Cinn spread her reading cloth on the market stones, but no one stopped. She was a green-skinned girl with long green dreadlocks and black eyes, and her wrists jingled with charms. Every star-shaman she hoped to join wore beads and braided bones like hers. To win a seat among them, she needed seekers who would swear her fate-readings came true. This morning she had none. A seed merchant hurried past. Cinn caught her sleeve. "One reading. Free." The woman pulled away. "They say you cheat. The fortune-seller warned us." Cinn's stomach dropped. She had heard the rumor for three days now. A rival fortune-seller worked the far end of the market, and he told every passerby that Cinn's gift was a trick. His words spread faster than hers. Empty stones meant no proof. No proof meant no seat among the wandering shamans. She touched the eye-charm at her throat. The painted eye stared back, useless without a crowd to convince. "You look like a girl about to do something loud." Cinn turned. Starr stood behind her, short black locs tied back, glasses low on her nose. She wore a long neutral skirt and sandals, and she sipped tea like the market noise annoyed her. Starr rarely left her quiet corner. Cinn had read her fate once, months back, and told her a lost brother would return by the rains. He had. Starr had never forgotten it. "He's turning them all away," Cinn said. "I can't prove anything to an empty cloth." Starr studied her, then set down the tea. "Then don't prove it to the empty cloth. Prove it to him." Cinn walked the length of the market to the fortune-seller's booth. A small crowd watched him shuffle cards. She stopped in front and spoke loud enough to carry. "You call me a fraud. Read my future, then. In front of everyone." He smiled and dealt three cards. He spoke of coming ruin, a fall, a curse. The crowd murmured. Then Starr stepped beside Cinn. "My brother was gone two years," Starr said. Heads turned. Everyone here knew her, the quiet woman who kept to herself. "This girl told me the exact day he'd walk back through the gate. She was right. This man told my neighbor she'd have twin sons. She had a daughter." The crowd shifted. Someone laughed. Another remembered a failed prediction. The fortune-seller's smile cracked. He gathered his cards and would not meet their eyes. By midday, seekers came to Cinn's cloth. She read for six of them. The fortune-seller packed his booth and left the market before dark. That night Starr found Cinn counting new charms, gifts from grateful seekers. "Word travels," Starr said. "You beat him in public. People noticed." Cinn should have felt only joy. But a stranger had watched from the crowd, robed in beads and bone, a true star-shaman. He had seen everything. And now he wanted to test her himself.

The star-shaman came to Cinn's treehouse the next morning. He climbed the rope stairway slowly, beads clicking on his robe, and stood on her porch beneath the strings of rainbow lights. He did not smile. He set a stool on her cloth and sat down across from her bones. "They say you read strangers," he said. "Read me. Tell me my own fate." Cinn spread her cloth and cast the bones. She waited for the pressure behind her eyes, the pull she felt with every seeker. Nothing came. She looked at him and felt only wood and stone. She cast again. The bones landed. She read nothing in them. Her hands went cold. For two years she had chased this seat, and now the door stood open and she could not walk through it. "I feel nothing from you," she said. She could have lied. She looked at his flat black eyes and knew he would catch it. "Your fate is closed to me." He leaned back. "Then you are not what they said." Footsteps on the stairs. A green man climbed onto the porch, red locs shaved into a mohawk, hands in his jacket pockets. He was a stranger to Cinn, one seeker among the many who had come since her market victory. He had been waiting below to have his fate read. Now he stopped and stared at the shaman. "You," the man said. "You're the pressure. Behind my eyes. It's stronger near you." He rubbed his forehead. "I've chased a signal across three systems. Old. Not light, not radio. It's you. Or something around you." The shaman turned. His flat face changed. "You feel it too." Cinn watched them, and understood. "That's why I read nothing," she said. "You're shielded. Wrapped in something that eats the signal. He feels the shield. I feel the empty place where a person should be." She pointed at the man's forehead, then at the shaman. "His gift and mine touch the same thing from two sides." The man sat down uninvited. "Cyf," he said, plain. "I turn myself in to people who don't believe me. Habit." He almost smiled. "You're the first one who didn't call me broken." The shaman stood. He looked at Cinn a long moment. "You told me the truth when a lie was easier. And you named the shield no other reader has named." He pulled a single carved bone from his robe and set it on her cloth. "Come to the shamans' fire. This is your token in. You will still have to earn the seat." He descended the stairs. Cyf stayed on the porch, watching the empty steps. "He'll be at that fire," Cyf said. "So will the thing I'm chasing." He looked at Cinn. "I'm coming with you." Cinn closed her hand around the bone. The door was open now. But she had traded one riddle for a bigger one, and she was no longer walking through it alone.

