Forward but Never Forget/XOXO - Chapter 31 - Lullabyes (2024)

Chapter Text

Define your meanin' of war
To me it's what we do when we're bored
I feel the heat comin' off of the blacktop
And it makes me want it more

~ "Going Down" – Sick Puppies

A DAZZLING DENOUEMENT

by B. Goode

Excerpt from “A Heart for an Eye: My Time in Zaun.”

The gala was done. The speeches were made. The photo-op began.

Zaun and Piltover's parties stood together at the top of the grand staircase, framed by the floor-to-ceiling window. The bombed-out Bridge was their backdrop. A symbol of a violent past—and the promise of a hopeful future. The contrast was indecently stark: black and white, moon and shadow, flesh and bone.

Piltover’s Councilors stood glossy on the cream skimmed off a lifetime of privilege. Their hands were spotless; their faces poreless. Every inch of them spoke of privilege. Their every garment, an exquisitely tailored work of art.

Meanwhile, Zaun wore its eveningwear like a calloused claw hidden in a kidskin glove. Their scars were bare as medals. Their sharp edges cut through every word and gesture. A past of privation; a lifetime of battles. Yet they held their heads as high, and their bodies proud. Survivors.

In later decades, the commemorative photograph would be dissected ad nauseum by historians. They would note how both parties bristled with signs of private disharmony. Their bodies were anathema to each other. And yet, unavoidably, they were side by side. The Piltovan guests on the right; the Zaunite hosts on the left. Councilor Talis and Chancellor Silco, shoulder to shoulder, the gap between them impassable. Councilor Medarda, poised in the center, a golden bridge between warring halves.

And seated in the middle: Jinx.

The icon of the new era.

Body-language would be analyzed. The way Councilor Medarda tucked her hand into Councilor Talis' elbow: proprietorial, protective. The way Chancellor Silco stood with his hand on Jinx’s shoulder: possessive, prideful. Talking heads would dissect the micro-expressions caught between rigidly-artificial poses. How Councilor Talis and Chancellor Silco's stances—squared shoulders and steely eyes—spoke of their parallel temperaments. Others would argue that it denoted a masculine rivalry right down to the similar palette of suits—one pewter, the other charcoal. The astute would make note of Chancellor Silco and Councilor Medarda trading perfectly civil glances while their smiles betrayed a private amusem*nt. Others would point out Councilor Talis' stare repeatedly cutting to Jinx, each nervous twitch recorded with incriminating glee.

The Evening Express would trumpet: "STRAYING EYES–SEDUCTION AT THE SIGNING?" Their frontpage would feature Jinx with a strategically placed caption: "TEMPTRESS IN WAIT."

(The Council would denounce the paper's journalistic integrity. Councilor Talis would threaten to sue them for defamation. Once Jinx's status as a minor was disclosed, the paper would pull the issue and print a retraction. Chancellor Silco would file a lawsuit on Jinx's behalf and the Evening Express would declare bankruptcy.)

The Gentleman's Gazette would declaim: "NEW ERA OF PEACE–OR JUST THE OPPORTUNE SEASON FOR LOVE?" Their frontpage would feature Chancellor Silco and Councilor Medarda sharing a sidelong glance, Jinx sensibly eliminated from the photograph altogether. The caption would read: "LOVE'S ALL AROUND–BUT CAN IT LAST?"

(Jinx would retaliate by spray-painting a giant middle finger on the Gazette's headquarters. Chross, owner of the enterprise, would hire security to keep her from repeating the prank. Afterward, Chancellor Silco would pay Chross a visit and negotiate Jinx's exclusive right to vandalize the Gazette whenever it printed salacious piffle with his name attached.)

The Sun & Tower, more sagely, would observe: "THE NEW ERA: BROTHERS & SISTERS." Their frontpage would feature Chancellor Silco alongside Councilor Medarda and Councilor Talis, Jinx respectfully relegated to the background. The caption would read: "COULD THIS BE THE FIRST STEP?"

(Chancellor Silco would purchase shares in the Sun & Tower and generously set up a journalist exchange program between Piltover and Zaun. The paper would publish puff-pieces with clockwork regularity. The adulation would work wonders for his city's image.)

History would, as history does, lend its wisdom. Parallels would be drawn; contrasts made. The cynical would fathom intimations of hostility. The romantic would project liaisons. The naïve would spin a tapestry of hope. And the rest of the world would wait. For reneged promises. For renewed faith. For the future.

For that was, undoubtedly, where this photograph would lead.

None would correctly predict Chancellor Silco and Councilor Medarda's scandalous affair, born less of impulse than a growing intrigue for each other's intellect. How Councilor Talis and Councilor Medarda's fairytale romance would disintegrate into regret and recrimination barely a fortnight after the Treaty. Nor would they foresee Councilor Talis' resignation, or his falling-out with his Hex-tech partner, Viktor. They would not know how the two men would remain embroiled in a lifelong rivalry, each nursing bitterness like a favored brandy. Likewise, they would never predict that Chancellor Silco and Councilor Talis would one day share something of greater significance than a Peace Treaty, and that it would pave the way for a grudging respect.

Meanwhile, Zaun and Piltover's simmering hostility would symbolize the Treaty's own failings—a fragile accord built on shifting sands. It would take narrowly-averted disaster for real dialogue to transpire. To usher in a renaissance of rapprochement.

History will, as history does, miss the vital fact. Nobody can predict the future. Not even historians.

But that's for later.

For now, the photograph captured a single moment: two cities bearing witness to their leaders' uneasy co-existence. Between flashbulbs, Piltover's dignitaries flicked cautious glances at their Zaunite counterparts, as if fearful of getting mauled. The Zaunites, for their part, bared sharp imperfect teeth in satisfied leers. Savoring everything; forgetting nothing.

The only one who didn't smile was Jinx.

Posed in the center, she sat like an ethereal fey caught between worlds. At her throat, the Hex-gem glowed the color of polar twilight. She didn't flinch when the fireworks erupted. But her eyelids grew heavy. Her expression held an air of enigma, at once eerie and melancholy. Between flashbulbs, she dipped her head.

A peculiarity occurred—a sheet of dark clouds unfurled over the moon. A single spectral beam fell through the window. It dusted Jinx, motionless, with a preternatural radiance. A lovely demi-demon in a congregation of mortals.

Moments later the moon was unveiled again. A prank by the gods, or Janna herself.

"The Witch Bred For War," some headlines would say. Others: "Hex-gems: Charm or Curse?"

None would divine the truth.

Jinx, fatigued by the celebrations, had fallen asleep.

She neither heard the salutary speeches, nor feel felt the moonlight on her skin. But she must have dreamed, as children do. Of monsters and mayhem. Of war and peace.

Of, perhaps, a better world.

Until—

"Jinx!" a photographer cried. "Smile!"

Jinx jerked. A dozen flashbulbs popped. Her reflexes kicked in, quick as lightning.

Or a grenade.

It flew skyward. The pin clattered to the carpet. Smoke plumed from the detonator.

Chancellor Silco reacted on instinct. He leapt forward, encircling Jinx, his body curved over hers. Councilor Talis surged in the same moment. He swept Councilor Medarda aside, her cry swallowed by the pandemonium. Hoskel hollered. Kiramman screamed. The rest of the guests scrambled back.

The camera's collective gaze, transfixed by the grenade, tracked its arc.

Glitter erupted in a purple spiderweb. Then it burst into a million tiny lights. A supernova in miniature.

It was, as it turned out, a prank. One of Jinx's glitter-bombs.

Relief broke in a thunderclap. Councilor Shoola sagged, her silk handkerchief pressed against her gleaming forehead. Councilor Salo, having ducked behind Councilor Kiramman's skirts, peeked out. Baron Chross heaved a mighty laugh that ended in a bronchial hack. Baroness Margot, whose heels had snagged on the carpet, was assisted to her feet by Councilor Hoskel. Some guests chuckled nervously. Others, braver, applauded. Even Councilor Talis' lips twitched, though it was with sheepishness when he realized that his protective embrace had landed him and Councilor Medarda in compromising proximity. She, it must be said, did not seem to mind. Her palm starfished his chest. They shared a private look, and disentangled.

All eyes fell upon Chancellor Silco and Jinx.

His body still sheltered her in an embrace. She peered up at him, eyes wide. Then her lips split into a woozy grin. In that moment, Zaun's most notorious looked as guileless as a child does upon opening a box full of surprises. Her tiny hands clutched the Chancellor's lapels. She nuzzled in, a laugh bubbling up.

"Oopsie!"

The Chancellor's teeth flashed like razors—he didn’t need an instant to orient himself; he knew exactly what had happened—before his scarred features rearranged themselves. The ferocity of instinct was subsumed by such a pitch of paternal tenderness that he scarcely resembled the same man. He smoothed his knuckles down the curve of Jinx's skull. His eyes passed in a head-to-toe scrutiny, a predator ensuring his pup was intact.

Only after he'd satisfied himself did he turn to the cameras. His expression dared a single flashbulb to go off. He did not offer a smile. The press was not permitted to record the Chancellor's slip into tenderness. But the ferocity of his encompassing embrace spoke for itself.

Recalling the scene now, at the remove of fifty years, I am always struck by the chance alignment: a flashbang, a furor, and a father's love on full display. Somehow, it was as fateful as the commemorative photograph. All the future times I would spend in the Chancellor's company, in the most intimate of circ*mstances, and yet this struck a tenor that resonated long after the rest was forgotten.

A thousand photographs could not do it justice.

As it was, not a single photo was taken. The Chancellor straightened, one arm still loosely encircling Jinx. She swayed, tucked against his side. Adrenaline crash, I would later learn. It drags at the body like an undertow. Her lids drooped. With a fingertip, she sketched something across the Chancellor's shirtfront.

X-O-X-O.

The Chancellor's eyes flicked down, then up. The barest nod. Then he turned to his guests.

His farewell, in the characteristic graveled tenor, was faithfully recorded.

In later years, it would be quoted more than any of the Chancellor’s diabolic masterpieces of oratory. The statement would serve to characterize his entire tenure. From the burning night he took the oath of office to the last of his days: a man who could seamlessly transition from sanctioning atrocity to safeguarding family. A man of split faces, and a dozen facets.

A man who wore each with consummate flair.

"War," he said, "hath murder'd many. Jinx past her bedtime? Let’s not tempt fate further."

There was laughter, and a smattering of applause. The festivities drew to a close.

By tomorrow morning, the gala would go down in history. A new epoch would dawn. Progress would march ever-onward.

The glitter-bomb would be forgotten. And yet nobody who'd witnessed the blast would be left untouched by its aftershocks.

In charmed or cursed ways.

The shadowed Aerie is softened by the radiance of a single blue oil-lamp.

Silco treads silently toward the stairs. The guests—chem-barons and Councilors—have retired to the east wing of his headquarters. His staff have already begun preparations for tomorrow's breakfast. The skeleton crew, mirroring, have begun preparations of a darker stripe.

By morning, Silco will have a detailed report of everyone who stayed overnight. He'll know who slept too little, who drank too much, who had nightmares and who sought comfort in the arms of another. Viktor will be a book, opened and read. Talis, a cut of meat, ready for the knives. Medarda, a riddle to be slowly unraveled.

The rest will be their usual selves: complacent, predictable, opportunistic. But Silco is sure there will be useful nuggets to glean by daylight. Chross' favorite cognac; Hoskel's midnight snack; Margot's pillow-talk. The arrogant are always at their most careless when drunk on success.

It's how they lose the game.

Silco's mind stays synced to the bottom-line. But as the hour waxes, it sidetracks into darker loops. No word from Sevika or the crew. Their business with Vi and the warmasons ought to have concluded. Yet all is quiet on the western front. The tension, a tiny vein throbbing in his left temple, is bothersome. He'd hoped to have a steadying moment with Sevika before retiring, but it looks like that will have to wait.

In his embrace, Jinx stirs. "…mn?"

"Ssh," Silco says. "Nearly there."

Her lashes flutter. She nestles her cheek against his brocaded breast, a small fist curled over his heart. Silco, powerless, lets his world close to nothing but Jinx's smallness in his arms.

She'd kept leaning heavily on his shoulder during their climb. Midway, indulgent, Silco had gathered her in. Swung her up like a babe borne to bedtime. Up close, her hair and clothes are strung with motes from the dinner: the mélange of champagne, smoke, strangers' perfumes and colognes. Her pale cheeks are mottled with fatigue, the eyelids drooping. But her lips twitch in a dreamy smile.

The Hex-gem glows like a star at the base of her throat.

Seven hours and thirty minutes since she'd first let Silco slip it around her neck. Now those hours have sluiced away. There is only a sense of bittersweet homecoming. Magnus flows like a shadow in Silco's wake. With a snap of his fingers, Silco bids the beast to guard the foot of the staircase.

The path, he climbs alone.

Silently, he bears Jinx over the threshold of the fourth floor, and into the colorful clutter of her room. The dangling tinsels and electric whirr of trinkets exude a life of their own, stroking threads of shadow everywhere. The room holds a tinge of the otherworldly. A twilit realm under the sea.

Comforting—and yet a chill catwalks down Silco's spine.

Like he and Jinx are being watched.

In his arms, Jinx comes to with a tiny jolt. "Mrrrrp."

Silco's palm rests against her skull, cupping behind ear. "Easy."

Her eyes slit open, a pink glitter. "Party's over?"

"Nearly."

"Huh?"

"There will be the afterparty. But it's business."

"Serious business?"

"Just a few deals to cinch. It's mostly investors from Piltover. I'll take my time with them." He speaks softly, refusing to rip the veil of repose. "You can rest."

"Good." Her mouth yawns open to reveal sharp white teeth and a pink horseshoe of tongue. "Fuggin' Pilties."

"Language."

Unrepentant, Jinx stretches. A wealth of restless heat under sheaves of pink chiffon. But there's no chance of dislodging her. Silco's grip is secure. Muscle-memory, and the hard-won habit of holding tight to what's his. Except, moments like these, where she oscillates between a child's delight and woman's guile, he doesn't know how to hold on to her.

She's growing up so fast. Disorientingly fast. Sometimes, when he isn't paying attention, the epiphany sneaks up on him like a gut-punch: the crashing dismay of a life-changing event that's happening without his consent. Faced with the metamorphosis, Silco can do nothing but hold on, lest he fall off the edge of a world that is only just beginning to make sense.

(Is that fatherhood?)

In the dark, Jinx’s eyes find his. "I did good tonight."

It is spoken with lazy smugness. But beneath that is a tiny question: Right?

Silco nods. "You were perfect."

"Yeah?"

"Just irreverent enough to charm them into dropping their guards." His thumb strokes the hollow behind her ear. "And just deadly enough to scare the living daylights out of them."

Jinx's purrs; he's found the sweet-spot. The flirtatious fey of a moment ago is replaced by a contented child. For a moment, he glimpses again his little one with the blue mop of hair, the sweet squinched-up face. From the recesses of her workshop, he can hear the scratchy tenor of the phonograph playing.

The song, its pure notes, its wistful cadences, are a memory-jolt.

There’s a girl in town and word’s gone around she’s just fine
So I don’t worry my head 'cause I know her heart is tied to mine...

He's never liked this number. It was Vander's favorite—the one he'd dance to with Lika, the pair of them swaying around the scudded floorboards at the Last Drop, or below the low-hanging blue lanterns at the Nymph. He'd croon the lyrics in his rough bass, grinning, and Lika would laugh her tinkling laugh.

The sight used to nauseate Silco. But he'd never deny how happy they always looked. The kind of happy that was forever.

Till death do us part—and not a day less.

The same song that'd played when Nandi had first floated into Silco's world, and stayed for three sweet summers.

Then, in a blink, been snatched away.

Now the song's a starburst of flying shrapnel. Blood and bone, and the stench of corpses voiding their bowels across the cobblestones. A temple reduced to a slaughterhouse; a bridge of bodies engulfed in flames. It's a song of disillusionment and lost dreams. The kind of love that's meant to end in heartbreak.

Or the bottom of the river.

Yet, Silco lets Jinx play it on the phonograph. Year after year. On Bloody Sunday, they've curled together under his bedsheets with a breakfast tray, and dipped their bread in hot chocolate to its bittersweet refrains. On the Day of Ash, they've toasted drinks to it, and shared a crooked set of smiles at the irony, the tragedy, the cosmic f*cking joke of the song's endurance in their lives. On the nights Silco goes to bed late after a long day in the war-room, he'll sometimes jolt awake to a small weight against his ribs. Jinx's cheek pillowed on his chest. She'll have fallen asleep listening to the song on his phonograph.

