Mondena was still shaking uncontrollably. The dull thuds from moments ago seemed to go on echoing in her ears: the aftershock shuddering through the metal fencing, the impact of bone against steel, the two sounds tangled together and haunting her eardrums like a lingering ghost.

  Terror forced her to drag in great lungfuls of air, but even breathing felt like a fresh assault on her senses. The damp reek of rust, the sour stench of beer, the smell of wet earth fouled by whatever filth had soaked into it—each breath made her want to gag, to choke. She clutched at her heaving chest and glanced down. The wrist that had been yanked so violently was still numb, the skin already scraped raw by that rude man’s grip; tiny beads of blood oozed to the surface, burning hot and sharp.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Flesh wounds were nothing compared to the thing inside her chest: the raw humiliation, the bewilderment, the brush with life-and-death that had all crashed down on her in the space of minutes. She had almost been forced to the ground. That man’s vile attitude, his rough hands, the hateful mix of alcohol and smoke on his breath, the filth he had hissed into her ear, the way he had touched her where he never should have—each memory was a red-hot brand searing her nerves again and again.

  And for a girl who had only ever known the Bible and an ordinary teenage life, that attempted assault alone would have been enough to rip open the nightmare she’d been trying to escape for years. But that still wasn’t the most terrifying part.

  She had watched Elisa raise her hand.

  She had seen, with her own eyes, that Elisa didn’t touch anything at all—just made a strange gesture, and the air itself twisted into a rope that lashed those thugs off their feet. Their drunken bodies had dangled like puppets with their strings cut, invisible cords cinched tight around their throats. They had clawed and scrabbled at their necks in mid-air, fingers raking at nothing.

  The thought of it made Mondena’s teeth chatter even harder. She dug her pale left hand into the ground, trying to push herself up, but her legs simply wouldn’t obey. Her mind was a total wreck. Everything she thought she knew about the world—her father’s teachings, her classroom lessons, even the TV programs that ridiculed “the supernatural” and exposed it as magic tricks or phenomena with neat scientific explanations—had all collapsed in an instant.

  Mondena lifted her head, still trembling. The reflection on the corrugated steel threw Elisa’s silhouette back at her, all sharp-edged and blade-like. The words Elisa had spoken earlier only burrowed deeper into her soul: Today you went through something you weren’t meant to go through, and you saw something you were never meant to see.

  If Elisa could wave her hand and decide whether those men lived or died, then what was to stop her from doing what villains and demons did in films and legends—massacring anyone who learned what she really was? The more Mondena thought about it, the more terrified she became. She stared at Elisa, who had already turned to look at her, and her voice tore itself out of her throat in a hoarse, exhausted shout:

  “D-Don’t—don’t come any closer—!”

  Her voice cracked and broke; tears sprang straight to her eyes and spilled over. She shrank in on herself even further, curling up almost into a ball, back pressed hard against the wall. She thrust a hand out toward Elisa, as if she could hold her off—putting up a ridiculous, instinctive line of defense.

  “What… what are you?” she demanded again, voice shaking. “What even are you?!”

  The question carried everything: the terror of almost being assaulted, and the visceral rejection of the impossible scene she had just witnessed. She didn’t even know which she feared more—the crude drunk who’d tried to pin her to the ground, or this girl she’d once called a friend, who could snuff out a life with a flick of her hand.

  Seeing that Mondena was still shuddering, Elisa hesitated. She turned her head, glanced at the sky growing darker above the alley mouth, and let out a quiet sigh. For an instant, the hard, knife-like lines of her face loosened. She looked down at her right hand—the knuckles she had just traced sigils with were still bloodless and white. In that moment she understood: to someone already terrified out of her wits, there was nothing “safe” about the way she looked right now.

  “…This is why we don’t want the world to know about us,” she said at last, her voice deliberately softened, carrying a thread of human weariness. “Every time someone sees this, they react exactly like you. Thousands of years, and you’ve never changed.”

  She paused for a heartbeat, then added, “And even if I explained, you’d never truly understand. Now—come on. Try to stand up.”