The bone token sat on Cinn's cloth all night. Cyf slept on her porch. In the morning he stood at the rail, still talking about the confrontation. "When we reach the fire, I face him," Cyf said. "I ask what the signal is. In front of all of them." Cinn watched him and felt the danger, the way she always felt things others missed. Storm the shamans' fire with demands, and they would brand her a threat before she ever earned her seat. "You'll get us both thrown out," Cinn said. "I need you calm." She climbed down and crossed to the flashy ship parked below her tree. Cyf followed. Inside, panels glowed and lights ran along the curved wall. A tall girl with curly pink hair sat at six scanners, sorting bright charts. This was Dolly, the sharpest signal tracker Cinn knew. She had been chasing the same strange signal for weeks. "Okay so," Dolly said, not turning. "Your friend's noise? I found it. It breaks its own pattern every time. Honestly, that's not a machine. That's a person hiding." She spun her chair and looked at Cyf. "You want to yell at the man carrying it. Bad idea. He'll shield harder and you'll learn nothing." Cyf stopped. He rubbed his forehead. "Then how do I—" He paused inside the thought. "How do I get near it. Without spooking him." Cinn pulled out her bones and an old book, the tome the market elder had given her. Celestial marks covered its cover. "You don't ask him," she said. "You let me read at the fire. Loud. A real reading, in front of the shamans. That earns my seat and pulls every eye to me." She tapped the book. "While they watch me, Dolly's scanners map the shield from the outside. You feel where it's thin. Nobody accuses anybody." Cyf looked at the bones, then at Cinn. "You'd risk your reading. For my signal." "I'd risk one reading," Cinn said. "Not my seat." Dolly grinned and grabbed a small handheld scanner. "I'm coming. Somebody has to make you two look normal." Cyf was quiet a long moment. He pulled his hands from his pockets. "Fine," he said. "No confrontation. Your way." He almost smiled. "You're the first one who didn't call me broken. I can wait a little longer." Cinn let out the breath she'd been holding. The demand was dead. Cyf would not storm the fire. She wrapped the bones and the book together in her cloth and tied it tight. Then Dolly's scanner chirped. A new chart bloomed red across the wall. "Uh," Dolly said, smile fading. "The signal just answered us. It knows we're listening." Cinn stared at the red lines. She had cooled Cyf down. But now the thing behind the shield was awake, and it was waiting at the same fire she had to walk into to earn her seat.

