Damon considered that.
Then he laughed once.
“You really are Nathan Vale’s daughter.”
“I am also late closing table twelve.”
Kaito’s expression softened just enough to be dangerous.
“You saved my life twice tonight.”
“You saved mine once. We are not keeping score.”
“In my world,” he said, “debts matter.”
“In mine, choices matter.”
He inclined his head. “Then choose.”
Mira looked at the cars. At the dark restaurant behind them. At the harbor where her father had vanished. At the key in her palm.
All her life she had survived by being unseen.
But invisibility was not safety. It was only a slower kind of disappearance.
She closed her fist around the key.
“I choose answers.”
Damon opened the van door. “Then get in before I regain common sense.”
Kaito stepped aside, letting Mira enter first.
Not ordering.
Not claiming.
Letting.
That mattered more than it should have.
Inside the van, the seats smelled of fish, diesel, and wet canvas. Tomas climbed in beside her, muttering prayers in three languages. Damon took the front passenger seat. Kaito sat across from Mira in the back, his men following in the cars behind.
As the van pulled away from the fish market, the Lantern Room burned behind them.
Flames rose through the rain, bright and hungry, turning the harbor windows orange.
Mira watched until the restaurant disappeared around the corner.
The life she had built there was gone.
The woman who could move through rooms unseen was gone with it.
Kaito looked at the brass key in her hand.
“You know,” he said quietly, “the dialect you spoke tonight is almost dead.”
Mira did not look away from the window.
“No language dies while someone still uses it to tell the truth.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, in that old island tongue, careful and respectful, Kaito Ren answered, “Then speak, Mira Vale.”
She turned to him.
The rain streaked the glass behind his face. The city blurred into silver and black. Somewhere ahead waited Warehouse Seven, Elias Rourke, her father’s ghost, and the kind of truth people killed to bury.
Mira lifted her chin.
And for the first time in years, she stopped whispering.