They enter separately.

That’s Violet’s rule.

She watches Astrid go first—laughing already, hair loose, lute slung easy like an afterthought. Astrid belongs anywhere. Violet waits three breaths, then follows, shoulders loose, expression bored. Violet edges the perimeter, clocking doors, windows, the position of the stairwell. She catches Rowan’s eye. Nods. He slips toward the back. Ilsa ghosts past Violet’s shoulder, light as rumor, already counting pockets.

Inside, the safe is exactly where Astrid said it would be. Ilsa slips in behind them, breathless, grinning.

“Crowd’s drunk,” she whispers. “Astrid’s killing it.”

Violet’s mouth twitches. “She always does.”

They work fast. Violet doesn’t rush them, but she feels the timing. The way Astrid’s voice swells downstairs, the way a song like this only holds attention for so long.

“Thirty seconds,” Violet says quietly.

They finish in twenty-five.

Outside, in the alley behind the house, they regroup one by one. Astrid arrives last, breathless, eyes bright.

“Tell me you got it,” she says.

Ilsa lifts the coin pouch. Violet nods once.

Astrid laughs and throws her arms around Violet’s neck, momentum carrying them both into the brick wall.

“You’re incredible,” Astrid says into her hair.

Violet stiffens for half a heartbeat—then relaxes, hands settling at Astrid’s waist.

“You were,” Violet replies.

Rowan clears his throat pointedly. Ilsa pretends not to watch.

Astrid pulls back, grinning at the group. “Drinks are on me.”

They share rooms when they can afford them, floors when they can’t. Rowan against the wall. Ilsa near the door. Astrid curled into Violet’s side, foot hooked over Violet’s calf like an anchor. Violet learns the rhythm of her breathing, where it catches in dreams.

She sleeps lighter than anyone, but when Astrid shifts, she adjusts automatically, even in half-sleep. She doesn’t touch when Astrid is asleep. That feels like crossing a line.

One night, Astrid whispers, “You don’t have to stay awake for us.”

She doesn’t move until she hears Astrid breathe properly, the hitch smoothing out into something deep and even. Only then does Violet sit up, stretch carefully so the floor doesn’t creak. She puts water on to heat. Quietly. The lookout—older now, goes by Rowan—grunts and rolls over.

In the morning, Astrid wakes last. Always. Hair everywhere, eyes half-lidded. She squints at Violet like she’s trying to decide whether she’s real.

“You’re still here,” Astrid says.

Violet smirks. “Disappointed?”

Astrid reaches for her hand instead of answering.

“We’ll make up the time,” Astrid says as they stand on the corner, waiting for her wagon to come by. She presses a kiss into Violet’s collarbone. “I’ll bring you something pretty.”

Violet smiles.

She doesn’t say: I hate when you leave.

The gang keeps working, but the jobs pay less without Astrid smoothing edges, lying sweetly, making things look like accidents instead of crimes.

Coin runs thin.

Violet does the math.

She knows the routes. Knows who still owes her. Knows how to keep it quiet.

She tells herself it’s temporary.

She has been at it for six months, and for the first time, the contact doesn’t show.

That’s the first sign something’s wrong, though she is early — perched on the low stone wall behind the dyehouse, boots braced against damp brick, counting breaths and watching steam curl from the river. The city smells like wet wool and old bark, tannins and rot. Honest work smells worse than crime. She’s always thought that.

The crate sits at her feet, wrapped in oilcloth and twine. It’s heavier than it should be.

She checks the time again, thumb rubbing the notch she’s carved into the face of her pocket watch. Five minutes late is nothing. Ten is careless. Fifteen is a message.

She waits anyway.

Violet has learned patience the hard way.

When the bell tolls the quarter hour, she exhales and crouches, peeling back the oilcloth just enough to check the seal. It’s intact. No leaks. No tampering. She swallows.

“Just a handoff,” she mutters. “Then gone.”

She straightens, scanning the street. The dyehouse windows are dark. The river runs slow and indifferent. Somewhere a dog barks, then goes quiet. No footsteps. No runner. No nervous apprentice pretending not to watch her from across the way.

She considers her options.

Leaving the crate here is impossible. Too many eyes could grow curious by morning. Turning it in to someone else would mean explaining how she got it. That conversation ends badly, no matter how it starts.

Which leaves only one thing.

The bar is a bad idea the moment she pushes the door open.

Too bright. Too open. The kind of place where people watch each other because there’s nothing else to do. Afternoon drinkers. Dockhands between shifts. A woman asleep at a table with her head on her arms like she’s pretending.