The red chart still glowed on Dolly's wall when Cinn made her choice. The signal was awake. It would feel her the moment she reached into the fire to read. If it caught her probing, the shamans would name her a spy. She would lose the seat before she earned it. So Cinn did not walk into that fire as herself. She walked in hidden. "Put this on," Dolly said. She held out a long cloak stitched with sacred charms. Beads and tokens hung from its collar in tight rows. "Okay so, the signal expects a shaman. Look like one. It reads what it expects and stops looking close." Cinn pulled the cloak over her own beads. The charms swallowed her signs inside their noise. Cyf watched from the door, hands in his pockets. "You'll be right beside it," he said. He stopped inside the thought. "Beside him. Whoever carries it." He did not like it. He said nothing more, which was his way of trusting her. The fire waited in a ring of carved stone. Shamans sat around the flame. Cinn felt the signal at once, a pressure that turned toward her like a face. It was hunting. She could not read past it, and she could not let it read her. So she gave it something else to watch. Cinn drew out a crystal pendulum on a fine chain. She let it swing above the flame. Light broke across its sides, throwing color over every seated face. The signal's pressure shifted toward the spinning light. It followed the shine. It stopped searching her. While it watched the pendulum, Cinn cast her bones on the stone. She read them loud, for the shamans, a true reading of the seeker before her. Her voice stayed steady. Under the cloak her real senses reached sideways, feeling for the thin place in the shield, the way she and Dolly had planned. Outside, Dolly's scanner caught what Cinn felt. The map completed. The reading ended. The shamans nodded. The signal never marked her. Cinn had walked past its guard and given nothing away. Then the pendulum slowed. The light died. The signal's attention snapped back, sharp and fast, and this time it did not find a shaman. It found the shape of Cinn beneath the charms. The pressure recoiled, then hardened, like a door slamming. Cyf caught her arm and pulled her from the ring. "It knows you now," he said. "It knows your face." They did not run to the ship. They ran the other way, to a cave mouth glowing with a small fire, hidden in the rock. Dolly was already there, her scanner clutched tight. "I got the thin spot," she said. "But honestly? It got you too." Cinn pressed her back to the cold stone. She had earned her reading and kept her seat alive. But the thing behind the shield had seen her clearly. Next time, it would be waiting for Cinn by name.

The cave fire cracked low. Cinn crouched behind a shelf of rock, her breath tight. Dolly watched the cave mouth, her scanner dark so its light wouldn't show. Then boots scraped stone outside. A shadow filled the entrance. A shaman from the fire had followed their trail. He carried a torch and swept it across the walls. "Someone ran this way," he called. His voice bounced off the stone. "Show yourself." Cinn knew the math at once. If he found her hiding, she was a thief and a spy. Her bone token meant nothing then. The seat she had bled for would close forever. Running would only prove her guilt. So she stood up. She stepped into the torchlight before Cyf could stop her. "I'm not hiding from you," she said. "I'm reading." Cyf tensed beside the fire. Cinn shot him one hard look. Stay still. He had wanted to storm the shamans with demands, and it had nearly ruined them. He trusted her now. He kept his mouth shut. Cinn pulled the old star-book from her bag. Its cover shone with worn gold stars, gifted long ago by a market elder. She had never opened it at a fire before. She opened it now. She set her bones on the flat page and cast them across it. "You felt something wrong at the ring," she said, reading the fall. "A pressure. It turned on all of us, not just me. You think it was me. It wasn't." She touched the third eye charm at her throat, letting its painted eye catch the light. "I read fate. I don't hide it. Look." The shaman lowered his torch. He studied the eye charm, then the bones, then her steady face. "You mapped the shield," he said slowly. "That was you." "Yes," Cinn said. "Because it's watching all of you and none of you know it. I do." He was quiet a long moment. "The elders will want to hear this," he said. "Not as a thief. As a witness." He turned the torch toward the cave mouth. "But the thing behind that shield heard your name tonight. Coming back to the fire means facing it in the open." "I know," Cinn said. The shaman left. His footsteps faded down the rock. Dolly let out a breath and dropped against the wall. "Okay so, that was insane. You just talked your way back in." "Not in," Cyf said. He stared at the fire. "Invited. To sit across from the thing I've been chasing." He paused inside the thought. "With everyone watching." Cinn closed the star-book. Her hands were shaking now that no one needed them steady. She had kept her chance at a seat. But the price was clear. Next time she faced the fire, the signal would be waiting, and it would know her by name.