  As she spoke, Elisa leaned forward and took half a step toward her. She had just begun to reach out, intending to pull Mondena to her feet, when her gesture stalled mid-air. The moment she saw Elisa’s hand come toward her, Mondena flinched like a startled rabbit, trembling even harder. She wrapped her arms around herself, clutching tighter, and her eyes filled with naked fear and defense.

  Elisa watched that skittish, evasive gaze and sighed again, more deeply this time. She drew her hand back and stuffed it into her coat pocket instead. Then she turned away, walked over to the concrete step two meters away, and sat down, deliberately widening the distance between them.

  “It’s already late,” she said quietly. “You should be going home.”

  She turned her face to the side, looking at the shaken girl huddled by the wall. The sharp edge had gone out of her eyes; what remained was only a serious calm, and fatigue. “Come on,” she added. “I’ll walk you back. As long as I’m here, they won’t dare try anything again.”

  When she said they, there was something in her tone—a deep, steady certainty. It wasn’t the empty bravado of some teenage girl mouthing off, but the instinctive declaration of someone who’d long since grown used to standing in front of blood and danger.

  Even so, Mondena’s mind couldn’t stop spinning out worst-case scenarios. Her throat tightened before she finally managed to force out a question:

  “Are you… a witch? A demon? Or something—something with powers I can’t understand?”

  As she spoke, she tugged her thin jacket tighter around herself, as if wrapping up every inch of exposed skin might help. Then she folded her arms around her legs, dragging her knees up to her chest, turning herself into a barricade—as if that could keep out any unknown thing.

  “Are you someone who made a pact with demons?” she choked, tears still brimming in her eyes. “These powers… did you… did you trade your soul to them for this? Are you—” She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, and still forced the phrase out—the same dreadful vocabulary she’d grown up hearing in church culture since she was small. “Are you some kind of harlot who walks at the demons’ side?”

  The moment those words left her lips, she shivered in spite of herself.

  “Witch. Harlot.”

  “Those who make pacts with demons.”

  “Those who sell their souls to Hell.”

  These phrases had always existed far away from her: in scandal rags, horror stories, and the pamphlets certain religious groups handed out on street corners. To Mondena, they had always sounded absurd, ridiculous. Even with that almost fanatical, Puritan father of hers drumming old doctrines into her day and night, she had never really believed such things could be real.

  But today she had watched a girl who went to class with her every day, who drank coffee with her, who complained with her about school and exams—she had watched this “friend” crush four boys’ throats in mid-air without laying a finger on them.

  In that instant, her entire understanding of life and the world collapsed.

  Were all those legends and bedtime stories she’d laughed at before… really nothing but lies?

  Mondena’s thoughts fought one last, frantic battle. She was trying everything she could think of to keep the whole system from crashing.

  Elisa, meanwhile, had frozen for a moment on that word—harlot.

  It wasn’t that she was struck dumb with anger. She had heard things a hundred times uglier than that, and far more venomous, by now. No, this time what stopped her was the way that one ugly word ripped open something in her—like a rusty nail hammered suddenly back into old memory, pinning her to scenes buried deep beneath the surface of her mind and the long river of history.

  She remembered the centuries upon centuries, day and night, whether it was ignorant rabble or deliberate persecution, when red pillars of flame had risen over towns and cities across countless lands. She remembered bound and tormented bodies—innocent figures tied and broken. She remembered men on high platforms, faces twisted, arms flung wide as they shouted about “purging darkness” and “burning witches”—priests, pastors, and raving believers baring their teeth as they screamed.

  And even now, in the modern age, that kind of story had never truly stopped.

  Every time there were flames and a crowd at the stake, the people leading the chant simply changed their clothes and symbols with the times. From Italy to France, from England to the Salem of the United States… from Malleus Maleficarum to bottom-feeding copycat bestsellers, to the cesspool of social media where mobs ran wild.

