Chapter 229: Legacy.
The heavy doors clicked softly behind me as I stepped out into the sunlit yard. Bright afternoon light poured down, warm and unforgiving on the stone steps.
Pauline was coming up the stairs toward the entrance, dark glasses hiding her eyes, dressed all in black for grief. We met halfway. A half-embrace, a quick kiss on each cheek—the quiet, careful acknowledgment of two people who had once worked under the same roof and now stood on opposite sides of what that roof had become. She continued inside. I headed down the steps.
I found Mable around the side of the mansion, standing alone in a patch of direct sunlight. Her chocolate skin glowed under the harsh light, the same neat braids she’d worn the night she showed up at my hostel room in Hogsby. She spotted me and smiled—just briefly, the kind of small, instinctive smile you give a familiar face before the weight of the day crashes back in.
She stepped into me the moment I reached her. I wrapped my arms around her waist and held her close. Her head dropped onto my shoulder, and everything she’d been holding back came pouring out—quiet, steady sobs that shook her frame. The kind of grief that had been waiting for someone safe enough to break in front of.
I rubbed slow circles on her back and didn’t move, letting the sun beat down on both of us while her tears soaked into my suit jacket.
"I’m so sorry," I said, and meant nothing else by it.
We stayed like that until her breathing evened out. Then we moved together to the wide wooden veranda nearby and sat side by side on the bench, the sun warm on our faces and legs. A light breeze stirred the leaves overhead, carrying distant voices from inside the house.
"I still can’t believe he’s gone," she said, turning to look at me. Her eyes were clear now, but red-rimmed, carrying a raw honesty I didn’t know how to meet straight on.
I had been sitting across from Bala just yesterday in that same office, making plans for a world he would never see.
"Was it Sinn?" she asked, voice low and careful.
"No," I said. "It wasn’t him."
She studied my face. So many questions swam behind her eyes, none of them fully answered.
"Then who?"
"I don’t know," I said.
"You’re lying, Bram." Steady. Not accusing—just certain. "You know who did it. You don’t have to do anything about it. I just need to know."
I rested my hand on her shoulder, thumb brushing lightly over the fabric. "I really don’t know."
She held my gaze for a long moment, searching. She was an ability user. I knew exactly what she was capable of, and exactly where handing her a name would end. There was no version of that story that didn’t get her killed.
"He asked about you," she said, quieter now. "Before yesterday."
"What did he ask?"
"I told him about us once. About Hogsby." A small pause. "So before yesterday he called and asked me if you were someone he could really trust."
I kept my hand on her shoulder. All this time I’d assumed Bala’s trust had come from the Fallen City mission, from Sinn’s recommendation, from whatever I’d shown him in the short days since I arrived. But it had started here. With Mable. With whatever she’d said about the boy she’d met in the school library.
"Thank you, Bram," she said, voice soft. "For coming. For standing with him." She glanced back toward the house as the low murmur of a speech started drifting through the open windows. "We should go back inside."
I stood and offered her my hand. She took it, fingers warm and steady, and rose to her feet.
We held each other one more time, quieter than the first. The kind of embrace that didn’t need words, just the solid press of her body against mine, her braids brushing my cheek, the faint scent of her perfume mixing with the warm afternoon air.
"Reach out whenever you need to," I said against her ear as we slowly pulled apart. "I’ll do the same."
She straightened her dress with practiced hands, composing herself the way she always did, then let me hold her hand as we walked back through the heavy doors into the house.
Sinn’s voice met us immediately, measured and carrying through the big living room.
"Lord Bala believed that duty mattered more than comfort."
He stood at the front near the casket, composed and steady, the speech built exactly the way Sinn built everything—deliberate, controlled, without a single wasted word. Mable slipped away toward the front rows. I branched off at the back and dropped into the seat beside Mercury.
"But we still stand for what Lord Bala stood for," Sinn continued from the front. "As a close friend, as someone he inspired from the time I was young and who now finds himself in a position of authority, I’m going to fulfill the last thing he asked of me."
"He didn’t ask him anything," Mercury murmured beside me, staring straight ahead, her expression unreadable.
"I’m going to make sure every person inside these walls possesses an ability," Sinn declared. "I’m going to end the extraction of ability users. That was Lord Bala’s dream, and I intend to keep his legacy alive."
The room broke into applause—polite at first, then stronger. Sinn had turned a eulogy into a platform, and most of the people here were moving with it. Grief and politics tangled together in that familiar way they always did when someone in power needed both.
Bala’s dream, I thought, jaw tight. You’re using his name to push Monica Veyron’s plan and these people are clapping for it.
"We should go," Mercury said, voice low.
"Yeah," I answered. "Let’s go."
Not far from here was another burial. And unlike this one, I had a very specific reason to be there.