We take the watcher at dusk.

  Mei circles around through the baker's alley while I approach from the front, casual, just another villager walking home. The figure under the oak doesn't run—doesn't even move until I'm ten feet away. Then she steps out of the shadows, hands raised, and I realize two things simultaneously.

  First: it's a woman. Young, maybe twenty-five, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes.

  Second: she's not congregation. The way she holds herself, the fear in her face—this isn't trained surveillance. This is desperation.

  "Please." Her voice cracks. "I just wanted to see. To know if it was really her."

  Mei emerges from the alley, blade drawn. "Who?"

  The woman's eyes find Corrine in the doorway behind me. Something shifts in her expression—recognition, yes, but also something darker. Older.

  "You don't remember me." Her voice is barely a whisper. "Why would you? I was just another girl in the cellar. Just another body on the table."

  Corrine goes very still.

  "Lyon," the woman continues. "Eight years ago, the autumn ritual—I was fourteen. You held my hand while they carried me to the pool."

  The silence is absolute. Even the evening birds have gone quiet.

  "You told me it wouldn't hurt." The woman's laugh is broken, jagged. "You told me to be brave. And then you watched while they pushed me under."

  I see Corrine's face in the failing light. The color draining from her cheeks. The mask crumbling.

  "I survived." The woman takes a step forward. Mei tenses, but I wave her back. This isn't an attack. "I don't know how. The others didn't. But I came up from that water with something inside me—something that shows me things. People. Places. Faces I'll never forget."

  She's crying now. Silent tears cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks.

  "I've been looking for you for six years. Every village, every town. Asking about a woman with gray-green eyes who might be hiding. And then last week I saw you in the market, buying bread, and I thought—" Her voice breaks. "I thought I'd finally found the monster from my nightmares."

  Corrine steps forward. I reach for her arm, but she shakes me off.

  "What's your name?" Her voice is raw. Stripped bare.

  "Marie. Marie Laurent."

  "Marie." Corrine stops three feet away. Close enough to touch. "I remember you."

  The woman—Marie—goes rigid.

  "You were wearing a blue dress. Your hair was in braids. You asked me if your mother knew where you were, and I—" Corrine's voice cracks. "I lied. I told you she was waiting for you on the other side. I told you everything would be all right."

  "You remember."

  "I remember all of them. Every child I helped prepare. Every lie I told. Every face." She reaches out, slowly, and takes Marie's hands in her own. "I'm not going to ask for your forgiveness. I don't deserve it. But I need you to know that I think about you. All of you. Every day. Every night. You haunt me the way I deserve to be haunted."

  Marie is shaking. Her whole body trembling like a leaf in a storm.

  "I wanted to hate you," she whispers. "For eight years, I've dreamed of finding you. Of making you pay."

  "Then do it." Corrine doesn't flinch. "I won't stop you. I won't fight. Whatever you need to do—"

  "I don't want to kill you!" The words tear out of Marie like a sob. "I want to understand! I want to know how someone could do what you did and still be walking around, buying bread, living a life, while I—while I—"

  She collapses. Corrine catches her, holds her, and for a long moment they stand there in the dying light—two women shaped by the same horror, finally facing each other.

  "I ran," Corrine says quietly. "Six years ago. I burned their mark off my wrist and I ran, and I've been hiding ever since. That's not redemption. That's cowardice."

  "Then what is redemption?"

  Corrine looks at me. At Mei. At the house behind us where the maps are spread across the table, marking the congregation's territories like battle lines.

  "I don't know yet. But I'm trying to find out."

  Marie pulls back. Wipes her face with shaking hands. Studies Corrine's face as if seeing her for the first time.

  "The others," she says. "The people who did this. Are they still alive?"

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  "Some of them. Not for much longer."

  Something hardens in Marie's expression. Something I recognize—the moment when fear transforms into purpose.

  "I want to help."

  "It's dangerous," I say. "The congregation doesn't show mercy to enemies."

  "They didn't show mercy to a fourteen-year-old girl either." She meets my eyes, and I see the marks shifting beneath her collar—different from mine, fainter, but unmistakably present. "I survived their ritual. Whatever they put inside me—it shows me things. People. Connections. I've spent eight years trying to understand it. Maybe it's time I used it for something."

  Mei and I exchange glances. Another survivor. Another weapon. Another piece of the puzzle that might help us bring the congregation down.

  "We're leaving tonight," I say. "If you're serious about helping, you can come with us. But once you're in, there's no going back."

  Marie looks at Corrine for a long moment. Something passes between them—not forgiveness, not yet, maybe not ever. But something.

  "I can't." Her voice is quiet but steady. "I spent eight years looking for her, dreaming of this moment. Now that it's here..." She shakes her head. "I need time. To understand what I'm feeling. To figure out who I am when I'm no longer consumed by hate."

  "Where will you go?"

  "I don't know. Somewhere away from the sea. Somewhere the marks don't burn every time the tide changes." She looks at me, and I see my own emptiness reflected back. "But if you need me—if you find a way to bring them all down—send word. I'll come."

  She turns and walks into the gathering dusk, a silhouette against the darkening sky. Another survivor, choosing her own path. I understand that choice better than I want to admit.