Violet tells herself: Just sell it. In and out.

She orders something cheap she won’t finish and takes the seat at the far end of the bar, waiting for the right moment.

An opportunity presents itself first.

Violet slides down from her stool when no one’s looking, ducks under the bar and out the employee’s entrance to where the delivery bay is. The cold air braces her slightly - and then the scent of half smoked cigarettes releases her. She opens the crate.

The smell hits first.

Sweet. Green. Too alive. She tells herself she’s checking quality. That a bad batch won’t sell. That she needs to know what she’s offering.

The warmth blooms too fast.

That’s how she knows she’s fucked. Her breath stutters, then smooths. The noise of the bar fades into something manageable. The edges of the world soften, like someone’s rubbed a thumb over wet ink.

She sways.

Someone clears their throat.

Violet looks up.

The barkeep is staring at her — not angry, not alarmed — just tired, eyes flicking to the blue stain on her fingertip, the half-open crate, the way she’s leaning like gravity is optional.

He doesn’t shout.

That’s worse.

“You can’t do that here,” he says flatly.

A couple patrons glance over, through the open door. One of them snorts.

“Figures,” someone mutters. “Middle of the day.”

Violet opens her mouth to explain — to say she’s selling, to say she has coin coming, to say anything that makes her sound like she belongs —but the words come out slow, wrong-shaped.

“I’m working,” she says.

Her room is three floors up, cheap and forgettable, the kind of place no one looks twice at. She locks the door behind her, wedges a chair under the handle, then sets the crate on the table like it might bite.

She doesn’t open it at first.

She washes her hands instead. Again and again, until the skin burns. When she looks up, her reflection in the cracked mirror is sharp-eyed, pale, too thin. She looks like herself.

That steadies her.

She cuts the twine.

Inside, the bottles are packed tight, nestled in straw. Violet lifts one free, holding it to the lantern light. The liquid inside is the deep, dangerous blue she remembers too well, like twilight caught in glass.

High quality. Clean. Potent.

She could try again, sell it properly. Of course she could. She knows buyers who wouldn’t ask questions, who’d pay in clean coin and vanish before dawn. She could flip it fast, walk away, never touch a drop.

Her pulse picks up, traitorously.

“Fuck,” she whispers, and laughs once, short and humorless.

The scent hits her like a ghost — floral and bitter and unmistakable. Her eyes sting. For a moment she’s back in the cottage, pine needles underfoot, Maple’s jaw working beside her as they chewed the petals raw and laughed at how awful it tasted.

Her breath catches.

“That’s not fair,” she says to the empty room.

The relief is immediate and devastating. The tight coil in her chest loosens. Her thoughts slow, spreading out like ink in water. She slumps back in the chair, staring at the ceiling as the drug settles into her bones.

There it is.

The quiet.

The warmth she’s been chasing since Astrid left.

Two months later, Astrid comes back with a gift: a ribbon, dyed a deep blue-purple, knotted with care.

Violet doesn’t meet her eyes when she accepts it.

The next job, she plays a song not joyous, but mournful. Pretends to be a busker outside the warehouse, gathering rich guards who take pity on her, her elegy for a late partner who has left her destitute, and offer spiced bread with raisins, and coins, and bottles of ale.

The night is humid, sticky with the smell of river and rot.

Violet checks the ropes and knives again, moving like she’s done this a hundred times before, but her fingers twitch too fast. The myosotis hums in her veins — steady, precise, warming her chest, dulling her caution.

Violet heard too late, the note too flat to be a mistake, and stumbled into the corridor a second too late. She tripped a thin wire. A crate tipped. It fell on a man they hadn’t planned for. The world is alarms and gunfire. Violet snatches up a crate, smashes the glass vials on the floor, then spins toward the exit. Ilsa yells, firing at the nearest lantern.

Sparks and smoke flare.

They burst into the alley.

Violet doesn’t look back.

They find a room. One night only. Astrid bolts the door with hands that don’t shake, not anymore.

Violet drops her pack and laughs.

“We pulled it off,” she says. “Little messy, but—”

Astrid turns.

Her face is pale. Controlled. Finished.

“You missed the cue.”

Violet shrugs. “I recovered.”

“You missed the cue,” Astrid repeats. “That’s not…that’s not you, Violet.”

“I know.”

“No,” Astrid says softly. “You don’t.”

Violet steps closer. The room tilts. She reaches out. Astrid pulls back.

Violet tries to laugh it off. “Hey. Come on.”

She leans in to kiss her.

She misjudges the distance.