It's not a bad song.

Like so many others—Dear Friend Across the River, The Wave-Soaked Maiden—it's followed him into the shadows. It tugs at him, sepia-toned, with memories of the days when hope was a real thing. When love lasted the distance.

It's the same for Jinx. He knows that. The song is a connection to the mother she barely remembers, but still loves with a child's ferocity. To the sister she lost, and the innocence that fled with her. To a past that'd closed over and become a grave.

A song that is, ultimately, her connection to him. And his to her.

Because the past's done, but Jinx makes the present better. Makes it bearable. She gives him a reason to look beyond his next breath. To map out a future that's more than a cold bed and a shallow grave.

A life where he isn't alone.

"Silco?"

He rouses. "Hm?"

"I'm sorry." Jinx’s voice is tiny. "About... before."

"Before?"

"The grenade." Morosely, she plucks at his lapel. "It was a—a brain-flash. For a sec I thought—"

"The Siege. I know."

"So dumb." She hitches a frustrated sound. "Stupid."

The voice doesn't belong to Jinx, but Powder. The little girl's ghost will always haunt Jinx’s triumphs. As if a child could ever atone for what a grown man had set into motion.

If anyone is guilty, it's him. For all his sins, and the consequences they'd wrought.

For her, most of all.

("Because you're a man who'd eat his own before ceding a single inch.")

Silco hides a flinch.

The revelation of the Siege—Talis’ blunt bombshell—still throbs in his skull. The horror dopplering in its wake carries a numb sense of disconnection. Part of him is still trying to parse out its enormity. The other part wants to crawl under a rock and process, process, process.

He tells himself it's too late for takebacks. A victory—an easy one, even, if only he'd taken Talis's offer at the battlements—is absurd to the point of fantasy. There is no conceivable way that the Council, after decades of blindness, were ready to turn a new leaf. That they'd have let Zaun—and its wealth of mineral resources—walk free. That the Hex-gem wouldn't have been confiscated; that Jinx wouldn't have been arrested—or outright assassinated.

They'd never have let her to walk free. Not after her long list of crimes.

Not with Silco as her father.

(And that was the point, wasn't it, Talis?)

(To make a deal with a snake—and cut off his head.)

No: the Council would've kept its chokehold over the Undercity. Through bureaucracy; through legalese; through the slow, corrosive poison of a thousand tiny delays and dead-ends. Silco would've gotten a nation, all right. But one gift-wrapped in red-tape—the freedom a paper-thin farce, the status quo a locked box. And Zaunites, once again, paying through the nose for their birthright.

He would've paid, too, in the end. They'd have put a bullet through him by the year's end. And the rest—Sevika, the crew—they'd have been the next in line for a public execution.

No: it's too late for takebacks. There is no easy win; no free lunch. Every step to progress is paid for in blood, and he's paid it in full. Every night, he dreams in technicolor of the dividends.

But in his dreams, Jinx is his, and happy, and whole.

Silco cradles Jinx's skull in his palm.

"Ssh."

"You're not mad?"

"Far from it." His lips find the soft crown of her head. "The grenade was my favorite part."

"Really?"

"Terrifying the Councilors and chem-barons in one fell swoop? I'll remember the look on their faces until my dying day." His lips curl despite himself: bitter pleasures. "Pity I've had the camera reels confiscated. Otherwise I'd frame that shot and hang it above my desk."

Jinx giggles. The sound is so incongruously pure, so far removed from the hellion she's played downstairs, that he's moved to circle her closer. He is a monster, yes. But because he's a monster, he will, selfishly, hoard what he can. Outside this tower, the guilt—the crushing, endless guilt—will twist like an ouroboros in his gut. And his joys—black, bloodstained, bilious—will be fewer and farther in between.

But here, in this tower, he possesses the treasure of a kingdom. This precious girl, who's been hurt so badly, and yet trusts him with every ounce of herself.

A gift he's never earned.

Our love, deeper than any ocean
Our love, for eternity...

"You're really not mad?" Jinx asks again. "You've been... kinda quiet, since the party."

"I thought you liked me being quiet." He's said it to tease, but there's no denying the concern in her eyes. He tries a softer tack. "I suppose I've yet to... take everything in."

"Like what?"

"The Treaty. The city. Ours at last."

Her smile is slow, tentative. "Ours, and forever."

"And nary a bomb to blow up our peace."

"Guess the jinx got unjinxed."

"It did." He drops a kiss to her forehead. "It has."

Carrying her to the bed, he lays her down gently. Jinx kicks her feet in an irritable shimmy. One ballet slipper flies off. Silco ducks; it thuds against the wall. He helps her pry off the other. With a slow lovingness of coordination, they peel her chiffon gown and tulle underskirt off. Silco arranges it all on a nearby chair.

Jinx starfishes in the middle of the bed, in a knee-length satin slip. The Hex-gem still glitters on her throat. When Silco reaches to unclasp the necklace, she shakes her head.

"Leave it."

"It might get lost in the sheets."

"Nah." She lifts the gem, whorled in wire, between thumb and forefinger. "It'll never let me go."

An inexplicable chill climbs Silco's spine. "Pledged for life, hm?"

"Yup. Till death do us part." She touches her lips to the gem. A scintilla of pink fire, like the last flicker of a lightning-strike, refracts in the sphere. "We'll go places. Me an' Gemmie. We'll make Zaun the strongest city in Runeterra. An' we'll make you proud."

Silco swallows a barb in his throat. "I already am."

The gem falls, and dangles. A blue comet in a constellation of milky freckles. The sight tugs at something in Silco. Gravity—or premonition. He still remembers the night she'd presented him this damnable rock, and its promise of progress. How he'd been too dazzled to see the charm from the curse.

The price in flesh and blood, not mystical but human.

He tells himself there is no use in dwelling. Not when his entire life is a formula of brute equity. Cost; reward. Yet only here can he spend without a fraction of return. The selfishness and the generosity are inseparable; at their crux is Jinx. What he can do for her—versus what he will do to anyone who comes between them.

A small palm cups his cheek. Fingertips cool as a specter's.

"Hey," Jinx breathes. "Where'd ya go?"

"Nowhere."

He dispels the spiral with a single blink. The world refocuses. He is with his girl, and the moment is perfect.

Tugging the bedcovers down, he lures Jinx amongst the heaped pillows and stuffed animals. Throws a duvet over her, tucks it around her body. Ordinarily, he'd suggest a session of tooth-brushing and pajama-donning first. But Jinx is already on the shores of sleep; he refuses to disturb its rolling waves.

Rest is a rarity for his girl. Let her have her fill.

He begins to withdraw. Jinx catches his hand. Her lips stir to ask a question.

"What're you up to, Silly?"

"What do you mean?"

"The business. The wheelies and dealies. The Medarda." Her little nose, poking from a curtain of hair, wrinkles. "You've told me all about your Four Horsem*n and the businessy stuff. The plans for Zaun and Topside. But I still feel like we're in the middle of a grift."

"Everything is a grift, child."

"Yeah. But like. A biiiiiiig grift. Or maybe a tightrope. A tightrope blowin' in the wind, and on one side there's Zaun, and on the other side there's this big fat question mark, and you're walkin' along, juggling a buncha rubber balls, except they're not balls, they're chainsaws, and any minute now you're gonna lose grip and it'll all fall down like the Bridge and bury us."

Silco crooks a brow. "Bury us under all those similes, perhaps."

"Ah, quiddit!" She tugs his hand chidingly. "I'm serious."

Her tone starts off lilting. But by the end it flatlines into an uneasy sulk. Her eyes flicker up at him through spiky lashes, an oblique scrutiny of his emotional temperature. Silco holds himself in a place of stillness. Or as still as a man can be with a living river of schemes inside him. Their preamble is as long as his life's story. But their gist only takes one sentence to tell.

Unfortunately, it's not yet time to tell it.

Kneeling, Silco caresses Jinx's hair, smoothing it back from her hot forehead. "There's no grift, child. Nor is there a tightrope."

"What then?"

Silco's tongue burns with secrets. Secrets about Vi. Secrets about Medarda. Secrets about Noxus. But he's paralyzed by the knowledge that Jinx cannot know these details. Not yet. Power is only a bluff without an ace up the sleeve. He's determined to play his cards right, to set off a chain of consequences that will save Zaun from future fatality. Leave it strong for all of them. For Jinx.

Because Jinx is at the center of this gamble.

Quietly, he says, "Consider it a game of equity."

"Equity?"

"The currency of revolution." His knuckles skim along her cheek. "Zaun was cheated out of so much in the past. So were you. Food. Sunlight. Happiness. In the future, I want you to have all of that. I want you to stand strong, in a fortified home. Because otherwise they will all come for us with sharpened teeth. Piltover. Noxus. Bilgewater. They'll halve and quarter our home and tear us to pieces."

"I won't let them," Jinx says, and that old spark infuses her voice. "I'm Zaun's monster, remember?"

"Champion."

"You like monsters more than champions."

It's true, and Silco half-smiles at the irony. Then he sobers. "I'd like you no matter who you are, Jinx. I owe you everything. Zaun does. All our suffering, our suffocation, our subservience. Everything undone by your hand. You've rescued us. Rescued me. You are the hero of my whole life."

Jinx colors up, lashes dipping. Her smile is a wobbly tease. "You never leave the pulpit, do ya?"

"I mean it."

More than that. He needs her to know it. Not as patronizing puffery that makes light of his child's courage, treating her as a clever little monkey performing his bidding in a circus—but as the miracle she is. A comet, a catastrophe, a consecration. A marvel that circ*mstances had mysteriously assembled to cross his path, so like any starved sumpsnipe, he'd stolen her in a twinkling. Treasuring her forever, keeping her close, so he'd always have her light to warm him.

He's only alive because he loves her. Because he is her father. If he loses that, he loses himself.

And Zaun loses everything.

Jinx's hands are still clutching his palm. He takes them in both of his, and squeezes. A silent message: Thank you and Good night. But Jinx rears up and catches him in her arms, enfolding him so tight that Silco nearly pitches headlong into her narrow bed. Such a ferocious hug, it makes her usual exuberant approximations into drowsy forgeries.

Caught off-guard, Silco hitches a breath before gathering her close. His cold hands cradle Jinx's head, a fragile eggshell containing a cosmos.

"I mean it," he repeats, "You are perfect. Perfect. You were today, and you will be every day after. All I want is to repay your gift."

"You don't gotta."

"I do." A rueful smile. "Because it's a gift to do anything for you."

"Likewise," Jinx whispers.

"That's not how gifts work."

"I thought you believed in tit-for-tat." Her breath tickles his scarred cheek. "Payback, or whatever."

"Daughter, not debtor, Jinx."

"Huh." Jinx pulls back, a contemplative moue "So it's like, what's mine is yours?"

"Something like that." Silco's fingertips find the gem. It is warmed from her skin. "I don't want to hold you back, child. You're a brilliant force, and I want the world to see it. I want everyone to know your name. To speak it, not in shouts but whispers. But I also want to make sure that no matter how high you fly, there is a place for you here."

"Our Safe Spot."

"That's right." He touches her chin. "My room. My desk. Our Zaun. Whatever you need, it's yours. I'll make sure of it." He takes a measured breath. The air is suffused with her scent: candied cherry and stardust. "Until then, rest easy. This is the first day of the new age. Tomorrow, our work begins. Tonight, you dream."

"Mmm." Her lashes flutter, and her skull falls against his shoulder. "Stay?"

"Wouldn't you rather call Magnus?"

"Later." She keeps a stubborn grip on his lapels. "Please?"

Silco hesitates. His mind is a rolodex of priorities. Sevika, and the crew. Vi and the warmasons. The investors; the Council; the chem-barons. There are papers to sign and secrets to trade. He has a thousand things to do before sunrise, and not nearly enough hours in the night.

And yet Jinx, half-drowsing, holds him happily hostage. Her lips, cherry-gloss sticky, kiss the crooked bridge of his nose. Then she pulls back just far enough to nuzzle his scarred cheek: a velvety glide on rough cicatrix. His skin burns in her wake. Gratitude is a stake driven through his black heart.

She's the only one who'd dare. The only secret he'd never trade.

Against his neck, Jinx whispers, "Bet I'll make ya fall asleep soon."

"Hm," he agrees. "You just might."

He cradles Jinx against the armature of his body. His palm smooths her hair, and finds the knots. The strands, tweaked, unravel. He unravels with her. Sighing, Jinx scooches closer; his arm encircles her. Their heads temple together on the same pillow.

Outside, the fizzle of fireworks goes off. Cheers drift up. Silco fancies he can hear the first footsteps of a new epoch.

Then he hears real footsteps.

A heartbeat later, a hand seizes his throat, a hand so insistently powerful that memory strobes in a nightmare starbust—Vander?—a moment before he's wrenched away from Jinx and hauled through the air, glimpsing a contorted face and rageful eyes right before a fist slams into his retinas, no longer a starburst but a flashbang that sends him rocking back, his hands flying up instinctively as blood fills his senses and a snarl fills his ears:

"Get the f*ck off my sister!"

A moment later, Jinx unleashes a ragged scream.

"VI?!"

The last time Vi heard her sister scream that way was on a night fourteen years ago.

Bloody Sunday.

She hasn't thought of it in years, and it is surreal to remember it now. So much has happened since, it feels as if lifetimes have passed. But nothing is truly forgotten, and her memories, once dredged, come crashing to the surface. A night that began in dread, and ended in bloodshed.

Same as tonight.

She remembers when news reached their home, Mom was by the stove, making a gruel-and-potato stew. Powder, four years old, was doodling fish on the walls with her chalk nubs. Vi was keeping an eye out to make sure she didn't nibble on it. Her sister had been chewing on stuff ever since getting her first loose tooth. She'd also been biting people who pestered her: the kids, the adults. Even Mom, which had earned her a scolding.

Vi, who'd already lost all her baby teeth, learned the best way to keep Powder distracted was with a game.

The formula was simple. Vi was a fearsome warrior. Powder, a brave sorceress. Her sister, armed with her chalk, would scribble make-believe runes over the walls. Each one would conjure a different spell. Her favorite was the Rainbow Lightning, an incantation that sent the monster recoiling.

Vi would yowl, clutch her chest, and drop to the floor with a theatrical thud. She would lie still, until her sister came close, and then she'd pounce. Powder would shriek, scrambling out of reach. Vi would chase her around the house until they ran out of steam and collapsed into laughter.

That’s how it always went. The game, the chase, and their laughter.

That night, laughter was in limited supply. Maybe they were all feeling it. A strange sense of portent.

Or maybe it was because Dad was in jail.

Last month, he'd neglected to pay a fine for his shop. Enforcers had hauled him off to the garrison for a fortnight. It was dismally common in the Undercity. As was the likelihood of a man succumbing to stabbings or beatings while locked up. Worse, there was no way to get word from the inside. No way to know if your loved-one was safe.

Vi's mind was full of terrible images. Dad, his body broken, tossed in a cell. Dad, a corpse in a mass grave, buried under concrete. Dad, gone. Never coming back.

Small wonder Mom was so high-strung. She'd put up a brave front. But Vi knew the signs: her clever fingers jittering, her eyes too bright, her smile too fixed. The worst thing was, Powder would catch the vibe. Her mood would shift in sympathy. If Mom was tense, then Powder would be antsy. If Mom was sad, then Powder would be inconsolable. Already, she'd had two meltdowns, and was working up to a third.

Vi was the equalizer.

Each day, she took it upon herself to keep Powder cheerful, and keep Mom from unraveling. It was no kid-sized job. But she'd done her best: peeling potatoes for Mom's stew while she chitchatted with Powder, and blue outlines of fish danced across the walls. From the rickety phonograph, the scratchy refrains of an old ballad filled their dank little kitchen.

There’s a girl in town and word’s gone around she’s just fine
So I don’t worry my head 'cause I know her heart is tied to mine...