The walk back to the fire felt longer than the walk away. Cyf kept pace beside Cinn, saying nothing. Her bone token rode in her palm, warm from her grip. She knew the entity behind the shield had her name now. It would speak against her at the fire. If she answered, she would have to explain the mapping, the pendulum, the plan. That meant exposing Cyf. She had no answer that saved them both. A girl waited at the edge of the ring. Light green skin, black space buns, butterfly clips, a purple skirt. Cinn had seen her at past gatherings, always watching, never seated. A seeker like Cinn, chasing proof the elders kept at arm's length. "You're the one it marked," the girl said. No greeting. "I'm Sky. I felt it turn. Everyone felt it. They think it was you." "It wasn't," Cinn said. "I know." Sky looked at Cyf, then back. "It's been here longer than any of us. The elders won't say its name. I've been trying to prove it's real for a year." Cinn understood the opening. She did not have to defend herself. She could make the entity the thing on trial. But the entity would test her first, pick at her story, force the lie into the open. Unless she gave it something it wanted more than her name. She pulled the sun-shaped relic from her bag. An elder had pressed it on her years ago. Its center gem woke under her thumb and glowed. The entity hungered to be seen. She would offer it that. "When it speaks, let it," Cinn told Sky. "Don't argue. Just confirm what you felt. You're a witness. So am I." Sky nodded once. "Finally." They stepped into the ring together. The shamans fell quiet around the painted stones. The flame stood tall and steady. Then the pressure came, the same shield Cinn could not read. It pushed behind her eyes. It knew her. She did not wait for its accusation. She raised the relic. The gem flared. "You've been hiding in their fire," she said to the empty air. "I'm the first to say so out loud. Not to hunt you. To see you." The pressure stopped pushing. It held, listening. "I felt it turn tonight," Sky said. "Everyone did." The eldest shaman rose slowly. He stared at the space above the flame, where the air bent light. "We never named it," he said. His voice shook. "How long?" Cinn lowered the relic. The entity had not accused her. It had let her speak for it. She had traded its exposure for her safety, and the shamans now saw the thing they had sheltered. "I keep my seat," she said. Not a question. "You keep it," the eldest said. "But now it answers to you, and we answer to neither of you." He looked afraid. "What have you brought into our fire."

The eldest shaman's fear still hung over the fire. Cinn kept her seat, but she saw it in their faces. They had watched her name the entity. They had not watched her read fate. A seat earned on exposure was not a seat earned on skill. One elder said it plainly. "She uncovered a secret. That is not a reading." Heads nodded around the stones. Cinn's token felt light in her hand. She could still be turned away. She stood. "Then test me. Choose the hardest fate in this fire." The entity answered before any elder could. It drifted above the flame, a ball of light and stars and crawling color. No longer hidden. No longer a pressure behind her eyes. "Read me," Luminance said. Its voice was flat. "You never could." The fire went still. Every elder knew the truth. Cinn had failed to read the shield once. Now the shield was gone, but the thing inside it had no bones, no fate a person could cast for. It was the one reading no shaman had ever managed. "I don't read you with bones," Cinn said. "Bones are for people." She reached into her bag and drew out the old book the market woman had pressed on her years ago. Celestial marks ran across its cover. She did not open it. She set it on the ground and laid her palm flat on its face. At the edge of the ring, a bird landed on a painted stone. Pale feathers, a long tail trailing light, glowing marks woven through its wings. The last of its kind. It fixed one bright eye on the entity and did not look away. Animals never looked away from Luminance. Cinn had read that in its silence. "I can't cast your fate," she told the entity. "You have none to cast. But I can read what you leave in what's alive." She watched the bird. Its feathers brightened near the entity, dimmed as the light pulled back. She counted the shifts. "You're counting," she said. "Everyone who saw you and looked away. You keep the number. The animal walking in on the day you left, that made it real." The light flared, then held. "Yes," Luminance said. The bird fluffed its wings and settled, calm now, bonded to the one soul that had named it true. The elders stared at Cinn. She had read the unreadable, not through the creature's fate, but through the life it touched. The eldest sat down slowly. "No one here has done that," he said. "Then I keep my seat," Cinn said. "On skill. Not on secrets." No one argued. The token stayed in her hand, heavier now, hers. But the entity hovered close, and its eyes were on her alone. She had proven herself to the fire. She had also tied herself to the thing it feared. The seat was won. The cost had a shape now, and it was watching her.