  Sometimes the ringleaders were the Church. Sometimes it was the Crown. Sometimes they were mobs wrapped in the jewels of “truth” and “justice,” while their hands did nothing but filthy work. The age changed, but mankind’s terror of the unknown, its frantic need to control thought, religion, and the right to define what others believed and knew—and the ugly deeds committed under those fine coutures—only grew and spread.

  When she was young, Elisa had briefly considered arguing with those fools.

  As she grew older, she had learned to simply toss such worthless gossip aside.

  The memories ebbed away. Elisa drew back the hand that had hovered in midair and walked over to sit on the steps about two meters away from Mondena. Her hands hung loosely at her sides as she deliberately relaxed her posture into something as “non-threatening” as possible.

  “There aren’t that many people selling their souls to demons,” Elisa said, glancing at the damp, stained corner of the alley. “You really have been poisoned more than a little by those stories they make up.”

  Her tone had lost its earlier icy edge. Now it sounded more like the gentle teasing and helplessness of an adult watching a child spooked by a scary tale.

  Even so, Mondena still didn’t know whether she should feel relieved or even more afraid. She didn’t dare let her eyes leave Elisa—not for a single second. She was terrified that the moment she looked away, the familiar girl in front of her would sprout horns and claws and turn into a monster.

  The sky grew darker. The alley slowly fell quiet. Only the distant hum of traffic and the low wail of wind threading along the edge of the metal fencing remained.

  “In this Firmament” Elisa said suddenly, her voice taking on the cadence of an old storyteller sharing secrets buried in history, “the forces of light and darkness are evenly matched.”

  Firmament.

  The unfamiliar term dropped into Mondena’s ears like a boulder, ringing with a strange, vast echo.

  “They oppose each other, and they sustain each other’s balance,” Elisa went on. She lifted her gaze; her eyes slipped past the mouth of the alley and through the night, as if they could see beyond the city lights to something far more distant. “The power they radiate can shape—can even destroy—the time, history, and reality of every layer of the worlds.”

  When she said “worlds,” her tone was unnervingly certain, as if “worlds” was not an abstract idea but a handful of fine, real threads, all held tight in some unseen grip.

  To Mondena, these new concepts were utterly baffling.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Her first instinct was to retort, “There’s only one world—how can there be so many?” But after what she had just witnessed with her own eyes, she swallowed the words back down. She realized how foolish she would sound right now. Everything she had thought she knew had just been smashed to dust in this strange night.

  “For thousands of years, we have served The Asgard and All Deities” Elisa continued. “As their priests and as their legions, we were given authority and certain powers. Generation after generation, we carry out our duties and keep the balance and order of the Nine Realms.”

  Her eyes grew a little unfocused as she spoke.

  Images welled up, unbidden—battlefields blazing across endless fields of snow; altars flaring to life in the midst of storm-lashed nights; and beneath the domes of ancient cities, thousands of hands raised together toward the star-strewn sky in prayer.

  Scenes that had no business showing up in the memories of a normal high-school girl rippled out from the depths of Elisa’s mind, stirred by the moment.

  “And those stories you heard about people selling their souls to demons,” she said, drawing her gaze back and fixing it on Mondena again, “most of them came from patriarchal thinking and from church authorities desperate to cement their rule.”

  “For centuries, to gain supporters and control beliefs, they kept manufacturing fear. They exploited people’s ignorance and stupidity to spin these lies, over and over. They stripped away the right to think freely, to explore, to grow.” Elisa’s voice cooled. “Those lies warped dynasty after dynasty and dragged countless innocent families into flames. Greedy, foolish mens used them as excuses to purge their enemies, seize thrones, exploit the weak, and even start wars.”

  The fear that had soaked into every nerve of Mondena’s body was now packed tight beneath the weight of this avalanche of information.

  Her throat was dry and sore; she swallowed hard.

  She had grown up in an age where science and faith marched side by side, and the versions she had heard mostly came from textbooks, educational programs, and documentary channels: a few medieval witch trials, some religious wars, those stories of how people tried to survive under power struggles… and her history teachers had always framed it as nothing more than “feudal superstition,” “ignorant masses,” and “a lack of scientific understanding.”