The song was Mom's favorite. Since Vi was a toddler, she'd danced with her to it, Vi balanced on her insteps and their hands linked together. Later, after Powder came along, Mom would sing it to her until she'd drifted off to sleep. Sometimes Dad would be there, and he'd hum the bars of the chorus. The melody had seeped into Vi's marrow, so it was like having a piece of Mom's heart, and Dad's warmth, and Powder's laughter, tucked inside herself.

The tune, and their happiness, followed her like a lucky charm, all the way through the Undercity.

Now, the music played as Mom stirred the pot and Powder scribbled away. The kitchen was suffused deliciously with the smell of potato and spices. But a strange tension bubbled under the surface, a feeling that had no place in a home where there was family, and a song, and a pot of stew. Vi would've given anything for Dad to walk through the door. To hug them, the way he always did. Then, everything would be okay.

Except it wasn't Dad who knocked on the door.

It was Benzo.

"Lika! Lika! Let me in!"

Mom, frowning, threw the bolt. Benzo burst through the door. He was breathless and sweat-streaked. The words fell from him in a deluge. Enforcers had stormed Janna's Temple. They had barricaded everyone inside, including the Priestess. And the children? The children, too. He didn't know the details. All he'd heard was gunfire and screams. No one knew what was going on inside the Temple. Nobody could get in or out.

Benzo had already alerted Vander. Vander had sent runners to warn the rest of the families. They had to stay vigilant. There was no telling how many Enforcers were in the city, or what their next orders were. Benzo urged Mom to come to the Drop. The rest of the rebels were already there.

There was safety in numbers.

Vi remembers Mom's eyes had gone huge and watery. Her wooden spoon clattered. The pot bubbled over. Powder, who'd been watching from her corner, started to cry. Benzo looked near-tears himself.

Vi didn't grasp the enormity of the news. All she knew was that something terrible was unfolding.

Her sister was afraid. So was Mom.

"The children," she'd breathed. "Oh gods. The children."

"Lika—" Benzo swallowed. "There's nothing anyone can do. We need to go."

Mom nodded. The barest nod, but she'd rallied like a soldier. Vi would never forget that. The way Mom had squared her shoulders. The way she’d taken a breath, and wiped her eyes, and held out her hands to Powder and Vi like an imperative.

"Girls,” she’d said. “Let’s go."

They'd gone. Powder, still whimpering and clutching Vi's favorite stuffed bunny. Vi, holding her hand. Benzo in front, and Mom in the rear: keeping her brood safe. Vi had felt a weird sense of displacement. The streets were empty. An awful quiet hung like miasma. Sky the color of embers. Their boot soles lapping at the asphalt were the only sound.

The illusion of being ghosts haunting the streets was so powerful—except Vi knew it could snap in a moment if Enforcers saw them in the wrong place at the wrongest time.

Then the blast happened.

Vi was struck by the force of it. The resonance knocked her sideways. Powder tumbled with her. A shriek vibrated in Vi's ears. Her own. A distant smoke-cloud swelled across the rooftops. It brought with it the stench of ash and sulfur. Next came a bone-deep rumble, like a giant beast waking from sleep.

Reacting fast, Mom snatched them both up. She dragged them into the shadow of a shop awning. Benzo shielded them protectively behind his bulk. His features were ashen in recognition of what the blast meant.

"Sweet Janna." His voice was ragged. "Oh, f*ck."

"What happened?" Vi's heart was throbbing so hard her ribs threatened to crack. "What was—?"

"The Temple," Mom breathed. "They've destroyed the Temple."

"Oh, f*ck," Benzo said again.

Powder was crying. She tried to wrench out of Mom's grasp, but she kept hold. Her grip was iron. Vi was too dazed to understand why. All she knew was the smoke had grown bigger, and blacker, and there was a red tinge to it, like the world was bleeding.

Then came the debris. Tiny, burning, incandescent motes fell from the sky. They'd remind Vi, in later years, of the glitter-bombs Powder would design. Bombs with monikers like Twinkle and Pop-Rock and Comet-tail.

She'd watched the glowing embers in shock, a single thought pulsing in her head:

Are those... stars?

It seemed as if someone had scattered a fistful of space-dust from a Celestial's palm. Each speck twinkled brightly, a little supernova floating down from the heavens. It was beautiful. It was terrible. A gash in the sky, shedding tears.

Vi couldn't take her eyes from the sight.

The scintillas were chased by a spectacularly foul stench. A heartbeat later chunks of pebbles and shrapnel came raining down. One landed with a crack on the cobblestones. A shop-window splintered. A tile spun off a rooftop and crashed near Benzo's head. Something pinged off Vi's cheek, and when she touched it, her fingers were streaked with blood.

It felt like the sky had ignited. Like the entire city was going up in flames.

"Oh, gods." Mom's voice was stricken. "We've got to move."

She seized Vi and Powder by the arms, jolting them to her directive. Vi's feet skidded, barely keeping up. Powder was stumbling, sobbing. Mom, pulling them along. Benzo, a pace ahead, scanning the streets. Every now and then he’d glance back, reflexively, to reassure them.

“Nearly there, girls. Nearly there—"

A clump the size of a horse's hoof hit the ground near them. The impact sent up a shower of grit. Blinded, Vi stumbled. Powder's wail rose. Mom's arm was a vise. She half-hauled, half-dragged the girls to safety. They ducked under a low-hanging roof. When Vi blinked the dust from her watering eyes, she saw the clump was a hand.

It was pale as marble. Two fingers were missing. The wrist ended in a cauterized stump.

The sky was raining dead flesh.

Vi didn't scream. There was no breath. Just the numb vertigo of being trapped in a waking nightmare. The knowledge of how easily things could be broken. How the brokenness could encompass everything. Her home. Her family. Herself.

Powder screamed.

It was an animal wail. Muted by the roar of the explosion, then ascending in volume as she sucked in lungful after lungful of air. Louder and louder it grew, a physical force as pressurized as the blast.

Mom snatched her up, covering her mouth. Powder bit her fingers, squalling and flailing. Her scream wouldn't stop. The red light of the fire was reflected in her eyeballs, in the tears that streaked her cheeks. There was a bulge under her soot-stained blouse, where she was holding her stuffed bunny, to keep it all in, two crudely-stitched ragdoll legs dangling from the crook of her elbow.

Mom shook her. "Sssh, kitten! Sssh!"

Powder kept shrieking. Her tiny fists pounded at Mom's arms. The descant grew shriller, more agonized, until Vi was terrified of what might hear. Terrified the noise would summon Enforcers. Enforcers and gunfire and more screams.

More death.

She doesn't remember what happened next. Sometimes memory is its own mercy. It digests the worst moments into a bolus of undifferentiated blackness. The last thing she recalls is Powder's hot little hand, squeezing hers, the tiny fingers slick with sweat. She remembers wanting so badly to comfort her sister.

To promise her that everything would be okay.

The rest of the night is a blur. She has phantom flashes. Scenes without a beginning or end. Benzo must have gotten them safely to the Last Drop. There was a tangled knot of people inside. Men, wet-faced. Women, wailing. Children, too terrified to stir. And when the death-toll sounded, name after name, the silence was so tight that Vi feared it would detonate, a blast as bloody as what had swallowed the Temple.

Then the Priestess' name was called, and the silence did explode: a man's screams that went on and on, rising and falling like an unholy dirge. His dark wavy hair had been in his face, his blue eyes scorchingly hot, and Vi had known him, somehow, before Vander had loomed in, dense and immense and solid, and hauled him outside. From the window, Vi had seen Vander enfold the screaming man in his arms, an embrace so fierce it seemed he'd squeeze all the sorrow right out of him.

Except he couldn't.

The scream went on. So did the names.

Friends. Family. Neighbors. All gone.

And it was only the beginning.

Vi remembers there was a mass funeral. The Temple was a wreck, but Fissurefolk had showed up from all quarters. She remembers the bier, piled with glossy urns. Remembers the credo etched into the old stone surface. It was in Ur-Nox, a language prevalent in the old empire in Oshra Va'Zaun.

Vi couldn't read it; only mouth the syllables as they were chanted.

Die Präzision eines Zauberers

Die Entschlossenheit eines Meisters

Und so atmet die Stadt noch etwas länger.

Vi hadn't understood the meaning of the hymn. But the melody was haunting, a looping refrain that her memory still conjures in sleep. Later, she recalls how the mourners had flocked to the harbor to scatter the dead Priestess’ ashes. Then, unexpectedly, they'd sung—could she be misremembering?—the old Fissure ballad from her childhood.

There’s a girl in town and word’s gone around she’s just fine
So I don’t worry my head 'cause I know her heart is tied to mine...

Strange, but that's what is stowed into the cubbyholes of her mind. That, and the smell of the seaside and a fistful of ash scattered by a pale, long-fingered hand…

Then again, Vi’s recollections of Bloody Sunday remain spotty. The Day of Ash happened soon afterward.

And she’d lost both Mom, and Dad.

"Bloody Sunday," Vander would say in later years, in a tone of bitter remorse. "Not a day we talk about much. On account of... Well, we just don't. It's a day we were hurt in a way that can't heal so easy. The Temple was our symbol. The heart of our city. A place where folks went for comfort. Then the Enforcers came. They came and they..." His jaw worked. "They did what they always do. They hurt us."

"It's okay," Vi would say. She hated seeing him sad. "We don't have to talk about it."

"I know. I just... think it's important. That we don't forget." He’d squeezed her shoulder, gentle. "Memory's a strange thing, kiddo. Sometimes we remember more than we ought to. Sometimes, the things we ought to remember, we forget." His hand fell away. The warmth remained. "In the end, you choose what you carry forward."

Lip bit, Vi nodded.

"We all carry something," Vander said. "Every single one of us. But one man's curse is another man's charm, eh? It's up to us to keep it, or let it go. That’s what makes us who we are."

"Who we are," Vi repeated.

"Yup." He'd ruffled her hair. "One day, you'll choose who you want to be. The path you'll walk. The things you'll carry. Just remember. We must honor the dead. But the ones we love? The living? They're the ones who'll keep us whole."

Vi nodded again, thinking she understood. She'd keep her family whole. She'd protect Powder. She'd do whatever it took.

And she’d never forget.

Now, fourteen years later, the promise comes full circle.

And her sister screams.

And screams.

And screams.

"Get the f*ck off my sister!"

Seizing a fistful of Silco’s cravat, Vi slugs the left side of his face.

Her knuckles smash the angular line of his jaw. He rocks backwards through a gilt folding screen. Busted hinges, a spray of wood, and he is reeling back, then down a flight of iron stairs. They culminate into a colorfully decorated workshop. It is a high-ceilinged room smelling of turpentine, chemical dyes, and gunpowder. The shelf-lined walls are stacked with books. The worktables are covered in beakers full of bubbling liquids in candy colors. The walls, graffitied with demi-demons, transform all light into a rainbow spectrum.

In the neon-lit glow from the witch-windows, the space seems surreal.

A lair of delirium.

Somewhere in the darkened cubbyholes, a phonograph plays the old childhood ballad.

Our love, deeper than any ocean
Our love, for eternity…

Silco grasps the edge of a table and hauls himself to his feet. His mouth is specked with blood. Vi has the rare pleasure of seeing his expression of cold cunning replaced by blind animal shock. She doubts he's ever been punched—no-holds-barred punched—since taking over the Lanes.

Vi will be the caffeine that jolts him wide-awake.

"You piece of sh*t," she says. "I'm gonna break every bone in your body."

Rage fuses the words together: Breakeveryboneinyourbody. It spreads like an inferno. She can barely breathe for its boiling heat. She's never felt something so powerful. So undeniable.

A monster flexing its fists.

Powder screams. Vi rounds on her. The sight of baby sister tangled in bedsheets and near-nude at the top of the staircase makes Vi see red.

And it is Powder. Not Jinx. Powder. Her face holds that deer-in-headlights aspect Vi remembers countless times from their childhood. Her eyes huge; lip quivering. The way she'd looked whenever a brawl broke out, and she'd fall back into herself. Her whole body tensed into a tiny full-stop.

"Vi," she says, and her voice is so brittle.

So broken.

Silco did this. Broke her. Broke everything. Except this time, Vi won't give him a second chance.

There should never have been a first.

Vi's boots boom like thunder on the floorboards. A giant silver screen, littered with sticky-notes, reflects her silhouette. Silco is right there in front of her, twenty feet away, then ten, five, before a clubbing two-handed blow sends him to the floor again.

Silco backs away on palms and heels. His eyes, cored into his ashen face, resemble sunken pits of poison. His blood-smeared lips part to speak. That's what men like Silco do when they're backed against a wall—talk their way out of trouble.

Vi is done talking.

There's no erasing what she just saw him doing with Powder. No forgiveness. No mercy.

Just pure f*cking violence.

Her hands seize fistfuls of Silco's tailored coat and shove him up against a glass cabinet full of hand-tooled gunstocks. Pistols and revolvers, all elaborately engraved with designs of dragons, phoenixes, griffons. They are arranged like works of art. Like priceless treasures.

Like the girl Silco keeps in this tower. His weapon in daylight; his toy at night.

Vi can't, for one second, get the picture out of her head. She’d snuck into the Aerie while Caitlyn kept watch at the turret for blackguards. Lining her eye through a half-cracked window, Vi spotted Silco, looming out of the shadows with a motionless Powder in his arms. He’d looked horribly like some inked nightmare from her sister’s childhood doodles: jagged and sharp-mawed. And when Vi had climbed inside, there he was on top of Powder in bed. Her sister: half-naked. Silco: clutching her like he was going to rip open her ribcage and suck out her heart.

It sickens her. Not just everything she'd seen. The fact that this must have been happening for years. Years she could do nothing to stop.

Silco, hurting her sister. Twisting her. Tormenting her.

Turning her into Jinx.

The monster inside Vi's chest erupts. Engulfs her whole being.

She hits him again. Silco's skull slams back, blood streaking the cabinet. A crack spiderwebs the glass. She swings twice more, feeling skin split skin and bone connect bone. There is a terrifying sensation that if she hits hard enough, she'll drive her fist so deep into his face that she'll pulp his brains.

She wants to.

For Ekko and Benzo.

For Vander.

For her.

At the stairs, Powder is chanting, "Vi, please please please—"

Yes, Vi thinks, please.

Reflexively, her hands go for Silco's throat. The Adam's apple vibrates against her squeezing fingers. Everything in Vi likewise vibrates to end him here and now. End everything she's suffered because of him. She can imagine her boot breaking his ribs. Her hands wrist-deep in his innards. His body broken at her hands.

She can imagine killing him.

She knows, instinctively, that this insane blood-tinged rush was what Silco must’ve felt when he'd stabbed Vander. All five senses singing; the air as heady as wine. She can see it all over Silco’s face. His gaze is unwavering, pitch-black. Like he's staring past her, and straight at Vander’s ghost.

A circle squared. A debt paid full.

His eyes say: Can you take me? Can you do it? His unrepentant smile verging on serene.

f*ck.

No.

The bastard has stolen enough of Vi's life. She won't dishonor Vander's memory by forfeiting the rest for a heartbeat’s payback, no matter how cherry-sweet it tastes on her tongue.

Vi lets go.

The smile spreads across Silco's face, slow and terrible. Blood seeps from his lips.

"Takes more than that," he says.

The words freeze Vi.

A heartbeat later Silco's kneecap catches her in the vulnerable center of her gut. The workshop is so dark, Vi's tunnel-vision so entire, that she doesn't see it coming. Not from Silco. He never looks like a man with gas in his pistons. But Vander always warned Vi that the wiry ones packed the nastiest firepower. Long limbs could lash like whips. Fists could angle themselves like switchblades.

His blow catches Vi’s belly with an unexpectedly vicious snap. A flesh-eating flower expands through Vi, pain so pure her whole world takes on a translucent tinge, walls and windows blurring into one hot, throbbing red eye.

Silco's eye.

Choking, she doubles over. Just in time for Silco to deliver a second blow, nastier, to her ear. Vi's eardrums pop. Fragments of light pirouette inside her skull. She stumbles, unbalanced. Closing in, Silco shoves her with open palms. Vi's thigh hits a low table scattered with vials of blue liquid. Her feet swing out from under her. Her head collides off a lamp, and she drops to the floor, crushing a few vials. The glass bursts with the powdery delicacy of eggshells, but sharper. There is a sizzling hiss as the acids eat through her clothes.

Silco's hands twine in her hair, dragging her up.