Cinn kept her seat, but Cyf still had no answer. He had chased the signal across three systems to reach this fire. Now the signal had a face, a name, a count of witnesses. But Cyf wanted to know why it had called out at all. "I came a long way," he told her at the edge of the stones. "I need more than a name. If I don't get it, I'm done here. I go home." The bird that had bonded to Cinn shifted on its painted stone, feathers dimming. Cinn read the dimming. Cyf was serious. Sky stepped out of the dark before Cinn could answer. She had vouched for Cinn as a witness at this gathering, a seeker hunting proof the elders hid. "I have records," Sky said. "Years of them. Every time the signal showed, I wrote it down. My fort's not far. Come see the wall." They walked. The bird flew low beside Cinn, never leaving her. Sky's fort was a round wooden thing hung with old records and notes on string. Inside, a wheeled board stood crowded with her handwriting. Dates. Sketches. Pins. "This is everything," Sky said. "Every glimpse." Cyf read the board. His jaw tightened. "These dates. They line up with mine." He touched one note. "It wasn't sending to me. It was sending out. To anything that could feel it." He paused inside the thought. "It was calling for someone to come find it." Cinn laid her palm on the board. She watched the bird instead of the notes. Its light pulsed, steady, then quick. "Yes," she said. "It wanted out. Hiding inside the shaman, it couldn't leave alone. So it called. The signal was a cry for a witness." She looked at Cyf. "You heard it because you were listening. That's your answer. It wanted to be found. By you, by anyone." Cyf let out a slow breath. "That's real," he said. "That's enough." He didn't go home. Then the bird went bright, too bright, and fluffed its wings. Cinn felt the air pull tight. "It followed us," she said. "It's here," Cyf said, louder, to the dark corners of the fort. "We can all feel you. Stop lurking." Light bled through the seams of the wall. Luminance drifted in, a ball of stars and crawling color, drawn to Sky's records of itself. It read the board. It read the count on the notes. "You kept the number too," it said to Sky. Flat. Then its eyes fixed on Cinn alone. "You told them why." "I did," Cinn said. "Now they know," Luminance said. "Now I'm not just watched. I'm understood." The light pressed closer to Cinn. "That binds tighter than watching." Cyf had his answer. Cinn had kept her ally at the fire. But the thing she'd explained now hung over her shoulder, closer than before, and it called her understanding a leash.

The light stayed close. In Sky's fort, every time Cinn read the glowing bird, Luminance leaned in to feel it. It knew her thoughts the moment she had them. When she wondered if she could trick it, it dimmed and said, "You can't." The binding ran one way. Cinn opened to Luminance, but Luminance never opened to her. She needed a wall. She had none. She left the fort at dawn. Cyf walked with her, and Sky followed with a roll of her records under one arm. They found the old tree alone in the clearing, its canopy lit from inside, blue threads running down the bark. Cinn had practiced hard readings here before. She sat in its roots now and emptied her bag. Bones. Beads. Charms. "I keep nothing from it," she said. "I need to hide my own mind." "A shield blocks you out," Cyf said. He paused inside the thought. "The shaman had one. You couldn't read him at all." He looked at the bones. "Make one for yourself." Sky knelt beside her. "You can't buy a shield. You build it." She touched a charm on Cinn's wrist. "Put yourself in it. Something only you own." Cinn understood. A shield had to be made of her. She lifted one green dreadlock and cut it free with a bone edge. Her hands shook. She braided it tight, working in crystals and small charms. From her star-shaman book she whispered a focus spell into each turn of the braid. The bird watched, its feathers steady. Luminance drifted at the clearing's edge, reading her as she worked. "What are you making," Luminance said. Flat. For once it did not already know. Cinn did not answer. She tied the braided band around her wrist and spoke the last of the spell. She thought of a wall of stone. She thought of the market, the elder's grip, every secret she had ever held. She pushed them behind the wall. The pressure behind her eyes went quiet. For two years she had read everything and hidden nothing. Now the inside of her head went dark, hers alone. Luminance surged forward. Its stars flared white. It reached for her thoughts and found a blank face of stone. "I can't feel you," it said. The light pulled back. "You're closed." "Yes," Cinn said. She was shaking, but she stood. The bond held. She was still its anchor. But now the door swung one way for her too. She could feel Luminance and keep her own mind shut. Cyf let out a slow breath. Sky nodded once, final. Then the light spoke again, quieter. "If you can hide from me," Luminance said, "you can hide from them. The elders will want to know how. A shaman who can't be read can't be trusted." Its stars dimmed. "You built a wall. Now they will ask what you keep behind it."