  All her life, no one had ever stood in front of her from a neutral standpoint and said—

  Those “witches” who were burned, tried, or thrown into rivers to see if they would float… in most cases, they were simply pitiful, innocent people dragged to their deaths by church politics and power struggles. The Bible was their banner as they proclaimed morality and “ethics,” using it to bind those they did not rule—and those who dared resist their oppression.

  For centuries, under the flag of “spreading the faith,” they had nearly wiped out other belief systems and the original ways of life of countless peoples. Then they hid their crimes under layers of veneer, polishing them into “artifacts of civilization” and hanging them in museums and printing them on the pages of respectable books.

  No one had ever really mentioned that the ceaseless clash between light and darkness was part of a shifting, delicate balance; that balance had to be tugged and tended by countless events and forces. In every official record, the side of “light and justice” was always written as absolutely dominant—but that, too, was just a gilded page crafted to shore up the authority of missionaries and the power-hungry.

  They spat on “darkness,” even as they wallowed in it.

  As for the ones who truly maintained the balance—those who held onto the resolve to preserve history and bear witness, and the blood and tears they offered up in the end—no one wrote a single word.

  “And besides—here’s a fun little fact.” Elisa’s tone suddenly shifted into something more teasing. “When people really want to sell their souls to a demon, I’m guessing you don’t know that the demons down there have a list of terms and conditions, plus very specific rules, do you?”

  Mondena’s head jerked up a little.

  For a moment she couldn’t even process what she had heard. She wondered if her ears were playing tricks on her.

  A “fun little fact”?

  That counted as a fun fact?

  “In reality,” Elisa said, sketching a vague line in the air with her hand, “an ordinary mortal has no way to sign a contract with a demon.”

  “W-Why not?” Mondena couldn’t help asking. Her voice still shook.

  “Because you don’t even have the leverage, let alone the qualifications.” Elisa’s answer was brutally direct. “To them, an ordinary soul has… basically no value at all.” She paused, smoothing down the turned-up edge of her collar, then added slowly, “If an eldritch god or a demon really wants to take a pure, innocent soul and grant that person power, then first that person has to be worth the price—worth enough to shake an era, a society, even an entire layer of reality. They have to hold enough potential, or enough boundless hatred and rage, for darkness to make use of later.”

  Elisa’s gaze slid, almost unconsciously, toward the spot where the four boys had fallen. Blood spatter and shattered beer bottles still stained the gravel-strewn ground. She narrowed her eyes, distaste and weariness flickering there.

  “And once someone has made a pact with the dark,” she went on quietly, “they have to be capable of starting wars or wrecking the balance of an age—turning the human world into a hell of fire and blood.” Her tone softened as she said it, but the chill threaded through those words was enough to make a listener’s spine go cold. “There aren’t many like that.”

  Mondena’s eyes widened even more.

  “In history, the very few who did manage to reach an agreement with demons…” Elisa gave a small shake of her head. “Almost none of them were able to fulfill the terms. In the end, they were brought down by the side of light—or by those who just wanted to live.”

  Her gaze landed on a battered trash can in the dim alley, as if she refused to dredge up specific names.

  “Did you think,” Elisa added, pulling one corner of her mouth into a wry half-smile, “that becoming a witch in service to the demons could be that easy?”

  She smiled, but there was a long-familiar fatigue behind it, the kind that comes from being misunderstood for a very, very long time.

  “And anyway, if I were one of their witches,” Elisa went on, unhurried, a more overt edge of irony in her voice, “I wouldn’t be spending my time wandering markets with you.”

  She delivered the absurd premise with a near-deadpan seriousness.

  “If I really were a servant for the darkness, my job would be to sow chaos and terror wherever I went—to plant the seeds of war among humans, to rip open the spines of cities and men kinds. How would I possibly have time to be your friend, drink coffee, and listen to you complain about your homework?”

  Her eyes settled back on Mondena.

  “There are only twenty-four hours in my day.” Elisa lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “And If I were really some ‘voice or servant of darkness,’ some temptress in their ranks, I’d be way too busy for that. I wouldn’t have time to be your friend.”