Gone is his stunned stupor: a mirage burned away by Vi's blows. Something altogether more horrifying inhabits his face. It reforms his features, a blackness like dark riverwater stealing over the crown of his head and glowing behind his eyes: cold and hollow and endlessly hungry.

He leans in, lips pressed to Vi's ear. His voice is depthless as the Pilt. "Let me show you how it's done."

Before Vi can react, his boot collides with her belly. The blow hits the exact same spot as before: precise, almost mathematical. A gout of saliva spurts from Vi's open mouth. His kneecap wallops her under the jaw, a brutal upswing that snaps her teeth shut, nearly cutting her tongue.

Vi falls backwards in a clumsy sprawl. The corrosive taste of copper fills her mouth. She's been juiced up on adrenaline all night. Now, breath by breath, the surge is draining from her system.

Unless she keeps moving, she's going to crash.

Hard.

Silco advances between her spread legs. Vi forces herself to meet his eyes. With a handkerchief, he dabs his bloodied mouth. Slips a finger inside and runs it around the gums. His movements are measured, methodical. A man who has taken countless beatings, and can stand a good deal worse.

Except his face isn't a man's at all. His eyes hold no sign of humanity. They are two black holes, sucking in all the light.

This is the Monster: murderous and half-starved.

He stole everything from Vi.

His smile vows to steal a great deal worse.

With a chill, Vi watches him undo his belt. The buckle hangs heavy and decorative. Gold, with no emblem except a familiar engraved script. Jannas Segen. It is a send-off for miners—lost to the blood-trade of precious metals and gems.

A toast Vander made all the time at the Last Drop.

Janna's Blessing.

Now, Vi watches the Monster slide the belt out from its loops. The rich leather holds the oiled slither of a snake. He coils it in his hands, and tips his head. With a paroxysm of horror, Vi realizes what he plans. A weak shoot of adrenaline jolts her. She struggles to rise.

The Monster kicks her in the gut. Vi gags, senses reeling. Her head lolls dizzily. In the next beat he has planted a knee between her ribs, bearing down with his weight.

He slides the belt around Vi's neck. She thrashes—and he pulls it taut.

Suddenly a red mist gathers at the edges of Vi's consciousness. Her lungs burn. Wildly, she scrabbles at the Monster's wrists. Her nails gouge through fabric and flesh. His grip stays unyielding. His face, looming over her, is streaked with red, teeth bared, unholy spirits dancing in his eyes.

"Like this, see?" The voice is a snake biting itself, scaly and raw. "Just. Like. This."

With every word, the belt pulls tighter.

Vi's heels drum across the floorboards. Her fists pound against his shoulders. In another minute, she'll fold from inside out. Her hands, fumbling uselessly, stretch across the floorboards. She encounters one of the scattered vials. The glass is cool against her fingers.

Do it now, Vander's voice urges.

In a single movement, Vi snatches the vial and smashes it squarely against Silco's skull. There is a nerve-shattering crunch and a hiss of scorched flesh. Silco reels backwards, palm covering the lidless shark-eye. His scarred cheekbone is mottled with a fresh constellation of tiny burns. His voice is a blistering snarl: "You bitch, I'll f*cking—"

Vi wrenches the belt loose. Sweet oxygen expands her lungs.

Heaving a breath, she gathers all her strength. Then, with a bloodcurdling shriek, she crashtackles Silco straight across the room. Their bodies slam against the cabinet. Silco's head caroms off the glass, which breaks with a shrill chime like bells. Shards scatter everywhere. They fall together in the wreckage.

Vi holds nothing back. By now, she’s done underestimating him. The bastard may speak in metaphors, but violence is a language he's naturally fluent in. Under the smooth veneer of sophistication, there is nothing but a killer weaned on bonemeal.

Tonight, he'll get his fill.

Her fist—a walloping straight right—strikes his forehead. Skin splits in a gout of blood. Exhibiting more resilience than Vi had first credited him with, Silco lashes out with a left hook to Vi's kidney. A bloom of white-hot agony explodes. She yowls, bile burning her throat. The rest of her is sticky with blood. Silco is worse off. The slicked red mask of his face is broken only by the jagged white slash of teeth.

Monsters, Vi thinks.

Two monsters shredding each other alive.

Her energy levels are ebbing. But hatred keeps her fueled. Muscle-memory takes care of the rest. He's fast, almost unnervingly so. But he's nowhere near as strong as others she's fought. His frame of fast-twitch muscle lacks the mass to pack a proper punch. And it is easy to tell he's out of practice. When was the last time anyone dared lay a finger on him?

A lifetime, probably.

His strategy is unpredictability. Vi's is attrition. In a drawn-out confrontation, a stronger opponent will press his advantages and negate the weaker one's. But where firepower comes out square, it becomes a matter of whose bucket goes the deepest.

And with a monster like Silco, Vi's bucket goes a long way. It is full to the brim with things he's stolen: her family; her childhood; her sister.

She will draw upon them and never, ever stop.

They roll, grunting and grappling. One moment Vi is on top, pummeling him. The next, he is straddling her, trying to gouge at her eye sockets with his thumbs. The high rancid reek of blood suffuses the workshop. In the glow of lamplight, their struggling bodies throw misshapen shadows everywhere.

They roll apart, eyes locked, panting. Vi grips a heavy shard of glass in her wrapped hand. One lucky strike and she'll slice him right open.

If he doesn’t gut her first.

Silco's butterfly knife flashes out. The same one Vi had seen at the dogfight: its handle decorated with a shark-fin. In a quicksilver blur, he spins it into an icepick quickdraw—then lunges.

On instinct, Vi ducks beneath the arrowing tip. Pivoting with a terror-fed quickness, she brings up her shard in a slashing arc. It rips through worsted silk. The jagged edge catches skin. Blood darkens Silco's left sleeve near the bicep. He doesn't leap clear. He closes in, practically flowing in the course of their entanglement now, no amateur showmanship but a relentless balls-out blitz, until Vi is backing into a corner, and then he suckers her, not with a left hook, but with a—a tickle to her right knee, right over her bunny birthmark, a spot nobody but Caitlyn knows about.

Vi jolts on an involuntary bray, almost a laugh, and that's her big f*cking mistake, because now he does hit her, a nasty uppercut that leaves her jelly-legged, the shard clattering away, and when she blinks the shimmering black dots from her vision Silco has smoked straight through her defense, his feral eyes locked on hers and his blade a raging silver streak inches from her jugular—

A bang fills the air.

The sound of a pistol discharged at close quarters.

The bullet misses Silco's streaking blade by a half-inch. Maybe less. He reels; Vi ducks. A hole punches into the wall between them.

Dust motes float in the silence.

Powder is framed at the bottom of the staircase. Now, Vi can see her sister in detail. Her fairytale braids are gone. She rocks a spiky blue crop that feathers her neck. The rest of her is almost wraithlike with her sunless white skin and cream camisole. In the reflected neon light, Vi can see all her shape through the fabric: the narrow shoulders and hips, the small breasts, the slender sinews roped in taut muscle. A trigger-happy ballerina.

Except her eyes are big and bright and brutal enough to chew though both Vi and Silco.

"Corners,” she says.

"Powder," Vi says. “Don’t—"

"Jinx," Silco says, "Keep away—"

"Corners. Both of you. Now."

She aims the pistol and fires. A coin-sized hole punches into the wall millimeters from the first.

Right between Vi and Silco's skulls.

Silco's eyes pass over Vi with a chill intensity that says: This isn’t over. With a peculiar fluid motion, he sheathes his blade and retreats. Vi barely sees his feet move, and yet he glides soundlessly backwards, like a snake slithering in reverse. At the corner, he remains perfectly still, his eyes locked on Powder.

Power, who is trembling top-to-toe. Vi can see the pink mottle spreading across her porcelain skin. The same one she’d get during childhood meltdowns. Her body overheating from conflicting impulses: fight versus flight. Her distress is nearly palpable—a fizzy chemical haze that hangs in the air.

Slowly, Powder steps out into the wreckage. Barefoot in a carpet of broken glass. Reflexively, Vi takes a step toward her. In his corner, Silco makes a sharp involuntary motion. Powder holds her pistol steady. The other hand lifts at shoulder level, index finger a tick-tocking metronome. Ah-ah.

It isn’t that gesture that dissuades Vi.

It’s Powder’s eyes.

Not blue.

Pink.

Shock swoops up like the ground rushing to meet Vi's falling body. Her fists loosen; her jaw unlocks.

“Powder,” she gasps, “What—”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

Powder’s voice, a scratchy contralto, holds no quaver. Except for the suggestion, in the edges of her outline, of something boiling to dangerous degrees. The shocky thereness of her makes Vi dizzy. Heat scalds her bruised face; her heart stumbles through two clumsy beats at once.

Her sister. The only family she has left. The one she never sees.

Except in nightmares.

"What,” Powder says, “is going on?"

"I—" Vi says.

"Not you." Powder whips around. "You."

Silco is a silhouette of pure blackness. Blacker within.

"Jinx," he says, and his voice is strangely liquid. "I can explain."

"I'm listening."

"Put Puff-Puff down."

"Nuh-uh." Powder twirls the pistol on her forefinger, mockingly playful and utterly expert. Her eyes hold a calculating sheen. Vi realizes her sister hasn't spent the past moments simply paralyzed. She's stood there, puzzling out details, while Vi and Silco savaged each other. "You've got some explaining to do, all right. Except I think my noggin is startin' to suss things out.”

"Jinx—"

"Zaun's your oyster. And I'm your little pearl, right? So how come, in such a night as this, she's on home territory?"

Silco stays in his corner. Not the sly savant, but a man, cornered by a rising tide.

"Please," he says. "Put the pistol down."

Powder shakes her head: a quick brusque shake the spells f*ck You. She turns away from Silco, her motion sharp, snubbing. He may as well not be in the room. In her antipathy, she's forgotten him.

Her eyes pierce Vi's.

"Well," she says, "can't you speak?"

"Powder, I—"

"Not Powder. It's Jinx now."

Beneath the jagged crowns of her lashes, her eyes are incandescent.

Pink.

The word strobes over and over through Vi's mind. Shock boils into inner-hysteria.

Pink.

Like Shimmer.

The moment mutates into different dimensions. The past ten months distort into a different flavor of horror. Her sister is different. Tainted. Vi is momentarily rocked by memory. The Bridge and the Enforcers’ bodies. The firelights going off in the sequence of explosions. And afterward, the bottomless silence.

Ekko—gone. Powder—broken.

And then Silco took her away. Took her—and then turned her. Twisted her, not just into Jinx, but into one of the worst things her sister could become. The one thing Vi always dreaded.

Her pulse kicks up. Horror seeps into rage.

"What did he do to you?" she snarls.

"Do to me?"

"Your—your eyes. Powder. What’s he done? What’s he turned you into?"

Powder absorbs the question. Vi sees her bite her lower-lip, shift her weight. The gestures, so incongruously girlish, resonate with memories of childhood. Every cell in Vi's body yearns to go to her. To cradle her and go back to when their family was whole. Back when everything was simpler.

Then Powder smiles.

A chilling smile. It transforms the armature of her entire body. Warps it into Jinx.

Jinx inhabits Powder’s flesh differently.

"You’re a class act, sister,” she says, with a buzz of laughter in her throat. "Don’t tell me you forgot?"

Vi feels the blood drain from her face.

"Forgot...?"

Jinx's expression darkens. It is like a force of nature, a gathering thundercloud. "You caused this."

Vi sucks in a ragged breath.

"You left me. There—on the Bridge. Left everything to go boom. All the King's Horses and all the Little Men. Everythin' falling down, falling down. Meanwhile, our Fair Lady went prancin' around Topside with her fancy toff." Her head co*cks, eyes taking on a shrewd gleam. "Now you’re back. Why? Trying to steal the Hex-gem again?"

"Powder, that's not—"

"So you're sabotaging the Peace Treaty?"

"I don't give a f*ck about that!" Vi explodes. "I'm here for you! Since that night on the Bridge, I didn't know if you were alive or dead!"

"And you didn't want it that way?"

"What? How could you even say that? I—"

Jinx's face is rigid with contempt. "You sold me out to the Council. You gave them my name and they came after my head. Me for Zaun. Me or Zaun. Except I wouldn't go quietly. None of us would. We make our own rules Down-Low. We don't forgive, and we don't forget." Jinx's lips smile. Her eyes don't. "I haven't forgotten. That's the worst part of war. The way it just goes on and on and on. Nothing to stop it. Nothing to take you out of the moment. You're just there, in a place where the pain is so deep and dirty and bad, except it doesn't kill you. It kills everyone around you. Everyone getting crushed, pounded, burned, blinded, raped, and knowing that's all Topside thought you were good for. And then turning around and showing 'em what you're really good for. What you're made of. Showing 'em… and settling the score." For a moment, Jinx's mouth wobbles like a sinewave. She crams her fist against it. Then it's gone, and her face is a cipher. "So tell me, Miss Vi? Who's telling the lie? Me or you?"

"I—"

Vi's head pounds. How can it pound like that, when her body is so still?

She wishes she could swallow acid, to erase the taste of futility in her mouth. Because she had sold her sister out to the Council. A desperate bid to separate her from Silco. To make those complacent Pilties take notice of the hellscape under their feet. A divulgence that went against all Vi's instincts as a Trencher. All her decades of pent-up suffering.

She'd done it for Powder. But what was the cost? The rout of Silco's Shimmer factory—and a dead child at hers and Talis' feet. Worse, the Council had taken what she'd given them, and played it to their own ends. Tried playing Silco, a snake who abided by his own rules.

They'd asked for Jinx. He'd given them war.

And, in the bargain, defiled her with Shimmer.

"I was doing it for you, Powder," Vi says, her voice wavering on the gutting edge of grief. "For us. You weren't—weren't safe with him. You aren't safe. Look what he's done to you! Look what he's—"

Jinx raises a hand for silence. There is something in how she holds herself, eyes dosed with a sloe-eyed menace, that replicates Silco's mannerisms. Even her expression is a simulacrum of his. But under her surface rage runs hot and electric, a volatile storm.

Where Silco is a mirage of a man, Jinx is a cataclysm. Where Silco plays violence like a chessmaster, Jinx reigns over its crucible.

Monsters, Vi thinks again.

This is a room full of monsters.

And she is one of them.

"This," Jinx says, "was always gonna happen."

"What?"

"Me. Changing." She throws her hands down her body, a flourish of taa-daa. "But you've changed too. Never were one for the ol' subtlety shtick. Now look at you. Being a little sneaky-sneak. This isn't your first time creeping into Zaun. You dropped by three months ago, too. Quick in-and-out—but hey! I ain't gonna hold it against ya." Her delicate facial map hardens. "Much."

"Powder—"

Her sister performs a lightning flash-forward. One moment she's ten paces from Vi. The next she's right up close, pink contrails streaking in her wake. Vi's shock bleeds into paralysis. Then—hypnosis. Because her sister is right there, and the world drops away. They are alone. And she might wear Jinx's face, but the rest of her is breathing, perspiring, her blood a rhythm of familiar tiny beats beneath her skin.

Jinx is a monster.

But the monster is wrapped up in Powder's precious shell.

"Why are you here?" Jinx says, soft. "Wasn't it enough that you left me dead? Why come back?"

Vi holds her sister’s unnerving stare. The wall is chilly against her back. But her spine steels itself.

"For you," she says, equally soft. "Every single time. I've come down here for you."

"Yeah? Sure didn't stick around."

"He stopped me."

"He?"

Fatigue sags Vi’s bones. But rage lends her an exoskeleton. He eyes go to Silco.

He stays in his spot, beyond arm’s reach, his hands dangling at his sides out of the sleeves of his black suit. His eyes, between the streaks gore, are watching Vi and Powder. His face is implacably still. But his stare is brimful. Vi sees in it all kinds of anticipation, kissing-kin to dread. Like a man whose secrets are unveiling, inch by inch.

Secrets from Vi.

Secrets from Powder.

Vi says, "He didn't tell you, did he? The first time, I wasn't chasing the Hex-gem. I was there for you. The second time, I wasn't spying. I was belowground to meet you. The Council had arranged everything. He'd given his word. But we both know what that's worth. The moment I touched down, he'd sicced his blackguards on me. He made sure I’d do something—something bad. That way he'd have an excuse to keep us separated." Tears threaten to spill. It’s all too much. The dead blackguard. The dirty deal. Her own suffocating remorse. "He used you too. That night, at the penthouse suite. You were in the pool. Taking a swim. He let me see that. So I knew you were with him. So I knew he'd never let me closer."

