The crowd didn't move like people anymore.
It moved like water—heavy, directionless, cruel in its physics.
Kellan was on his knees on the registry steps, wrists bound, rope biting into skin. Someone yanked him upright again, too fast.
His feet slipped.
His shoulder hit stone.
He made a sound that was all breath and panic.
The square answered with a roar.
"Let him go!"
"They're taking children!"
"Justice—!"
Shields tightened. Boots planted. Hands went to hilts.
And every guard's gaze snapped to Jina's mouth like her lips were a trigger.
Say it.
Make it stop.
Prove control.
The Diaconal attendant beside her watched with mild eyes.
"You can end this," he murmured.
Jina tasted iron.
Command rose in her throat like something hungry. One syllable—clean, efficient—would freeze the crowd and the guards and the rope hand.
It would also tell the Empire exactly what it wanted to know.
She pressed her tongue hard against her teeth until it hurt.
"No," she said, low.
Then she stepped forward anyway.
Out of the chalk circle.
Into the noise.
The guard captain stiffened. "Your Highness—"
"Open a lane," Jina snapped. "Now. Left side."
Not Command.
Just triage—sharp, human, urgent.
For a beat, the captain froze like his training couldn't process authority without coercion.
Then he barked, "Left! Open!"
Shields shifted. Bodies surged into the gap immediately.
The Diaconal attendant's smile didn't change.
He let it happen.
Of course he did. Let it tighten. Let it look like Jina had lost control.
Jina shoved into the lane before it closed.
Heat hit her—sweat, breath, panic. Elbows glanced off her shoulders. Someone cursed. Someone shoved back.
Jina kept moving.
Lysander moved too, at the edge of her vision—still "at distance," but his shadow angled so every lunge hit him first.
Kellan's face was slick with tears and grime. His eyes were huge, unfocused.
He wasn't looking at the crowd.
He was looking at the rope in his wrists like it was a snake.
Jina reached the bottom step.
A Diaconal clerk—different from Caldris, younger—held the rope with both hands like it was a holy instrument.
His voice rang out, trained for witnesses. "This child was concealed through registry fraud—"
Jina didn't let him finish.
"Stop," she said.
Not magical.
Just a word thrown like a stone.
The clerk blinked, thrown off-script.
Kellan flinched at the sudden shift in sound and tried to curl inward, bound hands trapping him.
His breathing went wrong—fast, shallow, thin.
Panic. Crushing. Not enough air.
Jina saw it instantly the way she'd seen a rabbit go into shock, the way she'd seen a dog choke on its own fear.
Her body moved before permission.
"Kellan," she said, voice low, anchored. "Look at me."
His eyes flickered toward her. Not fully. Not safe yet.
Jina lifted her hands where the crowd could see them—empty, palms open.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said clearly. "Breathe with me."
A laugh burst somewhere in the crowd—sharp, ugly.
"Listen to her! The tyrant's doing breathing lessons!"
Planted voice. Rehearsed.
Jina ignored it.
She took one slow inhale and exhaled deliberately, making it visible.
"In," she said. "Out."
Kellan's chest stuttered. He tried to match her and failed.
His lips were going pale.
Jina's stomach dropped.
Behind her, the crowd pressed closer, hungry to see what she'd do. Guards held, waiting for the moment violence would "justify" them.
The Diaconal clerk tightened his grip on the rope. "Your Highness, the judgment—"
Jina's gaze snapped to him. "Untie him."
The clerk's eyes darted. "I—cannot."
"Then cut it," Jina said.
"I do not have authority—"
"Then I do," Jina said, and her voice went colder. "Now."
The clerk hesitated.
One beat too long.
Kellan wheezed.
Jina didn't reach for Command.
She reached for the only power she trusted.
Heal stirred under her ribs—warm, bright, and expensive.
The poison hooks scraped in anticipation.
Jina knelt on the stone step in front of Kellan, putting herself lower than him on purpose. Putting herself where the crowd could see there was no dominance in the posture.
Her palm pressed to his sternum.
Kellan jerked, startled by touch.
"It's okay," Jina said quickly. "It's okay. I'm helping you breathe."
She let Heal open—controlled, narrow, precise.
