Paris welcomes us with rain.

  We arrive on a gray December morning, the city shrouded in mist and the smell of wet cobblestones. The carriage from the station rattles through streets that are nearly empty at this hour—shopkeepers just beginning to open their doors, street vendors setting up their carts, the city slowly shaking off the lethargy of night. Gaslight still flickers in some windows, fighting a losing battle against the encroaching dawn.

  The journey from Lyon was long and tense—two days by express train, with changes at Dijon and Paris. Every checkpoint, every patrol, every stranger who looked at us too long sent my heart racing and my hand reaching for the blade at my hip. At one station, a gendarme walked the length of the train, checking papers. I watched him approach through the window of our compartment, watched him pause at the door, watched his eyes sweep over three women traveling together—one Chinese, one with the bearing of former wealth, one too young to be so still.

  He moved on. We breathed.

  Corrine's hand found mine under the compartment's blanket. She didn't say anything—just held on, her fingers warm and steady against my cold ones. We stayed like that for the rest of the journey, neither of us acknowledging what it meant, both of us unwilling to let go.

  The congregation knows now. They know someone has taken Ashworth—their senior hunter, their enforcer, the man who kept defectors in line for twenty years. They know the Tide is real, and coming for them. By now, every congregation cell in Europe will have received word. Every watcher will be looking for three women matching our descriptions. Every safe house we've ever used will be compromised.

  But we made it. Three women traveling together, unremarkable, unmemorable. Just another set of faces in the endless stream of humanity flowing through France's veins.

  The marks beat beneath my ribs as the carriage crosses the Seine. River is swollen with winter rain, gray and churning, and something in its depths responds to my presence. I feel that vast awareness sharpen—curious, perhaps, about why its marked one has returned to this city of bridges and drowned memories.

  Mei has a contact in the Marais—a bookseller named Fontaine who's been helping hunters like us for decades. His shop is tucked into a narrow street not far from the river, sandwiched between a tailor and a wine merchant. The sign above the door is so faded it's nearly illegible: Fontaine et Fils, Livres Anciens. The kind of place you'd walk past a thousand times without noticing.

  A bell chimes as we enter. Smell hits me first—old paper, leather bindings, the particular mustiness of books that have survived centuries. Shelves rise to the ceiling on every wall, stuffed with volumes in a dozen languages. A fire crackles in a small hearth, fighting back the December chill.

  Fontaine emerges from the back room with his dark eyes already cataloging our condition—the bandaged wounds, the exhaustion written in our faces, the vacancy that follows violence. He's older than I expected, perhaps sixty, with silver hair pulled back in a queue and the careful movements of someone who's learned to conserve energy for when it matters.

  "Ashworth," he says. Not a question.

  "Dead." I settle into a worn leather chair that creaks beneath my weight. "Along with several of his guards. The estate is compromised—we took what intelligence we could carry."

  Fontaine examines the documents we've brought. His expression doesn't change as he reads, but I see his knuckles whiten where he grips the papers. Page after page of the congregation's secrets—names, dates, financial records, the meticulous documentation of an organization that has survived for centuries by keeping careful track of everything.

  "This is significant." He leaned forward. "Ashworth's correspondence with regional coordinators. Financial transfers that trace back to legitimate businesses across Europe—shipping companies, banks, a textile mill in Manchester." He sets down one paper, picks up another. "Names of contacts in law enforcement, in government, in positions of power. A magistrate in Dover. A police inspector in London. Three members of Parliament."

  My stomach drops. "Parliament?"

  "The congregation has been building influence for generations. They don't just hide in shadows—they shape the shadows." He looks up, his dark eyes meeting mine. "This intelligence could expose them. Could bring the whole structure crashing down. But it also makes you the most dangerous threat they've ever faced."

  "Good," I say. "Let them be afraid."

  "Fear makes people desperate. And desperate people do desperate things."

  "It's dangerous," Fontaine continues. "They'll intensify their search for you. All of you." His gaze shifts to Corrine, who sits in the corner with her hands folded in her lap. "Especially now that they know the Vane defector is involved."

  "They suspected already," Corrine says quietly. "Documents Eleanor found mentioned it. Someone called the Hound has been tracking the situation."

  "The Hound." Fontaine's expression darkens. He sets down the documents, crosses to a cabinet, pours himself a measure of brandy. His gesture speaks to how seriously he's taking this news. "Marcus Sullivan. The congregation's senior hunter. He's been with them for decades—longer than Ashworth, longer than most of the current leadership can remember."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Another name for the list?"

  "Eventually. But Sullivan is different from the others. He's not motivated by faith or profit or the satisfaction some of them take in cruelty." Fontaine takes a long swallow of brandy. "His daughter was chosen for a ritual twelve years ago. He believes it was an honor. A blessing from the Deep One."

  The words land like stones in still water. I think of the children in the Dover cellar. The ones who didn't survive. The ones whose parents handed them over willingly, believing they were doing holy work.

  "He believes they killed his daughter and it was a blessing?"

  "Belief is a powerful thing. It can make people accept almost anything—even the unacceptable." Fontaine sets down his glass. "Sullivan hunts because hunting gives him purpose. Because if he stops—if he allows himself to question—he'll have to face what really happened to his child. The truth that she died screaming while her father watched and called it sacred."