Jinx's eyes stay on hers. Surreally bright and strangely mesmerizing.

"Is that why you broke in tonight?" she says. "To get one over on him?"

"I thought that's what he'd do to you! He was—"

"Was what?"

"He—you—"

"He what, Vi? What was he doing to me?" Jinx's stare fritzes, then flatlines. "I think I've got a pretty good idea. But why don't you fill me in?" When Vi doesn't speak, Jinx's eyebrows rise, a perfect arch. "No? Guess I'll spell it out. He was holding me while I slept. Keeping me warm. Taking care of me. You know. Things family do."

The word—family—hangs sizzling-red in the air. A word that once meant the world. Now it scalds, a gut-deep betrayal. Her ears go hot, and then the rest of her. It's as if every blood vessel is about to pop.

She'd been willing to accept a lot: Vander's murder, Silco's manipulation, Jinx's madness. She'd seen it all unfold and done nothing. She'd been weak, and knew the price of weakness was steep.

But this is too f*cking high.

"That's not—" Her voice cracks. "He doesn't give a sh*t about family, Powder! He killed ours! He's hurting you!"

"Hurting me?" Jinx supplies helpfully. "Or f*cking me?"

Vi's gut heaves. "Powder—"

"My name is Jinx. Let's get that out of the way." Her lips pull an exaggerated pout. "After all, it's the one thing I've earned. Unlike whatever else I'm made out to be. Psycho. Killer." She leans in, until Vi can feel the heat off her body. "whor*."

Vi flinches. Jinx laughs, a ragged spray of shrapnel. Then she is flowing like a shadow into Vi's arms. It isn’t an embrace. The barrel of her pistol fits the notch of Vi's breastbone. Their stares lock, a jolt of intimacy. Vi feels the hairs on her arms lift. Something deep within, some ancient reptilian switch, flips her body into high alert.

It’s not the gun.

It's her sister.

"Well, that's one truth," Jinx says. "Here's another. You don't get to snitch on me, then come back and pretend you're rescuing me, or my virtue. Which—shock of shocks!—is still intact. For the record." She glances at Silco, who hasn't moved a muscle. "By choice, even. 'Cause that's something I've got. Choice." The barrel shifts. It is squarely between Vi's eyes. "Except you want to take it away. Make me into whatever you think I should be. The lost lamb. The monster. The victim. But that's not my story, Sis. No matter what you tell yourself. It’s not yours, either."

Vi sucks in a breath. The muzzle imprints itself against her forehead.

"Please," she breathes. "Just put the gun down. We can talk. Both of us."

"We're talking."

"Powder—"

"Jinx."

"Okay. Jinx. Please. We can make things right." Vi's hands lift in surrender. "I don't have to be the hero. You don't need to shoot. Not anymore. I'm here. With you. We're together. Isn't that what you've wanted? It's what I've wanted." Her throat constricts. "You're all that matters to me. My sister."

For the first time, a tremor goes through Jinx's hand. The gun lowers fractionally. Her face is a ceramic mask, but Vi spots something: a crack.

The smallest possibility of a breakthrough.

Vi keeps going. "I've spent all our childhood looking out for you. I'd spend the rest doing it, too. Whatever it takes. You can shoot me if that's what you want. You can put me on the rack. You can burn me at the stake. But no matter how bad things get, or how much you hate me, I'm not gonna give up. Not on you.”

Daring, Vi reaches out. The curve of Jinx's face meets the cradle of her hand. Her bindings are stiff with old blood. But Vi feels the spilling heat of her sister's skin. Gods, she smells so vividly like herself. That sweet natural scent layered with candy and oil-paints. Powder, unlike Vi, never stank—even if she went for days without a shower. She just gave off an intensely dusty whiff.

Eau de Urchin, Vander called it.

Jinx doesn't lash out. Vi senses her riding the razored line. Yet she stays still. Her eyes take on a strange interior glow.

"Why," she breathes, "should I believe you?"

"I—"

"You left me first, remember? After Mom and Dad. You left and got it all started."

Under Jinx's glittering shell, Vi sees the tiniest seed of longing. A longing that calls to her own, so deeply embedded in the soil of both their bodies that it may as well be an ugly red flower sprouting between them, its roots knotted through their veins.

“I never meant to leave you,” Vi says. “Not the first time. Not any of the others. I know you blame me. It wasn't fair, but—"

"None of it was fair," Jinx says dully. "That's what's got us into this mess."

"Powder—"

"Powder's gone. I don't have... I don't have her anymore."

Even as she says this, the surface of her face deliquesces. It is unnerving, like something curdling under high flame. Her scorn melts away. Vi sees her now. Recognizes her. Her sister, the one she's always adored. Her ghost is there, and her bones. But Jinx is there too, and that creature is a chimera.

Three quarters girl, but the rest is wildfire.

"Powder's gone," Jinx repeats. "She's in the After. Same as Vander and Mylo and Claggor."

Vi wants to cry. The names dislodge a bolus of agony in her throat. Tears well. She doesn't dare succumb though. Crying would break the tenuous spell of truce in the air.

Except Jinx is crying too. Soblessly, silently. Shimmer-stained tears slide from the corners of her eyes. But her face is unmoored from any emotion.

Like someone surfacing from a bad dream and into a living nightmare.

"You should've stayed away," Jinx says. "Should've let her stay dead."

Her?

Powder.

Vi can't help it now. She takes her sister's head in both hands. Their foreheads touch, an old intimacy long gone and terribly missed.

"I couldn't stay away," she says. "I needed to know you were okay. I needed—my sister."

Jinx stares at her. All hunched up, like she needs to hide. All while containing in her small body Vi's only shot at completeness.

"I know," Vi whispers hoarsely. "I know I should never have left you. Vander was trying to save us. But you were trying to save us too. I know that. I've wanted for years to tell you. You can blame me for leaving, Pow. But don't blame yourself." Rage resurges. "Blame him."

Jinx stirs out of her trance.

As one, she and Vi focus on Silco. He looms in the shadows. A predator in impossibly placid waters, except for a scorching glow in the eyes. He might choose to open and close the door to that inner-inferno at any given moment.

But it's always ten degrees above hell.

"Jinx," he warns. "Get away from her."

"Has he told you?" Vi interrupts, "that he struck a deal with me to do his dirty work? That he kept me from seeing you tonight, to go trounce a bunch of Noxian warmasons at Rotten Row?"

Mute, Jinx lifts the pistol's barrel to her lips. A reflex of shock, not threat.

"Has he told you he's running Zaun on nothing but dirty work, while he parades you around like a prize pony?" Vi's teeth grit. "He's using you, Pow. He's been using you all these years, and I'm sorry I couldn't stop him sooner. He stabbed Vander in the back, but I won't let him get to you—"

"Has she told you," Silco interposes coldly, "that she is an Enforcer?"

The silence slices like an open wound.

A shock straight down to Jinx’s bones.

She meets Vi’s eyes. Dismay transmits in the airwaves between them. Vi's pulse throbs in her throat. Jinx's own works like she's gulping bile.

"No," Vi hears herself stammer. "Powder, it's not like that—"

"Has she told you that she's cohabiting with a Kiramman?" Silco grinds on with merciless slowness. "That she stayed at their estate nearly five months and fed the Council secrets about the Lanes? About you? Has she told you that she had a spy-drone on her last visit? That she planned—not simply to see you—but take you? Out of Zaun and back to Piltover? After everything we suffered at their hands?"

Jinx jerks away from Vi. And the Jinxyness drops from her face, leaving the effigy of innocence behind.

"No," she says. "No."

"Powder—"

"How could you—? An Enforcer?!"

"I only joined to get into Zaun!"

"You're saying it's true?" Jinx jitters; her grip on the pistol goes taut. "All those years of them taking everything from us? Killing us? Starving us? Now you're in league with them?"

"Please," Vi says desperately. "Just hear me out! I'm not in league with anyone! I—"

Silco edges closer, ensnaring Jinx's gaze with his own. "My lovely, she is none of ours."

Vi's fists ball. "It's not like that!"

"It's true," Silco says, and he isn't focused on Vi at all. His gaze is entirely on Jinx, and she stares back, head tilted, a stark absence to her face. Her eyes are glossy, edging into moist. The corner of her mouth tics. Whatever conversation she and Silco are having, it occurs on some creepy supersonic frequency Vi can't decipher, except as a physical force between their eyes and bodies.

"Jinx," Silco breathes. "I've kept things from you. But never about this."

Jinx's lips part; she trembles.

In a broken little-girl voice: "You—you didn’t tell me."

"I couldn’t."

"You lied. Again."

"I swore to protect you. No matter what."

His voice has changed. This is how he talks to her in private, Vi thinks with a surge of nausea. Soothingly, meltingly, lovingly.

His shoes make no sound across the broken glass. Closing the distance between them, he lays a hand softly on Jinx's arm. Her gun-arm. His fingertips encircle her wrist. The pistol trembles, and Jinx does too. It takes everything in Vi not to belt Silco one. Not to beat him to the ground until he's stopped moving.

Stopped breathing.

Jinx isn't breathing either. She goes up on tiptoe, her bare feet touching the toes of Silco's boots, and nestles her head under his blood-splattered jowl. Her small hand starfishes across his vest, right over his heart. Her fingertips skim there, not a caress but a time signature.

A lie detector.

"Wonky heart," she whispers.

"Jinx..."

"Liar." Her hand balls into a fist. "Both of you. Liars."

"My lovely—please—"

Silco's arms encompass her. They close around nothing. Like a phantom, Jinx is gone.

Then Vi sees her.

She has taken a feline perch on the banister of the spiral staircase. She stares at Vi and Silco through the spiky tangle of her shorn hair, nearly shrouded in the gloom, her pistol halfway to her lips. Her eyes give off a sickly-hot glow.

She says, "Ex oh ex oh."

To Vi, it sounds like gibberish. Except it falls with the gravity of an incantation.

Or a command.

A heartbeat later, a black mass comes up the stairs with such deceptive softness Vi nearly thinks it's a hallucination. It's not. It's a mastiff. The one from the dogfight with Bilgewater. His paws barely seem to touch the floor. His dark shapes swirls up the stairs, abruptly materializing by the banister where Jinx is crouched. Absolutely calm—until his white teeth suddenly glint, flashing savagely.

He makes no sound. Barely a growl.

Vi realizes he's no ordinary guard dog. He's not intended as a burglar alarm. He'd not here to ward off intruders.

He serves one purpose only.

To kill.

"Jinx," Silco says, maddeningly calm, like he talks her down from bloodthirsty precipices every day. "Don't do this."

The mastiff lopes toward Vi and Silco, a smooth pistoning of muscles beneath sleek fur. His mouth opens—the jaws enormous—fangs bared with a predatory zeal. Vi's mind goes blank as internal circuits process her options for escape.

She's never had to fistfight a dog before. Let alone one who looks capable of biting a skull in half.

Then Silco reaches into his waistcoat. Withdrawing a tiny silver cylinder, he lifts it between his lips—and blows.

Vi hears nothing. But Jinx screeches, clutching her temples as if they've been dynamited. Her gun clatters to the floor. The mastiff shudders before his bladder lets go in a pungent trickle of piss across the floorboards.

A beat later, from all corners of the Aerie, footsteps thunder.

Blackguards burst up the stairs. Each one wields crossbows—hand-held and chem-fueled. The whistle is an ultrasonic warning system, Vi realizes. In one blast, it subdues the dog and alerts Silco's network of threats.

And at the head of the phalanx, Vi sees—

"Sir."

Sevika holds a steely demeanor. The rest of her is sopping wet from her fall in the river. Her eyes scan the scene. Taking in the wreckage across the workshop. Silco's and Vi's bodies crusted with dried blood. Jinx on the floor, hiding a face twisted with pain inside the dark fur of the mastiff's trembling body.

Sevika’s eyes meet Silco's. His stare drops forty below. His voice is an icy excoriation.

"I warned you," he hisses. "No f*ck ups."

Sevika opens her mouth. Then it snaps shut. Her jaw hardens. She looks less like a scared subordinate than a woman told off by her husband for letting the dogs run loose in the yard again.

Then Silco says, “Report.”

Just like that, Sevika shakes off the lapse. Vi can practically see the attitude disappear as the authority returns to her body. A soldier straightening to attention.

“No casualties,” she says. “We have the goods.”

“And the warmason?”

“Handled.” Sevika’s stare shifts from Silco to Vi. Her eyes hold a disturbing opacity. "We rounded up her accomplice from the turret."

"Weapons?"

"A rifle."

Silco nods, steel-tipped. "Dispose of both."

Just three words. Yet the static in Vi's body leaps like a needle into red. Panic seizes her.

Caitlyn.

They have Caitlyn.

"No," she cries, lunging forward. "Leave her alone!"

She advances on Silco like a runaway locomotive. Silco offers no reaction. His arms hang loosely at his sides; his face holds a blankness verging on boredom.

Out of nowhere, Sevika steps in. In a chopping motion, she brings her prosthetic arm up—then down. The impact collides flush with Vi's skull. Blistering fireworks go off. Her brain feels blowtorched. Then her body goes liquid, tendons stretched past their limits, as if unable to hold up the pulating mass of her skull.

Vi falls and keeps falling, as if the floor is sucking her in. She hits the gritty surface cheek-first.

From above, Silco's shark-eye locks on hers.

"Get her out," he says.

Sevika cracks a two-note whistle. The blackguards close in. Vi's hands are wrenched behind her back, and cuffed. So are her ankles. Two pairs of hands dig under either arm. She is hefted by the blackguards and dragged away.

Vi struggles. But her body is leaden. Adrenaline-crash—long overdue. Anguish crushes her chest. The last thing she hears is an eerie sound woven through the amorphous aural canvas of the workshop.

Sobbing.

Hauled down the stairs, Vi glimpses her sister. She is curled into a self-protective ball, arms hugging her drawn-up knees. Her eyes reflect emptiness; they don't blink, and hold the glossy scrim of a child who can no longer process the world. Instinctive self-preservation.

The same look Powder had worn on Bloody Sunday.

Silco is crouched near her. Not touching, but speaking in tones of uncommon tenderness.

“Ssh, my lovely. Ssh.”

The last thing Vi sees are his hands reaching out for her.

And the gleam of his bad eye. Bright and hot and hungry.

In the distance, the phonograph plays that song on a maddening loop:

Our love
Our love
Our love…

Vi wakes up in the dark.

She is strapped on something. A cot? A mattress? It is dented with the shapes of the bodies that have lain in it before her. A reek of industrial bleach pierces her sinuses. Her face is stiff with crusted blood. The rest of her feels jellified: a surface spectrum of hurts. Dull throbs from bruises; sharp stings from cuts.

Her right thigh burns, like it’s been etched with a white-hot needle.

She is stripped down to her bra and underpants.

Terror laps woozily. Vi thrashes. In the dark, a silhouette looms over her.

“Don’t move,” a voice says in Va-Nox. “You’re swollen all over.”

Vi tries to speak. But her lips are glued shut with a seal of old blood. The silhouette passes a damp cloth over them. Soft fingertips touch Vi's bruised lips.

“Don’t speak too loud. They’ll hear.”

Vi doesn’t understand why the voice sounds familiar. Her eyes, blurry at the edges, orient to the dimness. Now she can make out a woman. Dark-haired and delicate, clad in a black silken robe. A clasp necklace glimmers between her breasts. Her fingers play with it nervously: a design flashes in and out of Vi’s sightline.

The Eye of Zaun.

She’s from Rotten Row, Vi thinks.

The girl with the warmasons. The one with the swollen eye. The one Sevika called Maven.

Her cat-eyes probe Vi’s. And suddenly the familiarity acquires a deeper dimension. It is that aspect that triggers Vi’s memory, more than any particular feature. That way of gazing down at her, her eyes softly-lit, her fingertips on Vi’s lips softer still.

Déjà vu.

“Na—Nao?” Vi croaks.

“Ssh. I told you. Don’t speak loudly.”

It is Nao. There is no mistaking it. The same girl who’d been Vi’s first that long-ago summer night in the Lanes. It is like the cherry on top of a tragically twisted sundae. Vi feels less like she’s been shot back in time than fallen headlong into a hellscape.