  Corrine comes to stand beside me, watching Marie disappear into the evening.

  "She'll find her way," Corrine says quietly. "We all do, eventually."

  I glance at her—at the way the fading light catches her features, the resolve in her gray-green eyes, the strength she's found beneath the guilt and grief. Something shifts in my chest. Not the marks this time. Something else.

  She catches me looking and holds my gaze. For a moment, the hunt falls away—the congregation, the list, the endless violence. There's just this. Just her.

  The marks flutter in my chest. Something warm and terrifying blooms alongside them.

  I haven't felt this way since before the drowning. Haven't wanted to feel this way. Wanting things is dangerous—it gives the world leverage over you, creates vulnerabilities that enemies can exploit. Mei taught me that. The mission comes first. Always the mission.

  But standing here in the gathering dusk, watching the last light paint Corrine's face in shades of gold and shadow, I find myself wondering if the mission is enough. If vengeance is all I want from whatever remains of my life.

  "We should go inside," Corrine says finally. Her voice is soft, almost uncertain. "It's getting cold."

  "Yes," I agree, though I don't move. Neither does she.

  The moment stretches between us, fragile as spun glass. Then Mei appears in the doorway, her expression unreadable, and the spell breaks.

  "The watcher isn't coming back," she says. "We need to leave tonight. Before they send someone to investigate why their agent stopped reporting."

  Over the following days, Corrine shares more about the congregation's regional operations—how Celeste coordinates the southern cells from London, how Ashworth manages the continental network from Lyon, how each region operates semi-independently while reporting to Marsh's central authority. Their structure is designed for resilience; cutting off one cell doesn't compromise the others.

  We leave the village before dawn.

  An old woman with the signal lamp is nowhere to be seen—Mei dealt with that problem in the small hours of the morning. She won't tell me how, and I don't ask. Some things are better left unspoken, carried in silence between hunters who understand necessary violence.

  The Beaumont children are still asleep when we slip out through the kitchen door. I leave a note for their mother—thanking her for the hospitality, warning her to be careful in the coming weeks—and a small purse of coins that should help with expenses. It's not enough. It will never be enough to repay people who risk everything to shelter strangers like us.

  The carriage takes us back to Bordeaux, the wheels rattling over roads that haven't seen maintenance in years. The November mist clings to everything—the bare trees, the stone walls, the distant spires of churches that watch over empty fields. I sit by the window and watch the countryside slide past, feeling the marks thrum inside my torso with every mile that brings us closer to the sea.

  Corrine sits beside me, her shoulder occasionally brushing mine as the carriage rocks over uneven ground. She's been quiet since we left the village—lost in her own thoughts, perhaps reliving the confrontation with Marie. I wonder what it felt like to face someone she'd helped hurt. To see the damage walking and breathing and demanding answers.

  But my thoughts keep drifting back to Corrine. How she looked when she talked about her sister—hatred and love so tangled together that even she couldn't separate them. The strength it must have taken to burn away her own brand, to run, to keep running for six years while the congregation hunted her. I find myself wondering what her life was like before—whether she had dreams that didn't involve drowning children. The way her hand felt in mine when we shook on our partnership.

  Lyon is two days away by train—the express runs through Dijon, faster than the coastal route. Two days of travel, of planning, of rehearsing the protocols Corrine has taught us. Two days before we find out if her intelligence is genuine or if we're walking into a trap.

  Mei sits across from me, reviewing documents in the gray morning light. Her face is unreadable, but I've learned to watch her hands—the way her fingers tighten on the paper when something concerns her, the slight tremble that speaks of exhaustion she'd never admit to.

  She's worried. We all are.

  "The protocols are detailed," she says without looking up. "Too detailed for improvisation. Either Corrine genuinely memorized all of this, or someone prepared it for her."

  "You think it's a trap."

  "I think we need to be prepared for the possibility." She sets down the documents, meets my eyes. "The congregation has used defectors before. Plants who pretend to flee, who build trust over years, who wait for the perfect moment to betray whoever takes them in."

  "Six years is a long time to wait for a betrayal."

  "Six years is nothing to an organization that's been operating for centuries." She pauses. "I'm not saying I think she's lying. I'm saying we need to verify before we trust."

  I consider Corrine's tears in the parlor. The emptiness in her eyes that matches the one in mine. Her guilt—not fresh, but old, worn smooth by years of carrying it.

  "She's not a plant." Mei shakes her head. "She's too broken. Plants maintain their cover—they don't fall apart the moment someone applies pressure."

  "Perhaps. Or perhaps that's exactly what she wants us to believe."

  "Mei—"

  "I know." She raises a hand, cutting off my objection. "I know what you saw. I know what you felt. But trust is verified, Eleanor. We go to Lyon, we test the protocols, and we see what happens. If her information is good, we'll know we can rely on the rest of it. If something goes wrong—"

  "If not, we'll deal with that too."

  She nods slowly. "Yes. We will."

  The train to Lyon leaves at dawn. In forty-eight hours, we'll know if Corrine's information is worth dying for.

  Or if it's what gets us killed.