Not a flare. Not a spectacle.
A steady warmth pushed through his chest like hands clearing a trapped airway.
Kellan's whole body shuddered.
He coughed—wet, hard—and his shoulders shook with it.
Jina kept her palm firm, guiding the Heal to where his lungs were tight, where panic had clamped muscle and fear had stolen rhythm.
"Good," she murmured. "Good. Again."
Kellan coughed again, then sucked in a breath that actually filled him.
Color crawled back into his lips.
A sound rose from the crowd—shock first, then something dangerous.
Hope.
And hope always made people louder.
"She's healing him—"
"Is that allowed?"
"Is she possessed?"
"Divine—"
Jina didn't look up.
She felt the eyes anyway. A thousand witnesses drinking in proof.
She kept the Heal narrow and finished the stabilization—just enough that Kellan's breathing stopped skittering at the edge of collapse.
Then she withdrew her hand slowly.
The moment she did, the cost snapped back into her body.
Dizziness hit like a hammer.
Her vision spotted at the edges.
The poison hooks dug in, delighted by the fresh strain.
Jina swallowed hard, tasting metal.
She forced her voice steady. "Kellan. Can you stand?"
Kellan nodded jerkily, eyes still wide.
The Diaconal clerk saw his chance and yanked the rope again to pull him upright.
Kellan gasped, pain flaring in his wrists.
Jina's head snapped up.
"No," she said, sharp.
The clerk stiffened. "Your Highness—"
Jina rose too fast. The world tilted.
She caught herself on the step with one hand, breathing through the nausea.
"Untie him," she said again, slower now. "Or I will make you explain to this crowd why you're strangling a child who can't even breathe."
The crowd's mood shifted—angling toward the clerk.
For the first time, the Diaconal clerk looked uncertain.
Not because of Jina.
Because of witnesses.
His fingers fumbled with the knot.
The rope loosened.
Kellan's bound hands fell free.
He stared at his wrists like he didn't believe they belonged to him.
Jina took a careful breath.
"Everyone," she called, turning her head just enough to project, "step back."
The crowd surged—then hesitated.
Jina lifted her hands again, palms open, voice cutting through the noise without magic.
"If you push, children get crushed," she said. "If you want justice, give them air first."
A beat.
Then a few people—front row, closest to the reality of bodies—stepped back.
Others followed, not out of obedience, but out of instinct.
Guards exhaled in visible relief, line steadying.
The planted voices tried to redirect it—
"Don't listen—!"
"She's manipulating—!"
—but the crowd's rhythm had shifted. Survival had regained its grip.
Jina saw Maren near the post again—chin lifted, eyes shining. Watching. Remembering.
A witness with a name.
Jina's knees threatened to fold.
She forced them straight.
The Diaconal attendant appeared at the edge of the steps, mild as ever, voice soft enough to sound like concern.
"Your Highness," he said, "you are overexerting yourself."
Jina looked at him.
He was watching her pallor. Her sway. The way her breath hitched.
Waiting to label it.
Unstable. Unfit. Proof.
Jina swallowed, tasting iron.
"I'm fine," she lied, because truth was a luxury.
She took one step down from the steps.
Her foot landed wrong.
The world lurched.
For a second, the noise dimmed—like someone had stuffed cloth into her ears.
Her stomach rolled.
The poison hooks scraped deep, pleased.
Jina's hands slipped in her sleeves, fingers suddenly numb.
She tried to steady herself.
Tried to take another breath.
Her lungs didn't listen.
Her vision tunneled.
And then the stone rushed up too fast.
The last thing she registered was a shadow breaking protocol distance—
Lysander's arms catching her before her skull hit the steps.
His voice hit her ear, rough and urgent. "Aurelia—"
Not ownership.
Not duty.
A name used like a lifeline because he couldn't use anything else.
Jina tried to speak.
To tell him she hadn't used Command.
To tell him she'd chosen restraint and paid for it.
Her mouth wouldn't form the words.
Darkness folded over the square like a curtain.
And somewhere above the hush of the crowd, she heard the Diaconal attendant's calm voice float—public, satisfied, already shaping the story.
"See?" he said gently. "Instability."
[Power]