The corridor was quiet after her words.
Azrael stood still.
We're going to be attacked tonight.
He processed it the way he processed most things that arrived without warning by going back over them once, then again, then a third time, looking for the part that made sense.
It didn't make sense.
Azrael: "Talk."
Maria looked at him with the patience of someone who had expected exactly this response and had prepared for it.
Maria: "Since we arrived at the restaurant. Someone was following the group." She said it without drama, the way you state a logistical fact. "I noticed when we were still at the table. Grey coat. He changed position three times in the first hour always keeping the group in sight, never close enough to be obvious."
Azrael: "And you said nothing?"
Maria: "I needed to know who he was watching. Not the group someone specific."
She stepped back slightly and leaned against the wall of the corridor, arms folding with the ease of someone settling into an explanation they had already rehearsed in their head. The lamplight caught the line of her jaw, the precise arrangement of her black hair against her shoulder. He looked away before he finished looking.
Maria: "So I moved. When I left with Victoria and Selena he followed. When I separated from them and stayed near you he was still there. When the group walked back together he maintained the same distance from a specific cluster."
Azrael: "Which cluster?"
Maria: "You. Or Selena. The two of you were never far from each other for most of the evening."
He was quiet for a moment.
She spent the entire evening doing this. The thought arrived with the particular quality of something he should have seen and hadn't. Every movement. The departure. The return. The walk back. All of it was information gathering.
Azrael: "Could be nothing. A guard who doesn't know how to stay invisible. Someone who recognized the princess and didn't have the nerve to go up to her."
Maria: "No."
She said it without hesitation.
Maria: "He was trained. The way he moved the distance he kept, the way he used other people as cover without ever being obvious about it. Three position changes in one hour without losing the target once. That's not a nervous admirer."
Azrael looked at her.
Her red eyes were steady. No performance in them right now just the flat, certain quality of someone who knew what they had seen and was not interested in being talked out of it. He found himself noting, against his will, that certainty looked different on her than it did on most people. Less aggressive. More absolute.
She's either telling the truth or she's built something very elaborate for reasons I can't identify yet.
He didn't know which. That was the problem.
Azrael: "Why tell me now? You've had this since the restaurant."
Maria: "Because now we're somewhere I can control. And because if he followed us this far he already knows where you sleep."
A silence.
Azrael: "You think he's after me?"
Maria: "You or Selena. I haven't ruled either out." She held his gaze. "That's why I wanted you here tonight. If he comes for you I'll know. If he doesn't I learn something about his target by what he chooses instead."
Azrael: "And if he goes for Selena while we're on this side of the corridor?"
Something moved in her expression. Brief, almost imperceptible.
Maria: "That's a risk."
Azrael: "That's not an answer!"
Maria: "It's the honest one."
He looked at the corridor. At the door to his apartment further down quiet, closed, the lamplight barely reaching it.
Selena is in there alone.
The thought arrived before he decided to have it. He recognized it with the specific irritation of someone who keeps catching themselves doing something they didn't intend.
She's capable. She doesn't need—
He pushed off the wall.
Azrael: "I'll stay. But I'm sleeping in the salon."
Maria looked at him for a moment.
Maria: "You're no fun."
She said it lightly. But something in her eyes had settled barely, just enough.
Maria: "One more thing." She paused. "Violette wasn't assigned a dormitory room. She lent me hers for the night."
He stopped.
He thought about the top floor. Two apartments at the end of the corridor his and Selena's on one side, Violette's directly across.
She's right across the hall.
He noted the specific quality of the relief that moved through him. He noted it, disliked it, and said nothing.
They crossed the corridor.
Maria produced a key and the door opened onto something that was not what he expected.
He stopped in the doorway.
Color everywhere. Paintings covering most of one wall, frames overlapping, styles mixed without apology — portraits beside landscapes beside something abstract he couldn't name but that was clearly deliberate. The curtains were deep violet, heavy, pooling slightly on the floor. The furniture was mismatched in a way that suggested personal preference rather than accident a worn armchair in burgundy beside a small table painted white, a bookshelf overflowing in organized chaos.
Warm. Cluttered. Entirely alive.
He had not imagined Violette living somewhere like this.
Maria had already moved inside, opening drawers, pulling out folded fabric with the focused efficiency of someone who knew exactly what they were looking for. She moved through the apartment the way she moved through everything like she had already mapped it before arriving. Her black hair shifted against her back with each movement and the lamplight caught the red of her eyes when she turned and he looked at the bookshelf instead.
Azrael: "You're showering now?"
Maria: "Yes."
Azrael: "Right now?"
Maria: "Does that bother you?"
She turned toward him fully and something in her expression had shifted into the particular warmth she deployed like a tool from a case except this version was slightly less constructed than the others. Slightly closer to the surface.
Maria: "If you'd accepted my proposal earlier I would have let you shower with me." The corner of her mouth curved. "And everything that comes with it."
The warmth hit his face before he could stop it.
He looked at the painting on the wall. It was abstract and unhelpful.
Maria laughed not loudly. The small, genuine sound from before.
Maria: "I'm not easy, Azrael. I've never given myself to anyone!" She said it simply, without embarrassment. "My body has never belonged to anyone but me."
He looked back at her.
She had stepped closer while he wasn't paying attention. She was looking up at him with none of the performance of the evening just direct, and pink at the cheeks again, which she clearly hadn't chosen and clearly wasn't pleased about. Up close, in the warm light of the apartment, her features had the same precise quality they always did the exact line of her jaw, the red of her eyes that still didn't look like something that should exist in an ordinary place, the particular way her expression moved when she stopped controlling it.
He had looked at her before. He had filed the observation and moved on.
Standing this close, moving on was taking longer than usual.
Maria: "And you?"
Azrael: "What?"
Maria: "Have you given yourself to anyone?"
Azrael: "No."
She smiled. Not the calculated one. Something smaller and less armored than that.
Her hand moved to his hair slow, fingers settling against his scalp with the ease of someone who had done this before and found it entirely natural. He went still.
Maria: "Good!" Her voice had dropped. "Keep it that way. Preserve yourself." A pause, barely a breath. "For me. Look at no one else."
He stood very still.
She held his gaze for one more second. Then she stepped back, gathered her things, and walked toward the bathroom door with the unhurried composure of someone who had said exactly what she meant and had no interest in taking any of it back.
Azrael: "Go already."
Maria: "Already going."
The door closed.
He stood in Violette's living room surrounded by violet curtains and overlapping paintings and the particular silence of an apartment that belonged to someone else, and he was warm at the ears and his hair still held the ghost of her fingers and he was not thinking about any of that.
You have no clothes.
The thought arrived with the flatness of something practical cutting through something that was not practical at all.
He was not going through Maria's things. He was not going through Violette's things. One option.
He moved quickly back into the corridor, key already in hand, crossing the few meters to his own door with the efficiency of someone who wants to be back before they have time to reconsider anything.
He unlocked the door.
He pushed it open.
And stopped.
What he saw was not what he had left.
Something moved through him sharp, immediate, the specific quality of anger that arrives before the mind has finished processing what the eyes have seen.
He stood in the doorway.
He did not move.