The braid held the elders out. Now their doubt pressed in. At the fire, they would not meet Cinn's eyes. One of them turned her shoulder when Cinn passed. Another whispered the same word Luminance had warned her of. Untrustworthy. A shaman who could not be read could not be trusted. Her seat, so hard won, was already sliding away. She needed proof that worked the old way, a reading they could watch with their own eyes. She left the fire before sunrise, Cyf beside her. "Where do we go," Cyf said. He paused inside the thought. "If a new method made them doubt you, you need an old one. One they already trust." "I know where it started," Cinn said. They went to the weathered market hall. Under a faded awning sat the old woman in her wheelchair, dressed in star-worked robes and heavy jewels. Silvana Starweaver had given Cinn the star-shaman book years ago. Cinn had never come back. Now she knelt at the wheel and said nothing, the way she had that first afternoon. Silvana looked at the braid on Cinn's wrist. "You built a wall." Her voice stayed flat. "Smart. Now they fear you." "Can you teach me a reading they can't argue with?" Silvana reached into a fold of her robe. She drew out a wooden tablet, carved with rows of old marks, strung with colored beads. "Mark-reading," she said. "Older than bones. The marks answer out loud. Anyone can check the work." She set it in Cinn's hands. "The shaman must respect this. It hides nothing." Cinn turned the tablet over. The marks shifted as she read them, like the book had taught her tongue to do. "The wall stays in your head," Silvana said. "The reading stays on the wood. They see both are true." She did not explain more. She watched Cinn the way she had waited years to watch. Cinn returned to the fire at dusk. The elders stood when she entered, ready to strip her seat. She did not speak her defense. She knelt and laid the carved tablet flat where all could see. She read it aloud, mark by mark, and let them follow each line with their own eyes. She called the hidden count of those gathered. She named a loss one elder carried and had told no one. The marks said it plainly on the wood. The eldest shaman bent close, checked the carvings, found no trick. He straightened. "The reading stands," he said. "The seat stands." The whispers died. Cinn kept her seat. Then Luminance drifted close, its stars quiet. "They trust the wood," it said. "Not you. The next thing they ask for, you will not have a tablet to answer it." Its light dimmed. "And an elder just learned you can read the thing he hid. He will not forget that you found it."