  The words hit close to home. That void inside me, the way I fill it with purpose and violence. Is Sullivan so different—are any of us?

  "He'll come for us now," Mei says from the doorway. She's been standing there for several minutes, watching the exchange with her usual stillness. "Ashworth was his colleague. His friend, perhaps. Whatever else drives him, there will be personal motivation now."

  "Let him come." My words come out harder than I intend. "Let them all come. Every hunter they send is one less hunter pursuing other targets. One less person the congregation can use against the innocent."

  "Brave words." Fontaine almost smiles. "I hope you can back them up."

  We take refuge in a safe house in Montmartre—three rooms on the top floor of a building that leans slightly to the left, as if tired after centuries of standing. The windows look out over rooftops and chimney pots, a gray maze that seems to go on forever. On clear days, you can see the spire of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre in the distance, gray stone rising above the rooftops.

  That night, the Deep One speaks.

  Not in words—it never uses words. In pressure. In images. In that crushing weight of attention that settles over my sleeping mind like water closing over a drowning child.

  I'm standing on a ship.

  Gray water stretches in every direction, flat and still as glass. Fog hangs low, muffling sound, erasing the horizon. The deck beneath my feet is slick with moisture, the wood old and dark and stained with things I don't want to identify. Rust-colored streaks run from the railings toward the center of the deck. The copper-salt smell of old blood hangs in the air.

  This is a killing place. A sacred place. A place where the boundary between the world above and the world below grows thin enough to tear.

  Figures move through the fog. Four of them, emerging from the gray like ghosts taking form. I can't see their faces—not yet—but I know their shapes. The tall one with the military bearing, shoulders squared as if perpetually awaiting inspection. The woman who moves like cold water, fluid and merciless. The nervous one who scuttles at the edges, never quite still. And the ancient presence, barely visible, radiating power like heat from a forge.

  Marsh. Celeste. Whitmore. Ashford. The final four.

  One of them turns toward me. The fog parts just enough to reveal gray eyes, a knowing smile, the refined cruelty of someone who has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of breaking children.

  We're waiting for you, Celeste says. Her voice echoes strangely, as if coming from very far away and very close at once. We've been waiting for so long.

  I reach for my blade. It's not there. My hands are empty. My marks are silent—dead things carved into dead flesh, disconnected from the vast presence that usually pulses through them.

  Did you think this would end any other way? She laughs—a sound like ice cracking over black water. The Tide rises. The Tide falls. And in the end, the ocean swallows everything.

  The ship lurches. Water pours over the railings, black and cold and hungry. It reaches my ankles, my knees, my waist. Rising faster than physics should allow. Rising with purpose.

  Come home, something whispers. Not Celeste now. Something older. Something that has been waiting since before there were ships, before there were children to sacrifice, before there was anything except darkness and depth and endless, patient hunger.

  Come home. We miss you.

  The water closes over my head.

  I wake gasping, my hands clawing at blankets instead of black water. The marks are burning—not the warning pulse I've grown accustomed to, but actual fire, lines of pain tracing the symbols carved into my flesh.

  "Eleanor?" Corrine's voice, thick with sleep. She's in the chair across the room—she refuses to leave me alone at night now, after the monastery. Every night she's there, guarding me from nightmares she can't fight. The devotion in that simple act makes something ache in my chest. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." The word comes out ragged. Unconvincing. "Just a dream."

  "You're bleeding."

  I look down. She's right. Blood has seeped through my nightdress, dark stains spreading where the marks are carved. The fabric clings to my skin, wet and warm. The pain is fading now, but the blood remains—evidence that whatever just happened wasn't entirely in my head.

  "The Deep One," The words come out soft. "It showed me something. The ship. The final four." I meet her eyes across the dim room. "They're waiting for us, Corrine. And they know we're coming."

  She doesn't question the mechanics of receiving visions from an entity that exists outside human comprehension. She's been inside the congregation long enough to understand that some things simply are.

  "Then we make sure we're ready when we arrive."

  "And if we're not?"

  "Then we become ready." She rises, crosses to the window, looks out at the Paris night. Paris sprawls beneath us, a thousand lights flickering in the darkness like stars fallen to earth. "I spent six years running from what I was. It didn't work. You can't outrun what you are."

  "What are we?"

  "I don't know yet." She turns back to me, her face half-lit by the dying fire. "But whatever it is—we face it together."

  I think about the vision. The four figures in the fog. The water rising to swallow me. The way my marks went silent, as if the Deep One had simply... let go.

  But also—Corrine's hand in mine. Her voice in the darkness. The strange stillness that settles over the marks when she's close, like the eye of a hurricane.

  "Together," I agree. "Now try to sleep. We have a lot of planning to do tomorrow."

  She returns to her chair. I lie back on the blood-stained sheets and stare at the ceiling. The marks have gone quiet again, but I can still feel the echo of that attention—the vast, cold presence watching from somewhere beyond the walls of this room.

  It showed me the ship for a reason. Showed me the final four waiting in the fog.

  Either it's a warning or an invitation—and I'm not sure which terrifies me more.

  Somewhere in the city below, a church bell tolls midnight. The sound seems to echo longer than it should, carrying a resonance that makes my marks stir.

  The Deep One is watching. And it has plans for me I'm only beginning to understand.