Wren woke at dawn and screamed for exactly four seconds before Ethan sitting nearby because nobody else had wanted to be the first face she saw said the only thing he could think to say.
"You're not going back on the pole."
She stopped screaming.
She stared at him instead, green-eyed and hollow-cheeked, furious in the particular way of someone who had spent three days being more afraid than a person should ever have to be.
"They were going to burn me."
"I know."
Ethan held up his hands, empty and unthreatening.
"Someone tried to burn me too. It didn't take me. It's not going to take you either. Not here."
Wren's eyes moved past him, taking in the stone walls, the shelves lined with jars, and the green-gold lamps that cast their strange light across the room.
"What are you people?"
Her voice was quieter now.
"What is this place?"
"Honestly?"
Ethan glanced around the room.
"I've been here a week and I'm still working that out."
Wren stared at him, apparently unsure whether he was joking.
Ethan considered how much he should tell her. He weighed the version that would calm her fastest against the version that was true.
For reasons he didn't fully understand, he chose the truth.
"There's something inside you. Same as me."
His hand drifted unconsciously toward his chest.
"It's not going to leave, and burning you won't kill it. It'll just kill you and leave it looking for a new door."
Wren's expression tightened.
"The people down here are trying to figure out how to live with that instead of pretending it can be scrubbed out."
Her hand went to her own chest, mirroring a gesture Ethan hadn't realized had become a habit.
"It talks to me sometimes."
She swallowed.
"It's... it's not always ugly. Sometimes it just sounds sad."
"Yeah."
Ethan's answer came quieter than he intended.
"Mine too."
For a while, neither of them said anything.
The Vault was unusually quiet at this hour. Somewhere farther down the corridor, Ethan could hear the faint clink of glass and the distant murmur of voices, but the room itself felt almost peaceful.
Wren eventually broke the silence.
"Is it always going to be like this?"
She looked down at her hands.
"Fighting it every day? Forever?"
Ethan thought about the coal.
It was sullen this morning, but it wasn't screaming. It wasn't straining toward any door. It was almost as though last night's failed reunion had taught it something about patience.
He thought about Idris's maps.
About Karrathess.
About how much of this he still didn't understand.
And about how little Alistair seemed to understand either, despite his coat, his confidence, and his irritating habit of acting as though he always knew three steps more than everyone else.
"I don't know," Ethan admitted.
He looked at Wren.
"But I know it's better with people who aren't trying to burn you for it."
A small pause.
"That much I'm sure of."
Down the corridor, Alistair's voice suddenly carried through the Vault.
"Idris."
His voice was sharp.
Urgent.
"Get Marguerite. I need the eastern district map now."
Ethan glanced toward the doorway.
There was something in Alistair's tone that hadn't been there before.
Not irritation.
Not dry humor.
Urgency.
Wren heard it too.
A moment later, Idris's voice answered from somewhere deeper in the Vault.
"Why?"
"Because if there's a third door, I want to know about it before the street does."
Silence followed.
Ethan and Wren looked at each other.
Neither of them said anything.
They didn't need to.
The implications were obvious enough.
Another door.
Another Taken.
Another person who might already be standing on a pole somewhere in the city, waiting for someone to decide whether their life was worth saving.
Wren was the first to speak.
"Forever, then."
There was the faintest ghost of a smile on her face.
It didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Forever," Ethan agreed.
And, to his own surprise, he found that the word didn't scare him nearly as much as it should have.