist had drawn the inspiration to paint such a place that dulled sensitivities with its bleak gray shadows yet also attracted people like her, like Teo, like Ryuu, to stay there even when the city made them choke on its fumes. She imagined what this place might have looked like in the past, draped in fine silks, coated in blood, and studded with diamonds. Her gaze trailed over the Stacks, where she knew every corner, every speck of dirt, every boarded-up house, and every rumbling stomach far better than the painter ever would.

If Kohl was going to come after her anywhere, she’d prefer for him to kill her here where her parents had died. At least maybe inhaling more glue would leech away all her good memories of Kohl and leave only the bad, so maybe dying by his hand would hurt less.

She’d chosen a paper bag rather than plastic. It was less likely to suffocate her. She hoped to at least be conscious when he came, so she could ask him if she’d ever been anything more to him than a Blade.

Just then, a creak came from the other side of the house. Her head rolled to one side and her vision spun as she took in Teo. She tried to wave, but her hand tingled with numbness and fell limp.

“Should have known I’d find you here,” he said, standing and walking toward her.

But instead of sitting down, he stopped a few feet away. The cool spring wind pushed his hair in front of his face. Dark brown strands brushed against the stitches on his jaw still healing from his time in the Tower’s cells.

“Where else am I supposed to be?” she asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and gazing out at the close-pressed houses of the Stacks and the constantly hovering smoke carried down the hill from the factories. He hadn’t even looked at the bottle of firebrandy and the glue-soaked bag she held, though he must have noticed them by now.

“Congratulations, you found me,” she said, waving the bottle as if in celebration. “What do you want?”

Instead of answering her question, he sat next to her with his legs hanging over the edge of the roof. Her head drooped a little to the side, growing heavier each passing second, but Teo caught her before she fell over.

As he helped her sit up straight again, with one arm around her shoulders, his other hand moved to her chin and turned her face toward his. Her vision spun again, so she wasn’t entirely sure what she saw in his eyes now, but it reminded her of a long night last year when neither of them had to work.