“What—” Vi starts, then at Nao’s shushing gesture, drops to a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.”

“You—what?”

Her palm clamps Vi’s mouth. “Keep your voice down, will you? I’m not supposed to be here.” A smile, gone before it blooms. “You’re the last girl I expected to see.”

“I thought—” Vi moistens her parched throat, “you left for Bilgewater.”

“I did. Now I’m home.” She smiles again. An exceptionally sad smile. “In Zaun.”

Vi stares. She feels disoriented in place and time. The past few hours jolt her like currents. The tarred air of Rotten Row. The sawdust-and-blood stink of the cage match. Silco looming over Powder’s bed. Powder, her pink eyes red-rimmed and haunted.

And Caitlyn….

The residue of Silco’s graveled words drags down Vi’s spine.

“Dispose of both.”

Adrenaline buzzes.

No.

No.

She struggles against the straps. Nao seizes her shoulders.

“Don’t,” she says, urgently. “If they hear, we’ll both be in trouble.”

“Caitlyn. She was with me. What’s Silco done to—?”

Nao shakes her head. “Nobody but us in here.”

“Here, where?”

“Ssh. Don’t ask.” The cloth, cool and damp, touches Vi's face. Wiping it. A straw prods her lips. Vi catches it, takes a pull of sweet perfect water from a bottle. While she drinks, Nao whispers, “Sweet Janna—he’s really roughed you up. What did you do? He doesn't usually hit girls. Not unless it's to make a point."

Vi gulps a deep breath. Water spills from the corner of her mouth. "You—know Silco?"

Nao's eyes hold a peculiar blankness.

"Everyone knows Silco," she says. "He's the Eye of Zaun."

"And you—?"

"I told you. I work here." She touches the pendant again. Her thumb strokes the Eye's engraving. "It's my job to take care of him."

"Take care of him?"

Nao nods.

Vi keep staring. Understanding seeps in. “You’re—you’re one of his girls.”

A nod again.

“Nao—why?”

Again, the soft hand seals Vi's mouth. Her words buzz against Nao's palm.

Leaning in, Nao hisses, “He’s paid off my indenture, fool. He owns me. He owns the whole damned city. What choice do I have? And he treats me fine, you know. Some of the chem-barons are brutes. They'll beat you with pokers or make you lick their boots. But not the Eye. He's generous in his way. Gives us a good life. But if you do him wrong, he won't just turn you out. He'll put you down like a dog." Her eyes are a skittish crawl up and down Vi's body. "Why did you cross him, Vi?"

Vi wrenches her head around. “He’s got my sister!”

“Jinx—yes. You attacked her in the Aerie. The whole network’s on alert.”

“What? No, I—"

Nao gives a perplexed grunt. "Do I have to gag you, Vi? Is that what you want? You're already in a heap of trouble. None of us have seen the Eye so angry. Don’t make it worse. Please. He’s already—” She breaks off and drops her eyes. “He’s already had you marked.”

“Marked?”

Vi doesn’t understand what Nao means. Her right thigh stings ferociously again. It's a hot, concentrated ache. Right above her old birthmark. It replicates the sensation from Vi’s homemade prison tattoos. A renewed coat of sweat breaks across Vi's bare skin. Panic is whetted by premonition.

“Nao,” she whispers. “Where—where are my clothes?”

Nao averts her cat-eyes. "They took them off," she says, deliberately calm. "To brand you."

"What?"

“Ssh. For Janna’s sake—”

A bulb over Vi's head comes on. Everything is painted shock-white, rays knifing painfully bright.

Nao flinches away. Vi squeezes her swollen eyes shut. When she can see again, a bubble of iridescent horror blooms up her throat and pops in her skull. The room is someplace subterranean. There are wooden beams across the high ceiling, sandstone walls to keep off moisture and smooth hardwood paneling on the floors. Everywhere is sealed off; no windows, no openings. Like a bomb-proof cellar.

Or a torture chamber.

Wherever Vi looks, there are racks and presses. Chains and spikes. Above, a mirrored ceiling is suspended between the rafters. Ahead, there a slate-framed furnace like in a crematorium. Everything is clean and sanitized. Every machine pristine. A maintenance that suggests regular use.

The only piece missing is the prisoner.

Me, Vi thinks.

In the brightness, her attention passes down the foreshortened span of her body. She is strapped to a table bolted into the floor. Belts on the wrists and arms. Knees and ankles, ditto. Her skin is a mottling of red bruises darkening into purple. Under the bulb's harshness, her nudity seems alien, like it belongs to another person.

And on her right thigh...

Vi's breath locks in her chest.

Marked, Nao said.

Now she understands. On her right thigh sits a tattoo. Three fingers wide, it stretches above her knee, right under her birthmark. It is fresh, the ink gleaming blackly, with faint traces of dried blood. The skin around it is ruddy from a scrubbing of iodine and antiseptic.

The Eye of Zaun.

The same emblem on Zaun's streets. On Vander’s memorial. On Nao's necklace.

The Monster’s calling card.

What the f*ck?

Vi's chest heaves. Her muscles twist against the straps. She thrashes in a frenzy.

“So,” says a deeply unpleasant drawl. “Sleeping beauty’s awake.”

A shadow falls across Vi. Sevika stands framed in the doorway.

She's dried off and changed her clothes. A burgundy suit, simple but well-tailored. Her hair is pinned back severely, and her lips are painted a deep maroon, with a gloss as thick as honey. She looks like she’s just returned from a formal co*cktail party. But something about her heavy-duty boots and leather gloves hints at rougher work.

Her expression is the same. Neither happy nor angry, not emotional enough to veer at either extreme. Just the tepid permafrost after a night's dirty business.

It chills Vi even more than the tattoo. But she refuses to show it.

"What the hell did you do to me, Sevika?" she snarls.

Sevika doesn't answer. Her silence suggests neither antagonism or defensiveness.

Her focus is on Nao.

"You shouldn't be here," she says flatly.

Nao’s face schools itself to polite porcelain. In broken Standard: "I was—she—"

"Old friend?" Sevika suggests.

Nao says nothing.

There is a sly uptick at the corner of Sevika's mouth. "Oh, I see. Old flame."

Nao remains silent. Vi tries to catch her eye. But the other girl seems suddenly expert at averting her gaze, at positioning her body at the crossroads between aloof and irreproachable.

Then Vi understands.

She and Sevika have slept together.

The surreality quotient climbs sky-high. She wishes she could scrub her mind out with peroxide.

Nao looks up, a brittle mask of composure. "Please, Sevika—I only—"

"Want to get out of here?" Casually, Sevika hooks her thumb at the door. "Sure. This is too complicated for you. Stay out of it." When Nao hesitates, Sevika’s eyes lock on hers, steady as gun-barrels. "Really," she says with dangerous softness. "You do not want to know anything about this. Understand me?"

Maven nods. "I understand." Sevika holds her gaze as if to make absolutely certain. She nods again, firmer. "Yes. I understand."

"Good. Go do your job. Keep Silco happy tonight. He's in a mood, and you'll be the one he takes it out on. I don't have time to stay his hand." She glances at Vi, then away. "Pour him four fingers of the good stuff. Neat. Ice it, put a slice of bergamot in, and a thimble of Shimmer. No more, or things will get ugly." Her eyes flick down and up Nao's body, an appraisal so quick it's almost a muscle tic. "Get yourself ready. He won't take his time tonight. He'll be a wild animal. Don't make a peep, and smile, like it's your favorite. Afterward, he'll be hungry. Switch the lights on, go naked into the Laguna Lounge's kitchen, make him dinner. Steak. Rare. The bloodier, the better. Make sure he can see your hands doing it. He'll be watching, but he won't talk. You know the drill. Get the steak on his plate, sit with him. Don't touch him unless he tells you. Don't ask questions. By the end, he'll want seconds—and I don't mean dessert. He's got a soft spot for you. Play it right, and he'll be gentler. Do whatever it takes to keep him that way. He'll be drowsy after. A shot of brandy, a cigar, and he'll go down for the night. Stay close. Let him wake up next to you. And, when he does, make him coffee. Black. No sugar. I guarantee he'll give you a bonus, a brand-new wardrobe and the entire week off."

Vi listens, nausea and horror merging in her gut. The image of Nao having sex with Silco, then cooking him a meal of bloody meat is sickening. Worse is the way Nao listens, her face blankly receptive. Like a soldier getting marching orders. Or a zookeeper given an inventory of a predator's care and feeding. Her job, a performance in which every move is choreographed. Where every slip is a potential disaster.

It's not a job, Vi thinks. It's a life sentence.

"Go," Sevika says. "Keep your head straight." Then, as an afterthought. "And Maven? If I catch you in here again, I'll have you branded too."

The faintest flinch, before Nao nods. "I understand."

"Good. Now get the f*ck out."

Without a backward glance, Nao glides away. As she does, her fingertips brush Vi's hipbone. An intimate caress. Comforting. Vi feels her heart twist. For a moment, she is sixteen again, punch-drunk on hormones and teary-eyed at her first heartbreak. Then Nao is gone, a shimmer of black silk and hair. The door shuts.

And reality sets in.

She's twenty-three now. She's endured worse breakages.

And fought her way back every single time.

Sevika stays where she is. She's studying Vi like a bug pinned to a board. Vi is acutely aware of her nakedness, the vulnerable sprawl of her body.

The brand on her thigh.

"Sevika," she grinds out. "Let me go."

Sevika cuts her off. "Not happening." Her eyes glitter in the low wattage. "You're part of the stable now."

"I'm not a f*cking animal!"

"No. Just a bitch who's taken one bite too many. But it's not time to put you down." She circles the table. "Not yet."

Neck craned, Vi glowers, "If you're getting any ideas—"

"Please. I've got standards. I'm just making sure Silco gets his money's worth."

"What the f*ck does that mean?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

Vi struggles, the cords standing out on her neck. "Where's Caitlyn? Where's Powder? What's Silco doing to her?"

In Sevika's face congeals a glacial rancor. "Worry about yourself."

"Wha—?"

Sevika backhands her. She uses her human hand, but the force behind it is solid as a truncheon. Vi's teeth cut the softness of her cheek. She tastes blood; smells sandalwood, brightleaf and the barest whiff of bergamot on Sevika's fingers.

Seizing Vi by the chin, Sevika says, "I've known some half-baked bozos in my time, but you take the whole damn bakery." She shakes Vi. "What was the plan, huh? Break into the Aerie. Beat Silco to a pulp. Abduct Jinx. All on the same night as the Peace Treaty? You trying to start another war, Vi? Is that what you want?"

Vi feels blood welling in the chinks of her teeth. "The plan was to see my sister."

"Well, congratulations. You did. Now she's right back to ground zero. Like the rest of Zaun's agenda. She went batsh*t ten minutes after you’d been hauled away. It took twelve blackguards to subdue her. Twelve men who could have been keeping the peace on our streets. Meanwhile there's a roomful of tipsy investors ripe for blackmail at the afterparty. Except Silco can't afford to take his eye off his little ticking timebomb, so I’ve got to schmooze in his place." Her palms—flesh and copper—come flat on either side of Vi's head. Dark honey knuckles and blunt nails on one side; the pellucid luster of sculpted claws on the other. "Not to mention you’ve f*cked his face up. That'd be all over the newsfeeds. Pilties can't handle the sight of a papercut. Imagine if they saw him waltzing around with a mug as pretty as yours."

"Bastard’s lucky I didn't snap his neck—"

Nimbly, Sevika seizes Vi's ear and twists. Tears burst into Vi's eyes. She stifles a cry.

The other woman's face is stone-still, except for a twitch along the jaw. A warning.

"You broke in," she says. "Trespassed in Silco's territory. Assaulted him. Tried kidnapping of his child. What makes you think he'd let you get away with it? He's the Eye of Zaun. There's no limit to how badly he'd f*ck you up." She releases Vi's ear. "And that's if I didn't do it first."

Vi spits blood at her. It spatters Sevika's burgundy blouse. A fleck catches her chin.

Sevika doesn't blink. But the temperature between them drops fifty degrees.

"Try that again," she says, "and I'll call Silco down after all. He's got a lot of rage to work out. Trust me. Maven's barely enough to tide him over." She backhands the bloody spittle off her chin. "You'd get no star treatment, either. Silco likes his girls clever. But he likes them obedient, too. You're neither. Not much to look at right now, either."

"f*ck you!"

"He’d call in the boys and have 'em oblige." Sevika's head tilts with affected consideration. "Don’t get me wrong. Generally, he prefers to play the gentleman. But not tonight. Tonight, you'd get it raw. And believe me. Raw’s the last thing you want." She nods at the tools of torture. "He'd start slow, if you begged nicely. Then, he'd work his way up. To the pliers. The blowtorch. The prods. Maybe he'd cut your ears off first so you don't hear yourself screaming. Or pull your tongue out so you can't scream at all. I've seen him do worse. Much worse." She leans in, a waft of skin-warmed sandalwood. "Eventually, when he's tired of you crying and pissing yourself, he'll do something that'll really hurt you. And you can guess what that is, can't you?" Sevika's eyes hold a humorless glow. "You've had a taste at the Cannery."

A sour froth of bile fills Vi’s throat. She thinks of Vander. Strapped to the chair and streaked in blood. His screams as Silco threatened to tear his family apart. She thinks of the night's culmination. The flames kicking up in the rain. Vander a slab of veined flesh and empty sockets. Powder on her knees, crying and begging for forgiveness. Silco looming over her, a silhouette half-devoured by darkness.

And that eye. Red and gleaming as the knife in his fist.

Vi shudders.

"I already know what he did to Vander," she croaks. "And I know what he's doing to my sister."

Incredulous, Sevika co*cks her head. This again?

Vi goes on, "I saw them in the Aerie. He—he was—" The recollection nearly makes her gorge spew. "How many times has he taken advantage of her? Used her? Or does it not matter so long your precious Zaun makes money? If it was your sister—"

"Enough," says Sevika with a quiet savagery. Her eyes are black as old blood. "Silco hasn't touched Jinx, okay? I’d know right off. I’d smell it on ‘em. And if I thought—even for a second—that he had, I'd kill him myself." Her nostrils flare. "We're not animals, Vi. We have our own rules. And Silco's broken none of them. If anything, he's a damned saint. That kid's a lunatic incarnate. And every night, he holds her. Talks her down. Comforts her when nobody else will touch her."

"In her bed?"

"Her bed. His bed. Whatever. They share it. Because she wants him there." At Vi's shocked silence, she straightens, her palms sliding off the table. "Silco's been Jinx's guardian since the Cannery. He's kept her alive when another man would've kicked her to the curb. And it's not easy. Raising a hellion. Not when the whole damn city's falling to sh*t and you've got nothing but threats on all sides."

"He's got no right to her!" Vi erupts. "She's my sister! Mine! He can't just—"

"Silco doesn't own Jinx. Nobody does. But without him, she's a live grenade. He keeps her on the right side of sanity. Or whatever passes for it. And you want to know why?" She looks Vi dead in the eye. "Because he loves her. Loves that little bitch like a daughter. If you can't see that, you're a blind f*cking fool."

Vi starts to argue. But the conviction in Sevika's words burns deep.

Fragments from the Aerie resurface. Jinx, enfolded in Silco's embrace. The little-girl sob, a keening wail of anguish. And Silco. His voice a rasp of pure tenderness. The cadences of a father comforting a child. Two halves of the same twisted whole.

"He's no saint," Vi seethes. "He's the f*cking Devil."

"Yeah, he's a real bastard," Sevika agrees, strangely rueful. "But he's our city's best shot. And tonight, it’s paid off. A Treaty that could change our future. An accord that will let us breathe. We've come a long way from the cannery, Vi. We’re not just a sh*thole for the rich to piss on. We're Zaun. A free city—on equal terms."

"Hoo-f*cking-ray." Vi's chest is a cage of pent-up loathing. "You've won. Now let my sister go.”

"Let her go?"

"You have your city. Powder has no place in it. Let her have a normal life. In Piltover, with me."

Sevika stares a moment before a laugh spangles out. It's like rich, smoky music. In it, Vi hears echoes of a girlhood lost. She hears other things too. Disbelief, disdain. And the shock of epiphany, as if Sevika finally understands that Vi and Powder aren't simply sisters, but strangers to each other. Different species.

