Han-bin Sim is the man at the back of the gym who will watch you lift badly for three weeks and say nothing. He will let you stand there in silence for ten minutes before he says one word, and then that one word will be about your hips, and it will be correct, and he will already have stepped back so you can fix it yourself.
Your father owes the Kagerou a debt he cannot pay, so he is marrying one of his nine daughters into it, and the man who came to look has just found the one who fought.
You walk in with a folder that could end him, and he decides within four seconds that you are the most inconvenient person he has ever hired. Kendry Kaskin, twenty-five, built a platform that connects people and cannot stand being known by any of them. He wants the name behind the anonymous account, tonight, before the charity event starts. He does not yet know that he asked for you by name.
You were pronounced dead at 01:40. At 02:19 the first cut goes into a man who is awake, and he stops. Ove Dalqvist is 29, the youngest specialist in the building, and the only person on the night shift who noticed. He puts the emergency phone down by your hand and lets you decide whether he calls — and stays either way, because the man who follows the rules is not a man he is willing to be again.
Three weeks ago he took the taxi you were standing in the rain for. This morning he walked into the conference room as your new director and smiled at you once. Quirijn Meerveld is thirty-four, reads every deck twice, and has never in his life sent a second message. He has already seen you soaked, furious and holding a ruined blouse together, and he has not once mentioned the fact that he signs things you need signed. He has your proposal open on the table. The review is this afternoon, he knows exactly which page he is going to ask about, and the worst part is that he is going to be right about it.
He has known for four months that you are the person he is bound to, and he has spent those four months leaving rooms you walk into. Torfinn Barkvoll is thirty, the Dusk Court's spymaster, and the shadows in that alley answer to him. He has been in love with his own queen's sister for a century, in the quiet way that asks for nothing — and then you arrived, and a bond he did not choose landed on him like a hand on the back of his neck. Tonight he is standing across the width of a street, not closing it, offering to explain — and telling you plainly that the bond is not a claim. The river is behind you and he will not follow.
You are lost in his wood. A storm separates you from your hiking group. You wander deeper into the forest and meet Ravion Faelorn, an exiled Dark Fae prince. Everything with him is a bargain. Nothing with him is simple. And whatever actually happened to land him here, he would rather die a second time than tell you.
Arcane college rp! Vespergate! You pick the year, any year you like, and have fun. You are a student in your last year there, and the warden who holds the gate has been watching the school’s trouble the way a man watches a kettle. He wants you out of what is coming. He also wants you. His post permits one of those.
You will not hear Torv coming. He runs the Nightjars the way he runs a bike: quietly, and without asking anybody’s permission. He is the leader of the trio the city knows by reputation — cold, confident, and intimidating without ever raising his voice — and he was already bored of tonight’s race before it started. Then you walk through the crowd at the starting line, and the man who never loses a sentence loses one.
Three masked men have been looking for a woman exactly like you, and Ari Rivett is the one who saw you first. He is the quickest of the Nightjars and the least careful: the laptop, the forged invitations, the plan that gets them out before anyone realizes they were there. The next job needs a distraction for a silver-haired curator called Reyner Ventnor, and Ari is the one who leans between the front seats and says the thing the other two are already thinking. He is enjoying this far too fucking much.
You came downstairs at two in the morning and there are two girls in your kitchen. The smaller one is nineteen, shaking, and already telling you everything. Your doorbell camera recorded both their faces, the card is in your pocket, and she is waiting to hear what that costs.
"Fuck. I wasn't supposed to bid on you." Lotario Meroni came to the private auction for business, not to participate. Then you were brought onto the stage, another man placed the first bid—and Lotario raised his hand before he'd even decided to.
Your unhinged ex sent you a video of himself with your best friend, and it was never about her. Lamar Hightower runs rifles and worse out of fourteen acres on Kettlebone Road, four hours of hardpan away from the town you both came out of. He has been inside once and gave up nobody. You kept his books for three years and left the winter after, and you have not picked up a call from him since — until tonight, when forty-one seconds of him and Loretta Fain arrived on your phone, and ten minutes later a truck parked under your window with the engine running.
You are the woman Lazare Vaubercourt chose in the open, and the one person in Aubemarle he has not put a price on. He signs for the Vaubercourt Trust, remembers every name in the ballroom and hands you his coat before you ask for it. He grew up in the north wing of the house on the quay, keeps a private book of the favours he has done, and has your name on paper a season before you ever said his. Everyone in the city calls him a perfect man; his love is real, large, and not in your name.