Cinn kept her seat, but the creature of light never left her side. Luminance hung at her shoulder day and night, counting, watching. Her bonded bird followed too, a rare pale wispwing that no other shaman owned. Everywhere she walked, the elders saw the thing they had hidden, now bound to her. They would not trust a shaman tied to it. She needed to break that chain before it broke her seat. So she went looking for the one man who had carried Luminance first. She found him outside a cave warmed by a low fire, bundled in a patched grey robe. Ezra Calloway had seen Luminance long before the shamans did, back when the whole village pretended it wasn't there. His pale eyes glowed faint blue, like the old wisdom tree. He did not stand when Cinn approached. He only looked at the ball of stars drifting behind her. "You carry it now," Ezra said. "It was mine first." Cinn knelt by his fire. "Tell me how the bond works. I need to understand it." Ezra was quiet a long moment. "It bonds to the one who sees it true. You named it. So it anchored to you." He fed a stick to the flames. "You are not the only one hiding a bond." Cinn went still. "Who else." "The highest shamans. The twins." He said it plain, without weight. "Ember and Cinder bonded the rainbow-eyed pandas years ago. Before they took the fire seat. They think no one knows." His glowing eyes lifted to her. "Once you are bonded, you can see other bonds. They forget that. The twins knew I was bonded. I know what they hide." Cinn turned the fact over. The two shamans who judged her hardest hid the same secret she carried. That changed the ground under her feet. She looked at Luminance, then at the bird perched near her braid. Both trailed her like smoke. As long as they followed, the elders would stare at the creature, not her work. "I need room to think," she said. "Room they can't watch." She faced Ezra. "Will you keep Luminance here. Just for a while. It knew you first. It trusted you before anyone." Ezra studied the entity. Luminance drifted toward him, slow, its stars dimming soft. For the first time its counting seemed to pause. "It was lonely with me too," Ezra said. "We can be lonely together." He held out one thin hand. "Leave it. Go." Luminance settled beside the fire, close to its first friend. "I will still feel you," it told Cinn. "The anchor does not break." "I know," Cinn said. "But they won't see you on me now." She left the cave with only her bird. The light stayed behind. For the first time in weeks, no stars watched her back. And she carried a new weapon now, the twins' buried secret, heavier than any tablet.

Cinn walked without the light at her back for the first time in weeks. She carried the twins' secret now, heavier than any tablet. Ember and Cinder bonded two rainbow-eyed pandas years ago, before they took the fire seat. The same hidden bond they punished her for. If she used it right, the twins would protect her seat instead of threatening it. But first she had to learn one thing. Were they allies she could bargain with, or enemies who would bury her? She could not tell. So she went to the one shaman who had watched them longest. She found Kareth Bonewhisper at the edge of the temple steps, grinding bone to powder in a dish. He was the man whose secret she had once handed to the council. He did not look up. His hands kept grinding. "You exposed me," he said. "Now you come to me." "I need to know the twins," Cinn said. "Are they safe to approach?" Kareth set down the dish. His painted face was hard. "Safe is the wrong word for them." He studied her. "They caught me watching them once. Years back. They smiled at me. Same smile, same second. Not a word." He wiped his hands. "They watch everyone. They let the fire tell them things. If you walk up carrying a secret, they already know you carry it." Cinn felt the ground shift. "Then they can't be surprised." "No one surprises them." He stood. "But I'll tell you this for free. I'm done keeping other people's secrets. Mine's out. Theirs is next. Yours too, if it suits me." He held her eyes. "You and me, we both act like we know what's right. That's the dangerous kind." He walked off before she could answer. The threat landed clean. Kareth would expose the twins himself, soon. If she wanted their bond as leverage, she had to use it before he spent it for free. Cinn climbed the temple steps. The twins sat together at the fire, one head turning as she came. Two eyes found her. "The anchor girl," Ember said. "Without her light," Cinder said. Cinn's heart knocked. She touched the eye charm at her throat and steadied her breath. "I came to speak plain. I know about the pandas." Neither face moved. The fire cracked between them. "We know you know," Ember said. "We knew when you learned," Cinder said. So Kareth was right. They missed nothing. Cinn made her choice. "Then you know Kareth means to spill it. I don't. I'd rather trade." The twins looked at each other, one quick turn of the shared head. Then both eyes came back to her. "Then we are not your enemy," Ember said. "Not yet," Cinder said. "Sit." Cinn sat by the fire. She had her answer. The twins were allies, for now, bound to her by the same man who hated them both. But Kareth was loose, and her leverage had an expiry.