To Vi, Zaun is a black maw. To Powder, it is a cradle.

"A normal life?" Sevika repeats, when she can breathe without gulping. "With you? Do you even know what that means? Jinx would be a f*cking fugitive. They'd throw her in the clink."

"I'd keep her safe! Get her across the sea." Vi's eyes glaze wetly. "We'd run away. Together."

"Yeah? Where would you go?"

"Wherever. It doesn't matter. Someplace warm. An island in Tereshni. With sun and sand. Or a fishing lodge in Bilgewater. Anything, as long as it's not here. She can paint, or build model ships, or—"

"You think it's that easy? Just pick up and start over?" Sevika's eyes are so dark the pupil and iris are indistinguishable. "What do you think she is, a f*cking doll? Put her someplace new, and bam! She's fixed." She shakes her head. "Your sister's f*cked beyond repair, Vi. There's no place for her anywhere. Except Zaun. Because our city gives her what she needs." She taps her temple. "Someplace to put all that chaos."

"That's not true! She doesn't have to be a monst—"

Vi breaks off, horrorstruck. She's spoken the forbidden truth. Her sister is a monster.

Just like Silco.

Sevika's eyes gleam cruelly. "Monster? That she is. No use making her into something else." Her chin tips. "Come to think, there was a kid who tried. After Silco took over the Drop, he'd hang around. Try to catch Jinx whenever she was alone. He'd show her toys he'd tinkered with. She'd show him her inventions. They'd be happy as clams." The reminiscence curdles into cynicism. "But whenever Silco showed up, Jinx clammed right up. Wouldn't leave his side. It didn't matter what the boy did or said. He might as well have been a pebble on the street. Something to make way for the man of the hour."

Realization judders through Vi.

"Ekko," she says.

"Yeah, that's right." Sevika snaps her fingers. "Ekko. The little man at Benzo's shop. He and Jinx had a thing, didn't they? Puppy love. I remember how they'd be off in the corner, doodling together. Always a few inches apart. Then he'd whisper something in her ear, and she’d light up like a birthday candle." A beat. "She sure wasn't smiling by the end. Neither was he."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, right." A faux-pitying look. "You were in the slammer." She sobers. "After a while, Ekko got it into his head that Silco was hurting Jinx. Same as you. He went from playing with her to pestering her. I'd see them sometimes. On the rooftops. He'd be tugging her arm. Trying to get her to run away with him. But she wouldn't listen. She'd already imprinted on Silco. Like a damn baby bird. Everytime Ekko pushed, she'd push back twice as hard. Eventually, he gave up." A beat. "Or so we thought."

A foreboding chill creeps in. "What happened?"

Sevika's eyes flick left and right, before resettling on Vi. "Silco usually gives brats wide berth. We're not slavers. But that boy was bad news. Always skulking in the alleys. Trying to suss out the Drop's defenses. How many guards. Where the Shimmer was stored. The security system. Everything. Finally, he staged an... intervention." She shakes her head. "The little sh*t. I warned him to stay away. But he was gung-ho. Only fourteen, and Jinx was the moon to his sky. So, he and his gang—they snuck into the Last Drop."

Vi's mind reels. She knows what comes next.

"It was a massacre. Jinx knew they were coming. Ekko had let it slip during a chat. She went and told Silco. I remember them both in the barroom the night before. Him sitting at the counter. Her standing by his shoulder. Going on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. They had the same look. Same set to the mouth. The same f*cking eye." Sevika's features shade into grimness. "The next morning, Ekko and his gang snuck in. One of them stepped on a trigger wire. Set off a silent alarm. When they entered Silco's office, our guards were waiting. The punks didn't have a chance. Most were scrappers with switchblades and flashbangs. Silco's crew were trained militia. They popped the kids like fish in a barrel. And Ekko got a front-row seat."

Vi swallows bile. "Ekko was a good kid. He didn't deserve—"

"He and his pals were a bunch of uppercut morons. What'd he think would happen? Jinx would ride off with him into the sunset on a pair of unicorns?" Sevika’s lips peel back from her teeth. They are bright white, faintly delineated with pale brown tobacco stains. "She didn't even cry. That's the funny part. Not a single tear. She just watched the slaughter without a word. Later, the guards hauled the bodies out. Dumped 'em in the river. Ekko was dragged down to the basem*nt. Silco planned to put his skills to use. Get the little rat to work for Zaun. But it didn't work out. After a week, the kid slipped loose."

"How?"

"Good question." Sevika tips a shoulder. "I suspect Jinx knows the answer."

"You think... she helped him escape?"

"Like I said. Puppy love. Maybe she cared. Or maybe she thought it'd be funny. A final f*ck You." Her laugh holds a note of marvel. "Point is—the kid scarpered. Silco didn't say a word. Guess he knew who was behind it. But he didn’t care. Jinx had already chosen. That’s because your sister knows the score. Always pick the winning team. No matter how much it hurts."

Vi thinks of Ekko as a boy. Quick with a quip; quicker with a smile. A boy who'd lost his family, then lost whatever remained. Who'd witnessed a slaughter at Silco's hands. Who'd gone on, as a full-blown adult, to fight the monster with everything he had.

No matter how much it hurt.

"Winning team, huh?" Vi's throat is raw. "What about the people caught in the middle? Where's their victory?"

"Them's the breaks. The past is the past. There's only one direction. Forward."

Sevika's delivery is a smooth; her eyes are flint. Like a gambler who's all in. Vi wonders what feeds her stoicism. Wrong choices in the past, where she'd been forced to live with the consequences. Or right ones, and their bitter pay-off. Vi thinks of the woman's history. Her father, the Wharfside Devil. His business: bootlegging, brawling, murder. His fate: a life sentence in Stillwater.

Sevika, Vi thinks, is the byproduct of her father's errors.

Just as Powder is the byproduct of Vi's.

"Powder deserves more," she argues. "More than—"

"Powder is dead. In a million different ways. Jinx? For Silco, she's the lifeblood of Zaun. There's no way he will give her up. The last time Uppside tried, he waged a war. This time?" She glances at the brand on Vi's thigh. "He'll raze everything to the ground."

Vi's flesh throbs. The tattoo is a fierce itch. A final insult in a string of lifelong scars.

"Good," she rasps. "I'll fight him every step."

"Idiot," Sevika says, not unkindly. "You think the brand is a souvenir? A little something to remember Silco by?" She looms in. "You belong to him now. That's the price for trespassing in his territory." Her eyes bore into Vi's. "Your life."

Vi trembles. The room takes on an arctic chill.

"Consider yourself lucky," Sevika goes on. "Lucky your main squeeze is a Kiramman. So Silco won't dump your body in the Pilt like that runner who kept making eyes at Jinx after she turned thirteen. Lucky you're a Peacekeeper, so he won't order your co*ck cut off like that dumb sh*t who tried to get frisky with her in the ginnel when she was fourteen. Lucky you're under the Council's watch, so he won't have your eyes plucked out like that Peeping Tom at the bath-house when she was fifteen. Lucky as hell. Because nobody gets close to Jinx and lives." She stops to let that sink in. "And you know what else?"

When Vi doesn't reply, Sevika continues, her eyes slitting. "You're lucky you still hold value to Zaun's operation. That's why you’re alive despite tonight's fiasco. That's why the crew and I vouched for your ass tonight. And why you've earned yourself that tattoo instead of a bullet through the brain."

The chill becomes a negative space. Suddenly, Vi is a foot away from a yawning grave.

And Sevika holds the shovel.

"So what use am I?" she manages. "Bait for more warmasons?"

"Bait," Sevika agrees, "for something bigger. Ready for your second job, little girl?"

"f*ck off."

"That's the spirit. Now listen up. Whatever hijinks you cooked up with your Piltie princess tonight? Consider them over. We've called a moratorium." She leans over, cold yellow light from the bulb touching her silhouette and breaking off in flaming spears. "You're going to be a good dog. No more spygames. No more insubordination. Because if you come within a mile of Jinx without authorization, the deal's off."

"There was never a deal, and you know it! Just Silco twisting my arm and you doing the same!"

"Wrong," Sevika says. "The deal is your sister. Seeing her. Without interference."

"I'll never see her if Silco's calling the shots!"

"Not this time. This time, you've got a direct line." Vi frowns, and Sevika gives a short scoff. "Janna, you're dense. The Treaty between our cities was ratified tonight. Means we've got a new diplomatic wing. With ambassadorial delegations. You're a Peacekeeper. You'll be escorting them. So, unless you're a coward who backs out on her word, you'll be seeing plenty of your precious sister."

Vi’s heart thumps inexorably: temples, ribcage, fingertips.

“Why do I get the feeling there's a catch?"

"Because there is." Sevika's eyes narrow. "Three months from now, Zaun will host an Expo. Our brightest minds, showcasing their goods and services. Tech, food, fashion, entertainment. All under the dome of the Skylight Commercia. It's a chance to prove that our city isn't a lawless hovel. It's also the perfect breeding ground for saboteurs."

Vi opens her mouth, reaching for words. She fails to find them.

"The Expo will attract a crowd of investors," Sevika goes on. "Every security, defense, and finance contractor in Runeterra, jostling for a suck at Zaun's teat of Shimmer-tech. One of 'em is a Noxian consul. He's a bigwig residing at Uppside's Bluewind Court. And he's got ties to the warmasons from Rotten Row."

"I thought they were a rogue faction?"

"Need-to-know only. And you needed to know jack sh*t." Sevika reaches into her smart burgundy jacket. A brightleaf cigarette is withdrawn and lit. She takes a drag the way she does everything else: with the practiced ease of a woman who's seen it all, and done it twice as nasty. "We've got intelligence that the warmasons are brewing a plot. An assassination. But it's not our chem-royalty they're after. Or Silco. It's someone in Uppside's upper echelons."

"A Councilor?"

"Bingo." Her lips pull into an enigmatic moue of smoke. "The warmasons are a mixed bag of exiles from across the continent. But the Trifarix in Noxus is the money behind 'em. The consul is their advance scout. Sent by the Trifarix to get a lay of the land. See if they can get a toehold in Zaun to destabilize Piltover." The cherry tip flares red. Sevika's eyes float above the flame, twin points of ember. "That can't happen."

"Why not?" Vi snaps. "You're making nice with Piltover. Why's Noxus any different?"

"We're not making nice. We're getting even." Sevika's left cheekbone is a locus of Shimmer-veins, thin purple traceries like lightning riven into her flesh. "Uppside is a thorn in our side. But they're a thorn we can cut down to size. Noxus is a hornets' nest. They don't want a partnership. They want a garrison. And if the consul is successful in his pitch, our city will end up as an outpost in Noxus' war machine."

Vi's mind whirrs to keep up. "So... what happens during the Expo?"

"The consul and his warmasons are planning a false flag attack. They're going to blame it on Zaunite extremists. The Chancellor will be held accountable. There will be calls for his resignation. Hostilities between our cities will revive. Meanwhile, Noxus will consolidate power on our home turf. A nest of snakes coming into its own." With every word, a mist of smoke furls. "Unless we cut off the head."

Vi's stomach sinks as she understands. "You're going to kill the consul."

"Nothing so crude." Sevika's lips split in a cutting smile. "It'll be an accident. The kind that can't be pinned on us."

Nausea rises inside, nasty and heavy as a drip of black oil.

"You want me to do it," Vi whispers.

"Three weeks from now."

"I'm not killing a diplomat!"

"No?" With a dexterous roll of copper fingers, Sevika balances the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. "You're fine with killing a blackguard. Trespassing on Silco's property. Beating up unarmed men. But a consul's off-limits?" Her hand drops. The cherry's fiery tip nearly touches Vi's collarbone. "Why? Because he's got a big name?"

Vi flinches away. "No!"

"Then what?" The cigarette's ash falls, soft as snowflakes, but warm. "You're already a killer, Vi. It's too late to pretend otherwise."

Vi's chest burns. She feels the smoke as if it’s inside her, choking her lungs.

"The consul's a rabid wolf," Sevika goes on. "He's sanctioned hundreds of deaths. Slaughtered civilians in the name of Noxian expansion. If we don't kill him, he'll kill us. Simple as that." The cigarette is lifted. She sucks on last lungful of smoke. Then, with a flick, she drops the butt into a metal bucket. "I won't waste my breath on a sales pitch. But I'll give you some incentive. You won't need to pull the trigger. Only set the stage."

"You know how hard that is?" Vi snaps. "He's a consul! Even I was got into his security detail, he'll never let anyone get that close. Unless—" She stops. "You've got someone on the inside."

"Very good. Guess who?"

Vertigo tilts the room. "...Nao."

Sevika nods. "She's our stickiest honeytrap. Her specialty is the high-class mark. Rich, powerful men. She seduces them into compromising positions. We take care of the rest. And this one's a big fish. She's been reeling him in for months. First time, the consul spotted her at one of Silco’s shindigs. Next, she got cozy with the warmasons to learn more about his dealings. Then, she set her sights on him personally. He's already taken her to a dozen fancy dinners. Bought her jewelry. Tried to bribe her into bed. He's so far gone he's convinced himself she's fallen for him."

"That's disgusting."

"It's the oldest trick in the book. She'll make him feel important, invincible, like the baddest wolf in the woods. When she's got him wrapped around her finger, she'll let him believe she's wrapped around his. And once he's hooked, he'll tell her things. Things we can use to set him up."

"Where do I fit into all this?"

"You'll be the backup. The ace in the hole." Bloodwork irons out Sevika's voice. "A fortnight before the Expo, the consul will stop by Zaun. Nominally for networking. Getting wined and wooed by entrepreneurs itching for his coin. But really, he's there to touch base with the warmasons. On the way back, he'll pay his favorite lady a visit. She'll remove something from his luggage, and fit a special device into it. Something that'll help us gain access to his ship's systems."

"You'll scuttle his craft?"

"We'll do what needs to be done. Maven will give us the opening. You'll carry the luggage on board his ship. Then you'll join the speedboats as part of his entourage. Midway downriver, there'll be a malfunction. The ship's engines will overheat. His craft will explode. There's a Gnasher forecast on the coast around that time. It'll take care of the wreckage. When the Pilties pull him out of the water, he'll be in too many pieces to question."

Vi’s mouth is sour with dismay.

"It's easy," Sevika says. "Get close. Transfer the luggage. The rest, we'll handle."

"How do I know you won't kill me when I'm done?"

"You're a Peacekeeper. If we killed you, Piltover would call the Treaty off. We need that deal.” Her voice drops. “And you need ours. Get the job done, and Silco will let you see Jinx. Refuse, and the offer's off the table. For good."

Vi's teeth set on edge. She hates that, even with herself, she is raising only practical concerns. She's never been a fan of Noxus; few Fissurefolk are. The majority of their Ionian population are refugees fleeing Noxus’ war-machine.

But to kill a diplomat is another order of magnitude. Murder on the international stage. And bystanders caught in the crossfire.

Sevika's hauteur downshifts. "There's a bigger picture here, Vi. A lot bigger. But the bottom-line is this: Zaun is our city. Our future. Nobody f*cks with it. If they try, we cut 'em off at the pass. If that means blood on our hands, so be it." Her prosthetic hand goes to Vi's throat. Copper fingers encircle the windpipe. Not pressure; just enough to feel Vi’s pulse. "If you keep jeopardizing that, you'll throw our city straight into bedlam. What then? How will you protect your sister if we’re back under someone's boot?"

"I—"

"Consider this the cost." Sevika's eyes fall on Vi's thigh. "And take the brand as a gift. From Silco. From me. And remember. If you endanger our cause again—" Sevika leans in, her fist encompassing Vi's throat, breath smoky as dragonfire on Vi's face, "—We'll cut you into so many pieces not even Janna could find them."

Vi can't speak. Her body is a slab of meat: naked, bound, branded. She stares up at the shadowy rafters, where her reflection stares back, a ghost suspended in glass. And beyond: the dimensions of the furnace, the glossy racks, the gleaming tools.

All of them a promise.

Sevika's grip loosens. Without a backward glance, she goes to the door. There, she turns, a three-quarter profile framed in the threshold. Her voice is pitched to someone else's ears.