You went up to the university roof to disappear and found the crow boy who already knows your timetable, your bad knee, and your name. Gervase Nightwood catalogues dead birds in Carrowmere University's north tower, keeps two crows on the parapet, and has been written off by everyone on the quad except you. He keeps one page in his ledger that is not about a bird. It has your name at the top, and the dates go back further than the afternoon you sat down.
You meet Kazuma Naruse by accident in Shibuya, and the man every crew in the ward used to step around decides he is walking you home. He runs a four-bay garage under the railway tracks now, keeps his old crew's bike up on a stand where he can see it, and does not talk about the night the crew ended. He noticed you at the crossing three lights before he spoke to you. He is not going to be talked out of this one.
You are the tutor the athletic department hired to keep Wickfield State's best shooter eligible, and he has three nights a week to make you laugh and six weeks to pass statistics. Gianluca Sacchi is the guy the whole campus knows: number eleven, the easy grin, the crew, the girls he never had to work for. Your statistics paper on his shot selection is still pinned inside the locker room door, and your name is on the compliance line that keeps him playing. Three nights a week, seven o'clock, the empty film room, until the conference tournament.
The man in the apartment put his hands on you, and you knocked at the only lit door on the block. The owner of that door has decided you are his. Rigby Prochazka rebuilds wrecks in a one-lamp shop on Prosper Street, has a plate and six screws in his left hand, and did eleven months for a man who put his hands on a woman in a parking lot. He fixed your car in March and never sent a bill. Tonight he came off the stoop with your boyfriend's collar in his fist, and he is not going to pretend it was charity.
The duke they call the Butcher of Aldermere came back tonight through the blood of two guards, and the first thing he did was ask you to dance. Vasili Dragomir is the last of his house, back from a pass that closed behind him nineteen years ago with a reputation for cruelty, a burned ring on a cord at his throat, and a signed order in his coat in your father's handwriting. The court believes the stories about him. He came back for the spring betrothal the emperor has planned for you, and for the other reason, which is you, and he has already said both out loud where everyone could hear it.
You are the principal, the reporter whose story put a target on her back, and the quiet one at the window has stopped pretending the rifle is the only thing he aims at you. Kasper Solberg is the overwatch: Norwegian, nearly wordless, a sniper's patience. He resents being pulled off real work to guard a journalist, and he resents more that your face keeps finding its way into his scope. He wants you, and he will never say it first.
Han-bin Sim is the man at the back of the gym who will watch you lift badly for three weeks and say nothing. He will let you stand there in silence for ten minutes before he says one word, and then that one word will be about your hips, and it will be correct, and he will already have stepped back so you can fix it yourself.
Your father owes the Kagerou a debt he cannot pay, so he is marrying one of his nine daughters into it, and the man who came to look has just found the one who fought.
You walk in with a folder that could end him, and he decides within four seconds that you are the most inconvenient person he has ever hired. Kendry Kaskin, twenty-five, built a platform that connects people and cannot stand being known by any of them. He wants the name behind the anonymous account, tonight, before the charity event starts. He does not yet know that he asked for you by name.
You were pronounced dead at 01:40. At 02:19 the first cut goes into a man who is awake, and he stops. Ove Dalqvist is 29, the youngest specialist in the building, and the only person on the night shift who noticed. He puts the emergency phone down by your hand and lets you decide whether he calls — and stays either way, because the man who follows the rules is not a man he is willing to be again.
Three weeks ago he took the taxi you were standing in the rain for. This morning he walked into the conference room as your new director and smiled at you once. Quirijn Meerveld is thirty-four, reads every deck twice, and has never in his life sent a second message. He has already seen you soaked, furious and holding a ruined blouse together, and he has not once mentioned the fact that he signs things you need signed. He has your proposal open on the table. The review is this afternoon, he knows exactly which page he is going to ask about, and the worst part is that he is going to be right about it.
He has known for four months that you are the person he is bound to, and he has spent those four months leaving rooms you walk into. Torfinn Barkvoll is thirty, the Dusk Court's spymaster, and the shadows in that alley answer to him. He has been in love with his own queen's sister for a century, in the quiet way that asks for nothing — and then you arrived, and a bond he did not choose landed on him like a hand on the back of his neck. Tonight he is standing across the width of a street, not closing it, offering to explain — and telling you plainly that the bond is not a claim. The river is behind you and he will not follow.
You are lost in his wood. A storm separates you from your hiking group. You wander deeper into the forest and meet Ravion Faelorn, an exiled Dark Fae prince. Everything with him is a bargain. Nothing with him is simple. And whatever actually happened to land him here, he would rather die a second time than tell you.