  At that, the taut wire inside Mondena finally slackened, just a little.

  There was something oddly disarming in that self-mocking line—“no time to be your friend.” And she noticed something else: when Elisa spoke the words “servant of darkness,” she never once denied the word “witch” itself. What she scorned was the stigma fastened onto “witch,” the idea of “trading with demons”—not the fact that she possessed power.

  “Then you…” Mondena bit her lip and finally forced out the question that had been stuck in her throat. “Are you a witch on the side of light?”

  It sounded like a childish either-or question.

  With the way she understood the world right now, everything was still black or white: either the side of demons, or the side of “light.”

  “That description…” Elisa tilted her head a little, as if picking through her words. “It’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s not quite right either.” She thought for a moment, then said slowly, “The term ‘witch’ is just something that makes us easier for you to understand and remember. Strictly speaking…” She laced her fingers together and rested them on her knees. “We’re clergy. Priests and Legions for the gods.”

  “Clergy…”

  The word fell into Mondena’s ears with a strange, heavy weight.

  Images from everyday life flashed through her mind: monks in robes, pastors in white, priests in black with white collars walking around the university, and news reports that mentioned bishops and popes. Men who stood in pulpits with scripture in their hands, preaching “faith” and “salvation” to crowds.

  “But you…” The protest slipped out before she could stop it. “You fall asleep in class. You fight for the last roast chicken in the cafeteria. You sneak copies of other people’s homework. None of that sounds like ‘clergy’ at all.”

  Elisa was amused in spite of herself.

  “Who said clergy aren’t allowed to love roast chicken?” Her laugh was quiet but clear, cutting through the chill in the alley for a moment.

  The tension in Mondena’s nerves eased another notch. She slowly lowered the hands she’d been holding defensively in front of her chest. She was still on edge, but not as paralyzed as before.

  “Then…” she ventured, still avoiding eye contact but unable to hold the question back, “will you hurt me?”

  As soon as the words came out, Mondena felt like an idiot.

  If Elisa really meant to hurt her, she wouldn’t be sitting here, talking to her in some dingy alley.

  But human fear has never been bound by logic.

  The first time you realize that someone you always thought of as “just another person” actually has the power to crush your throat with no effort at all, the unease rolls in like tide after tide, no matter how clearly you know this person just saved your life.

  The alley fell briefly silent.

  Then—

  Grrrrk.

  An embarrassingly loud stomach growl broke the silence between them.

  Mondena froze.

  Elisa did, too. She looked down at her own abdomen, her expression turning distinctly awkward. Fighting, exerting that much control, and then holding this long explanation had drained most of her strength; she had also spent days juggling exams, research, and nights broken by nightmares. It had been a long time since she’d eaten properly.

  “…If you don’t get up soon, and you make us miss the dinner,” Elisa said, lifting her head and struggling to keep a stern expression on her face, “then I really will be angry.”

  As she spoke, she suddenly winked at Mondena and pulled a ridiculous face—mouth stretched wide, eyes bugged out, nose scrunched up.

  The expression was so silly that it had nothing at all to do with the “member of the divine legions who commands invisible forces” from moments ago.

  The sudden, exaggerated grimace startled a flinch out of Mondena. Her lashes were still sticky with drying tears, but something caught in her throat. It was a strange feeling—like someone pricking a needle into an overinflated balloon that had been pumped full of fear. All that pressure whooshed out in an instant.

  “Pff—”

  She couldn’t help herself.

  First she sniffled, then her twisted expression broke into a sputtering laugh. She scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of her hand, smearing away the tears. The hitching sobs hadn’t quite stopped, but the corners of her mouth were already tugging up of their own accord.

  “You…” Mondena tried to speak, and after holding it in for several seconds, finally managed, “You’re so… you.”

  “And I,” Elisa picked up smoothly, “just saved your life, am about to buy you dinner, and will personally escort you safely home.” She pushed herself to her feet, brushed the dust from her pants, and took two steps backward, deliberately opening up a bit more space between them. Then she spread her hands out to either side, palms facing forward, as if to show she posed no threat at all.