"Get her dressed," she orders. "The ride's ready"

A moment later, four blackguards enter. Vi thrashes; the straps bite deep. They loom above her, a quartet of shadows. The lightbulb buzzes; their hands come down. The last thing Vi sees before she's gagged and blindfolded, are Sevika's eyes, watching her.

Cold, flat. A scavenger's stare. But the emotion beneath is hard to name.

Then there is a pinch at Vi's neck, followed by a wave of icewater. Every cell in her body prickles. Hallucinogen?

Shimmer.

Panic is a bright bloom of heat surging up her ribs and exploding in her throat. The Shimmer chases after, spreading outward until nothing can stop its eruption: a full-body seizure encroaching into blackout. The rest is drowned by a scream.

It is Vi's own.

Sobbing.

Vi comes awake to the pulsating pain in her temples. She opens her eyes to an imperfect blackness that triggers a depth-charge of panic.

She isn’t in the torture chamber. She isn't in Silco's headquarters. The air holds the acrid smell of dust, tobacco, and spilled alcohol. She feels a gritty dampness all over body, and realizes from the friction that she is wearing clothes. They stick to her skin; her body is sweat-soaked. Underneath, the floor is a mix of crumpled trash and pitted concrete.

Her vision adjusts to the dark. She is lying at the bottom of a stairwell, thirty cement steps below street level. The barest hint of daylight filters through the slats of a boarded-up basem*nt window. The walls are pale green, flaked off in places. The brickwork underneath is discolored by mildew. Here and there, graffiti is splashed. Gang tags. Political slogans. Profanities.

"DOWN WITH UPPERS" – "ZAUN FOR ZAUNITES" – "f*ck THE COUNCIL."

A mural catches Vi's eye. It is carved into the wall. A frieze version of the Eye of Zaun. It glitters from its recessed niche, polished with resin. An oculus opening onto an unknown realm.

Someone is sobbing.

Vi struggles to sit up. Stiffness atrophies her muscles. She feels as if she's been dragged behind a drag-car for the better part of a mile. Her clothes aren't the ones she'd worn to Zaun. She is in an outfit similar to the blackguards’ uniform. Armored vest, black pants and boots. Around her neck, a chain dangles, a single key flashing.

Miraculously, her bruises are gone. The cuts have scabbed over. Only the tattoo burns beneath her trousers, a dull throb like a residual fever.

The sobbing keeps on.

It has an eerie quality to it. Not the sound itself, but the way it resonates. Like a single drop in a large basin of water.

Like someone wailing from the bottom of a pit.

A memory: Vi, seventeen years old, slumped inside a tunnel. A rain-storm rages. Flames crackle, the air choked with smoke. There is a foul undernote of charred meat. And ahead is a little girl, crouched on rain-slicked concrete. She is small and wet and shivering. Her foreground is the body of her father, bleeding out in the night. His eyes are a milky film; his mouth hangs open.

And the little girl is sobbing.

"Powder," Vi gasps.

She struggles to her feet. The co*cktail of Shimmer and sedative is a dizzying undertow; she fights the pull. The sobbing is coming from above. The stairwell rolls and pitches like the deck of a ship. Vi’s hands scrabble over the concrete, finding a handhold, then a toehold. She crawls up on all fours.

When her head pops above ground-level, the brightness is a shock.

She's in the backroom of a bar. A deserted one. There is a pool table, its green surface chalky with a layer of dust. Broken glass glitters everywhere. The rotting floorboards are littered with the husks of spent cigarettes and used condoms. A fetid aura of decay overlays everything.

In the middle sits a coffin, elevated on a catafalque. It is matte black and elaborately engraved. A heavy chain coils from the lid to the floor, where it is attached to an eyebolt, and padlocked shut.

The sobbing comes from inside.

Vi drags herself out of the stairwell. The drug's sediment coats her bones. But adrenaline is a livewire. The entirety of last night, she's been pummeled, pounded, paralyzed. Now, the fight rises in her like a tide. Her hands seize the padlock, trying to yank it off its hasp. Her nails dig under the coffins lid.

"Powder," she hears herself babbling. "Powder, I'm here!"

The chain is solid; the padlock unyielding. Vi tries to break it with her ill-fitting boots, but her heels glance off. She stumbles ass-first to the dirty floor. Then she remembers the key around her neck. It is small and silver, and it slots perfectly into the padlock's aperture. With a twist, the chains spring free.

Vi seizes the lid, and pulls. The hinges creak. The sobbing grows louder.

Then it cuts off.

Caitlyn is curled on her side, arms tucked, knees pulled up. She is naked except for her underwear; her white velvet skin is ashen. A trickle of blood runs from her nostrils. Her breathing comes rapid-fire; she is almost hyperventilating. When Vi touches her, she feels the chill film of shock-sweat.

There are small furred bodies crawling across her skin, her hair.

Rats, Vi thinks dazedly.

On reflex, she swipes them away. The rats scuttle under the catafalque. Leaning down, Vi cradles Caitlyn around the shoulders, and lifts. Caitlyn jerks. Her eyes focus on Vi's face, a blue that seems nearly too bright for their sockets. She smells intensely of a night's rancid sweat. An incongruous sweetness oozes from her pores: the residue of Shimmer.

They drugged her, Vi thinks.

Drugged her and locked her in a box.

Like a corpse.

"V-Vi!" Caitlyn gasps.

"Ssh," Vi whispers. "I'm here."

She enfolds Caitlyn in her arms. Instinctively, her eyes sweep over the room. The pool table; the broken windows; the decaying walls. In one corner, a velvet-padded alcove. A stage for burlesque dances. In the opposite, a steel service exit. Beyond, the main entrance.

Vi realizes she is on red alert for threats. She expects an attack at any second.

"Vi?" Caitlyn repeats.

Vi's attention snaps back. "I'm here." She smooths a strand of tacky hair from Caitlyn's forehead. "I've got you."

"Are—are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Vi lies. "Nothing broken."

Caitlyn gives a hoarse laugh. "You're a terrible liar." A tremor takes her. "Gods. They told me—you were going to die."

"They?"

"Three of them." Caitlyn licks her cracked lips. "The big man—with tattoos. The one from the airship. A blond boy. A darkhaired person. They had guns. And they said..." Her eyes dart from side to side, as if tracking invisible phantoms. "They said—if I didn't cooperate, Silco would kill you."

"What'd they do to you?"

"Pushed me around." Caitlyn's voice is rasp from the bottom of a well. "Took away my clothes. Left me in the dark." Her body shivers uncontrollably. "Then they—they gave me something. A drug." She tries to look into Vi's eyes, but her lids keep fluttering. "The rats. I thought they were—monsters." She retches. "It felt—I don't know—like they were chewing into my skin."

Vi's hands quest Caitlyn's body, searching for the bite marks. A few are red welts. Others have scabbed into bruises. The rest of her is intact.

"I remembered," Caitlyn says.

"Remembered...?"

"You told me—when you were young." Caitlyn's shoulderblades tremble. "Sometimes rats would crawl into your bed. The best thing to do is not thrash. Stay calm, or they'll bite."

"Yeah," Vi whispers.

"I tried to be calm." Caitlyn's lips quiver. "But—the drug—"

"It's okay." Vi gathers her in. Shame heats her cheeks, but her voice stays soft. "It's okay."

The memories are vivid. The sensation of vermin scuttling across her body, nibbling her skin. A milestone for every sumpsnipe. How many nights had Vi spent awake, her eyes screwed shut, her body enfolding Powder, waiting for the rodents to crawl off? Now Caitlyn has endured the same nightmare. Worse.

All because of Vi.

"I'm sorry," Caitlyn croaks. "I should've—should've been stronger."

"Don't say that" Tears scald Vi's eyes. She blinks them away. "This is all my fault. Gods, I should never have brought you down here. I should never have—" Her voice catches, a sob threatening. "Please. I'll make it right, Cupcake. Just—hang in there."

"Ssh." Caitlyn's hands, shaking, cup her face. "I'm okay. Don't—don't worry."

The tears break loose at last. "Look what I did to you!"

"It wasn't your fault." She touches her clammy forehead to Vi's. "It's just... what happens in the Undercity. Right?"

Vi's hands find the small of Caitlyn's back, and fold her close.

Inside, rage, sharp and clean, slices through the fugue. Silco is the sole architect of this. Everything from the drugs to the coffin to the rats. Pure sadism sheathed in prurient theater. He's letting her know he can reach Caitlyn. Touch her in the worst ways—but leave no fingerprints. He's letting Vi know there are things worse than death.

Things he'll inflict with relish—if she steps out of line.

Vi's teeth grind. Every cell in her body wants to storm Silco's headquarters. Beat the life out of him. End the monster, once and for all.

Then she thinks of the brand on her thigh. The bargain. The city.

Jinx.

All in jeopardy. All on the brink. Silco is a hydra with a hundred heads. If she slays one, the others will grow back. To finish him, she'll need to stab the heart. And she can't do that without getting close. Closer than she's ever dared.

She needs to play along. Do as they say. Until the opportune moment.

The end of the line.

"I have to get you out of here," she says. "We can't stay or else—"

The door bangs open. Sunlight spears into the room.

Vi scrambles to her feet. Her eyes squint against the flood of brightness. Three figures appear, silhouetted in the glare.

Lock, Ran and Dustin.

"sh*t," Vi breathes.

They armed to the teeth. Lock casually palms a pistol. Dustin's eyes are a feral glitter that matches the switchblade dancing between his fingers. Ran's stare is hooded, mouth an obscure seam. Her hands, hanging loose by the sides, end in a pair of claw-tipped brass knuckles.

Behind Vi, Caitlyn lets off a sharp involuntary sound. Vi doesn't dare look. Instead, she sizes up the distance to the service exit. It's only a few yards away, but the distance yawns like a gulf. For the umpteenth time, Silco has her dead to rights. He knows how her mind works. How her Peacekeeper training compels her to act. How her reflexes as a sumpsnipe shape the rest.

Now he's placed her in a cage where the only escape is his mercy.

"Relax," Lock says. His demeanor is easygoing. The only giveaway are his eyes: empty as gunbarrels. "We're not here to fight."

"Why the f*ck should I believe you?" Vi's fists curl. "You're a bunch of lying scumbags!"

Dustin feigns hurt. "Ouchie. Blowtorch doesn't pull punches."

"I'm not gonna punch. I'm gonna kick your ass!"

"Save it for later," Ran says mildly. "Bossman's orders are to escort you out."

She reaches into the knapsack slung from her shoulder. Vi tenses, expecting—what? A flashbang? A gun? Instead, Ran produces a balled-up dress and a pair of sandals.

"Thought you'd like these." She tosses the garments onto the catafalque. "Something warm for the journey."

"If you touch her—"

"Wouldn't dream of it, Sugartooth." A feline smirk. "Your boat's waiting."

Vi glances at the exit again, gauging the odds. But Lock lifts his pistol. He is the picture of calm, except his finger is ready on the trigger.

Vi understands the odds are stacked.

She turns her attention to Caitlyn. Gently, she eases her upright. Caitlyn is wobbly, her eyes glazed from the ebbing hallucinogen. Her shoulders quake hard enough to shake her teeth. Her beautiful girl, who's always stood her ground and never flinched. Now she's barely capable of standing.

Vi has never hated herself more.

She slips the dress over Caitlyn's head. Slips her arms into the sleeves. The cloth hangs on her lithe frame like a sack. It is a pink polka-dotted affair, with a low square neck and a pleated skirt that falls past the knees. A relic from bygone days. It smells faintly of mothballs.

The shoes, at least, fit.

"Time's a-wasting," says Lock. "Don't want to miss the boat."

"Give me a sec," Vi growls. "She's sick."

"Nothing a night's sleep can't fix." He gestures at the door. "After you."

Vi hesitates. Caitlyn, sagging against her, nods. Her steadfast expression is the same, a lifetime ago, from the Undercity walkway. The night she'd taken a shot at Sevika, and saved Vi. The expression, three lifetimes ago, on the night they'd lain in Caitlyn's bed, and talked. When Vi had wondered, for the first time, if maybe someone cared about her. Not because she was useful. Or tough. Or a fighter.

Because she was her.

Vi takes Caitlyn's arm, and eases it over her shoulders. With faltering steps, they approach the doorway.

The three thugs close rank. Vi’s hackles rise. But they make no aggressive moves. Flanking Vi and Caitlyn, they escort them out the door, and into the deepening heat of early-morning. The sky is algaeal green. The city air is a miasma of smoke, salt and sulfur. The building is an abandoned two-story tenement. It is part of Entresol, in the slum-quarter edging the northern bank. Ahead is a stretch of docks. Beyond, the river fanning into an arboreal network of canals.

A boat sways gently in the brackish gray waters. Its hull is rust-flecked, its moorings frayed. But the motor is shiny new, idling with a steady purr that promises speed.

"M'ladies," Dustin mimes an exaggerated bow. "Your carriage."

Vi and Caitlyn descend the jetty. A few seabirds caw at their passage. All else is silent. The boat is unmanned, with seats for two. They will be making the return trip back home by themselves.

Home.

Surreal to call Piltover that. But after the events of the past twelve hours, it's all Vi has.

Sucking in a deep breath, she lets it energize her. Momentum toward a goal. When she and Caitlyn got home, a bath. Many baths. And their bed. Where they can sleep and talk and heal. Vi will tend to Caitlyn's welts. Caitlyn will help Vi forget her own. Then, tomorrow, Vi will find a way to fix the mess.

Save her sister.

At the end of the gangway, Vi hears the click of a gun co*cked.

She stills. Caitlyn, half-leaning, jerks her head up. Their eyes meet. The fear in Caitlyn’s is tempered with the steel of resolve. Her hand finds Vi's and squeezes.

Together, they turn.

Lock has the gun aimed squarely at Vi's skull. His eyes are icy blue.

"It goes without saying," he says, "but if you try to return, Himself's orders are to shoot on sight."

"I won't," growls Vi.

"For your sake, and hers—" a jerk of his chin toward Caitlyn, "—you better not."

The pistol comes up again.

"Three," Dustin chants. "Two. One."

Lock pulls the trigger.

Instinctively, Vi enfolds Caitlyn in her arms. The click reverberates between her ears. She braces for the bullet. The hot-metal stench of gunpowder. The searing blast of impact.

Nothing comes.

The pistol sounds off hollowly. Lock lowers it, displaying metal-capped teeth in the ghoulish semblance of a smile. Vi breathes raggedly. Her knees nearly buckle. In her arms, Caitlyn is near tears, and struggling to keep it together. Tonight, they've been reminded that the edge of life is a single slip. That death's mercy, denied, can become one moment a charm, the next, a curse.

"Whoops," Lock says pleasantly. "Finger slipped."

Dustin doubles over with laughter. Ran's grin is a barbed sliver. Behind them, the sun climbs a few notches, the light spilling a dirty greenish glow.

Vi's eyes slit against the glare. She understands the language of payback. Lock's true aim was to spook her. To remind her that for creatures like Silco’s crew, death is an easy sport, and pain, a simple pleasure. The only thing keeping both at arm's length is a thin membrane of pragmatism.

She is too useful to kill.

For now.

"Himself will be in touch," Lock says.

Vi's blood ices. "Tell him he won't like what I have to say."

"We know." The pistol drops casually to Lock's side. "You're a wildcard, Missy. And a pain in the ass. But you keep things interesting."

He pockets his gun. With a nod, he and his companions disappear down the pier.

Vi stands at the docks, Caitlyn encircled in her arms. The sun is coming up. On the south bank, the industrial skyline of Zaun cuts into the gloom. A cursed maw. To the north, Piltover sparkles, its spires plated with gold, spitting off fractals in rainbow shards. A cradle of charms.

For a moment, the world is still.

"Vi," Caitlyn whispers. "What do we do?"

Vi can't answer.

She, who'd been conditioned to fight, but failed to safeguard her family. Who'd always coped with the aftermath of disaster by reverting to the caretaker's well-worn groove, but failed to keep Caitlyn from harm. Who'd learned early on that the world is cruel, but couldn't prevent its cruelty from touching anyone she cherished.

Now her hands are empty. Her body is branded. Her options reduced to the single vessel waiting to take her out.

Tears slide down Vi's cheeks. She tastes salt on her lips. A taste of girlhood, gone for good.

"Home, Cupcake," she says, hoarsely. "We go home."

And Caitlyn, who always has a reply for everything, can only nod.

Together, they climb down the gangplank, and into the boat.