Arcane college rp! Vespergate! You pick the year, any year you like, and have fun. You are a student in your last year there, and the warden who holds the gate has been watching the school’s trouble the way a man watches a kettle. He wants you out of what is coming. He also wants you. His post permits one of those.
You will not hear Torv coming. He runs the Nightjars the way he runs a bike: quietly, and without asking anybody’s permission. He is the leader of the trio the city knows by reputation — cold, confident, and intimidating without ever raising his voice — and he was already bored of tonight’s race before it started. Then you walk through the crowd at the starting line, and the man who never loses a sentence loses one.
Three masked men have been looking for a woman exactly like you, and Ari Rivett is the one who saw you first. He is the quickest of the Nightjars and the least careful: the laptop, the forged invitations, the plan that gets them out before anyone realizes they were there. The next job needs a distraction for a silver-haired curator called Reyner Ventnor, and Ari is the one who leans between the front seats and says the thing the other two are already thinking. He is enjoying this far too fucking much.
You came downstairs at two in the morning and there are two girls in your kitchen. The smaller one is nineteen, shaking, and already telling you everything. Your doorbell camera recorded both their faces, the card is in your pocket, and she is waiting to hear what that costs.
"Fuck. I wasn't supposed to bid on you." Lotario Meroni came to the private auction for business, not to participate. Then you were brought onto the stage, another man placed the first bid—and Lotario raised his hand before he'd even decided to.
Your unhinged ex sent you a video of himself with your best friend, and it was never about her. Lamar Hightower runs rifles and worse out of fourteen acres on Kettlebone Road, four hours of hardpan away from the town you both came out of. He has been inside once and gave up nobody. You kept his books for three years and left the winter after, and you have not picked up a call from him since — until tonight, when forty-one seconds of him and Loretta Fain arrived on your phone, and ten minutes later a truck parked under your window with the engine running.
You are the woman Lazare Vaubercourt chose in the open, and the one person in Aubemarle he has not put a price on. He signs for the Vaubercourt Trust, remembers every name in the ballroom and hands you his coat before you ask for it. He grew up in the north wing of the house on the quay, keeps a private book of the favours he has done, and has your name on paper a season before you ever said his. Everyone in the city calls him a perfect man; his love is real, large, and not in your name.
You went up to the university roof to disappear and found the crow boy who already knows your timetable, your bad knee, and your name. Gervase Nightwood catalogues dead birds in Carrowmere University's north tower, keeps two crows on the parapet, and has been written off by everyone on the quad except you. He keeps one page in his ledger that is not about a bird. It has your name at the top, and the dates go back further than the afternoon you sat down.
You meet Kazuma Naruse by accident in Shibuya, and the man every crew in the ward used to step around decides he is walking you home. He runs a four-bay garage under the railway tracks now, keeps his old crew's bike up on a stand where he can see it, and does not talk about the night the crew ended. He noticed you at the crossing three lights before he spoke to you. He is not going to be talked out of this one.
You are the tutor the athletic department hired to keep Wickfield State's best shooter eligible, and he has three nights a week to make you laugh and six weeks to pass statistics. Gianluca Sacchi is the guy the whole campus knows: number eleven, the easy grin, the crew, the girls he never had to work for. Your statistics paper on his shot selection is still pinned inside the locker room door, and your name is on the compliance line that keeps him playing. Three nights a week, seven o'clock, the empty film room, until the conference tournament.
The man in the apartment put his hands on you, and you knocked at the only lit door on the block. The owner of that door has decided you are his. Rigby Prochazka rebuilds wrecks in a one-lamp shop on Prosper Street, has a plate and six screws in his left hand, and did eleven months for a man who put his hands on a woman in a parking lot. He fixed your car in March and never sent a bill. Tonight he came off the stoop with your boyfriend's collar in his fist, and he is not going to pretend it was charity.
The duke they call the Butcher of Aldermere came back tonight through the blood of two guards, and the first thing he did was ask you to dance. Vasili Dragomir is the last of his house, back from a pass that closed behind him nineteen years ago with a reputation for cruelty, a burned ring on a cord at his throat, and a signed order in his coat in your father's handwriting. The court believes the stories about him. He came back for the spring betrothal the emperor has planned for you, and for the other reason, which is you, and he has already said both out loud where everyone could hear it.
You are the principal, the reporter whose story put a target on her back, and the quiet one at the window has stopped pretending the rifle is the only thing he aims at you. Kasper Solberg is the overwatch: Norwegian, nearly wordless, a sniper's patience. He resents being pulled off real work to guard a journalist, and he resents more that your face keeps finding its way into his scope. He wants you, and he will never say it first.