  “Take your time to getting up. No rush. When you feel like your legs can move, we’ll go.”

  Mondena drew a long, shaky breath and tried to move her legs.

  Maybe it was because she’d been crouched for too long; or nearly gone numb from fright. Either way, her legs were heavy and weak, as if filled with molten lead. Bracing one hand against the wall, she slowly pushed herself upright, every small motion eating up all her strength.

  Elisa didn’t go over to help her. She only watched quietly from the side, eyes steady and patient, offering silent encouragement. She understood that what Mondena needed right now was time—and a bit of distance.

  More than once, Mondena nearly slid back down to the ground, but each time she gritted her teeth and forced herself to endure it. At last, she managed to stand, spine still pressed against the cold wall, shoulders trembling. She lifted her head to look at Elisa.

  Elisa had already walked to a point slightly inside the mouth of the alley. The streetlights behind her cast a soft halo around her silhouette where light met shadow.

  “…Let’s go,” Mondena whispered.

  She was still afraid—terrified, even—but some instinct deeper than that fear made her decide to follow the one who had just saved her, the one who could just as easily destroy her, out of this heavy, shadowed corner.

  Elisa dipped her head in a small nod, like a silent acknowledgment of Mondena’s courage.

  “Hey.” She pointed at the space by her side. “If you’re scared, walk here.”

  Mondena shuffled over to stand next to her, leaving a careful sliver of distance between them—not close enough to touch, not so far that she would slip back into the dark.

  Together, they walked out of the alley, one in front and one just behind.

  Outside, the city was already bright with lights.

  The lamps along the overpass glowed like parallel rivers running from the sky into the distance. Neon signs over convenience store doors flashed in garish colors. Every time the automatic doors slid open, a rush of cold air and the smell of roast chicken spilled out. Farther away, a bus pulled to a stop with a squeal, and the ground shivered faintly under its weight.

  Everything looked perfectly normal.

  So normal that what had just happened in the alley felt like a dream that had slipped loose from reality.

  As she stepped out of the alley, Mondena glanced back again.

  That dingy corner piled with beer cans, torn cardboard boxes, and rust-streaked metal sheets was quickly swallowed up by the city’s lights and the flow of passers-by. The forces that had just warped reality, the suffocating air, and the crushing pressure all seemed to vanish behind an invisible curtain.

  She realized, suddenly, that to the world outside, she was nothing more than an ordinary high-school student walking down the street at dinnertime. No one had seen how close she had come to being violated. No one had seen a classmate her age raise a hand and squeeze four men’s necks shut at once.

  “Those guys…” Mondena couldn’t help asking in a low voice, “they’re not coming back, are they?”

  “Not for now,” Elisa replied without hesitation. “They probably won’t even remember clearly what happened tonight.”

  “Why?” A tiny spark of relief had just lit in Mondena’s chest, only to be smothered again by a new wave of confusion.

  “Because that memory of almost being strangled to death will be swallowed up by their own fear and shame, with a little help from the alcohol.” Elisa’s voice was calm. “It’s a self-defense mechanism. Humans build it into their minds. And besides,” she added after a brief pause, “I gave it a bit of a push.”

  Mondena had no idea what “gave it a bit of a push” meant, but she didn’t dare to ask.

  “Then what about me…?” she said suddenly. “Are you going to give me a push, too, and make me forget everything that happened today?”

  This time, Elisa was silent for seconds.

  Then she turned and looked at her.

  What she met was a pair of eyes reddened with burst blood vessels and ringed with tear tracks. Inside them, confusion and fear still churned—but there was also a thin, fragile thread of trust beginning to form. That trust had grown slowly, as fragile as the first skin of ice across a lake: one careless step, and it would shatter.

  “No,” Elisa said. Her voice was soft but steady. “I’m not going to touch your memories.”

  Mondena blinked. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the one who got you involved in this in the first place.” Elisa lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “I’m the one who dragged you around the market, and listened to you complain about your parents, and sat there cursing those exam papers with you.” The corners of her mouth tugged up in a faint smile.