Her mouth brushes Astrid’s cheek instead, clumsy, wrong. She stumbles forward, catches herself on Astrid’s shoulder, breath hot and uneven.

Astrid freezes.

Then she gently — gently — pushes Violet away.

“Don’t.”

The word lands clean.

Violet blinks, confused. Hurt flickers through the fog.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Astrid says. Her voice breaks there, just a little. She swallows it down.

Silence fills the room. Thick. Unavoidable.

“You scared me tonight,” Astrid continues.

Violet opens her mouth.

Nothing comes out.

She looks at Violet one last time — really looks — like she’s memorizing the shape of her for a song she’ll never finish.

Then, she reaches for her pack.

Violet sits down hard on the edge of the bed.

Her hands are still shaking, but not from the drug.

She presses her palms together, trying to remember the sound of the third note.

She can’t.

And for the first time, the myosotis doesn’t help at all.

It takes a few months before Violet admits to herself that she is alone again.

It’s been weeks since Rowan’s arrest — his empty chair at the table like a warning she didn’t want to read. And yet she’d kept herself busy: small jobs, walking the alleys, counting coin, pretending. Pretending that nothing had changed. Pretending she could still hold a crew together, or a life that mattered.

Ilsa corners her in the kitchen that night, leaning on the edge of the table, eyes sharp.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” she says.

Violet stares at her, folding her hands. “I’m… fine,” she muttered.

Ilsa leaned closer. “Rowan wanted it this way. You know that, right? He thought prison was better than leaving you to clean up after him.”

“I—”

“Say it,” Ilsa demanded. Her voice was low, steady, not cruel.

Violet’s response was to tear out the room. She tells herself it’s to clear her head. Maybe to score. Maybe to sell. The street lamps smear gold across the slick cobblestones, the smell of smoke and rain in the air. Her hands feel empty without it. She walks fast, each step thudding like a drumbeat she couldn’t quiet.

The corners are familiar. The door she’d always slipped through, the alleyways that hid her from eyes that didn’t care. The alley is narrow and reeking, as always. Smoke from the tavern curls up through the iron grates, carrying the tang of burnt fat and wood ash. Violet slides the crate from under her cloak, the familiar weight of it pressing against her hip.

“Anthus,” a voice calls from the shadows. A man, grizzled, leaning against the wall, pipe smoldering. His teeth are crooked; the codename slips from his mouth as easily as his orders used to, the syllables like a key into an old, dangerous room.

Violet nods, lips dry, and sets the crate down on the chipped stone.

“Evening,” he says. “Thought you’d gone quiet on us.”

“I had… business,” she murmurs, keeping her eyes low. Her fingers hover over the crate. The smell of the flowers curls around her like a sigh.

He grins. “For you, always a discount. Run anything you like, just… don’t overstay, Anthus.”

She nods again, fingers brushing the buds. The ritual is familiar: open the crate, sift through the bottles, check the texture, the hue. The sediment is a little darker than she remembers, richer. She dips a finger, smells it, tests the warmth. Already, her pulse softens, a wave rolling through her, smooth and terrible.

A pair of boys appear on the other side of the alley, nodding to her. They know her codename too. “Evening, Anthus,” one says, grin wide. “You running tonight?”

“Always,” she whispers, almost to herself.

They’re fast. Efficient. She counts the coin later, always later. Tonight, she barely notices the weight of it. It’s enough that she’s moving again. That she’s needed, that she’s useful, even if only to these shadows.

A small thrill runs through her when one of the buyers haggles, underestimating her. “I’ll take half.”

She laughs softly, a low sound. “You’ll take nothing if you waste my time,” she says.

The boy blinks at her — disbelief, awe, respect. She always liked that moment. A flicker of control. A reminder of Anthus. That she still exists.

By the time the alley empties and the crates are lighter, Violet’s hands are trembling. Not just from the movement — from the warmth of the flowers, from the familiar pulse of her veins. She’s been here a thousand times before. She knows every echo, every shadow, every whisper.

She tucks the remaining crate under her cloak and leans against the wall. Eyes closed. Breath shallow. She lets herself sink into it. The world outside can wait. The world always waits.

For a while, she forgets. Tonight, Anthus is alive. Tonight, Anthus runs.

When she returns, the inn is quiet.

The door to their shared room hangs slightly ajar.

Ilsa is gone.

No note. No whisper of leaving. Only the faint scent of her perfume clinging to the bed linens, like a shadow that had fled before Violet could even speak.

Violet’s fingers tremble on the doorframe. Her mind races, grasping for an explanation, a way to make this feel like less than it was.

But nothing comes.