  “I’m the one who chose to get close to you,” she went on. “So I’m the one who has to live with that choice.”

  “Live with it… how?” Mondena repeated under her breath.

  “Well,” Elisa said, scanning the street ahead as if still picking out a place to eat, “for one thing, it means you might end up seeing things you were never meant to see.” She paused. “For another, it means that from now on, I have to keep a closer eye on you, so you don’t get dragged deeper into trouble because of any of this.”

  She spoke quietly, but there was a promise in it.

  “But…” Mondena still couldn’t help asking, “you said you don’t want the world to know about any of this. Now that I know, won’t that cause trouble for you? And, um… in the future, won’t someone come after me because of it?”

  “It’s possible,” Elisa said. She didn’t sugarcoat it.

  Mondena’s steps faltered.

  “Before that happens, though—” Elisa stopped as well and turned to face her. “Anything that comes for you because of me.”

  Silence fell between them again.

  After a while, Mondena sniffed and managed a crooked little smile.

  “You know, that sounds… kind of like the sort of line people in manga saids right before the storms.”

  Elisa let out a helpless sigh. “You really are a product of your media diet.”

  “Sorry.” Mondena gave a tiny, apologetic laugh. “I’m just… a little nervous.”

  “If you’re nervous, think about what we’re going to eat later,” Elisa said, setting off again. “Didn’t you say you’ve been craving fried chicken from that one place? If I remember right, they do a buy-one-get-one on Tuesday.”

  “You…” Mondena hesitated. “Didn’t you just say you’re clergy? Are clergy allowed to eat stuff that greasy?”

  “For the last time—” Elisa rolled her stiff shoulders. “Who says they’re not?” She shot Mondena a look that was half meaningful, half warning. “If you report any of my ‘eating habits’ to the Council, I’ll have to put you on the list of people in need of extra supervision.”

  “Council?” Mondena latched on to the word at once.

  “…Forget about it” Elisa realized she’d slipped and cut the topic off cleanly. “You already know too much. If we keep this up, I really have to file a very long report.”

  “You have to write reports?” Mondena couldn’t help laughing. “Do you have monthly meetings, too? Summaries of your ‘work in the mortal world’ and all that?”

  Elisa shot her a long-suffering look and didn’t answer.

  That quiet look, somehow, made it impossible for Mondena to tell whether she had just made a joke—or hit on something uncomfortably close to the truth.

  A thought suddenly struck her.

  “So… your identities… you can choose who to tell and who to hide it from, right? In a case like mine, where I found out by accident, what happens? Could you just wipe my memories and let me wake up tomorrow with no idea any of this happened?”

  Elisa fell silent again.

  This time, it felt like genuine consideration.

  “I could erase your memories,” she said at last, very honestly. “For you, that might actually be easier.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” There was no accusation in Mondena’s voice. Only a careful, tentative curiosity, peeking out from the narrow gap between fear and the need for safety.

  “Because—” Elisa turned her head, letting her gaze rest on a lit window across the street as if searching for the right words. “When they were trying to pin you down just now, you called my name.”

  Mondena blinked.

  Her mind spun back over the awful evening, rewinding to that moment at dusk. She did remember, vaguely, that in the depths of her panic she had indeed shouted—

  “Elisa!”

  “I thought about it,” Elisa said. “When people are in danger, of course they’ll grab for whatever’s closest. That’s normal. But the honest feeling in your voice at that moment—the instinct to reach for me when you were terrified—that’s not something you can fake it. If, in a moment like that, the name you screamed was mine… if you really treat me as a friend you trusted, then the least I can do is stick around and take some responsibility.”

  For several long seconds, Mondena could only stare at her, cheeks burning too hot for the cold air.

  Elisa didn’t say anything else.

  Her eyes dropped instead to the purple bruise already blooming around Mondena’s wrist where it had been wrenched and pinned.

  “Let’s go eat,” she said. “When you get home tonight, rest well then. I’ll bring you something tomorrow to help with the swelling”…