By two in the morning, Levi had learned three things about Celeste Lumos.
First, she could smile for six hours without letting it reach her eyes.
Second, she knew exactly where every camera was, even the ones nobody admitted existed.
Third, she hated roasted fingerling potatoes with a quietness that bordered on violence.
He had spent most of the day following her through a schedule that looked less like public service and more like a hostage situation with better lighting. Morning language review. Movement briefing. Charity appearance. Two hospital visits. A controlled walk through Old Bellwether with six watchers, three route officers, one Asterion liaison, and a security drone pretending to be a decorative streetlight.
Celeste had been perfect through all of it.
Daystar had been perfect.
She had held children’s hands and listened to survivors with her head tilted at the exact angle that made people feel heard. She had given soft answers to ugly questions. She had smiled beside donors, thanked city officials, and accepted flowers from a little girl who cried so hard Celeste had knelt in front of her and whispered something Levi couldn’t hear.
Whatever she said, the girl stopped crying.
The cameras loved it.
They loved her in sunlight, in doorways, beside hospital beds, under gold banners, with her hair braided over one shoulder and her hands folded like she had been invented for comfort. Every time someone called her Daystar, she answered warmly. Every time someone thanked her for being there, she looked as if there was nowhere else she would rather be.
Levi had watched her all day and understood, with growing irritation, that he was watching a performance so practiced it had started to look like mercy.
Now, at two in the morning, the performance was gone.
Mostly.
They stood outside a side entrance of the Glasshouse, where a black service car waited with its lights off and its driver pretending not to listen. The late air was cold enough to bite. The city beyond Civic Crown was quieter than Levi had ever heard it, all wet pavement, sleeping towers, and the distant pulse of neon signs no one had bothered turning off.
Celeste stood under the overhang beside him, dressed down in an oversized gray sweater, dark jeans, and boots that looked too practical to have been chosen by Asterion. Her honey-brown hair was loose tonight, gold strands catching the security lights. She had a pair of sunglasses pushed up on her head despite the hour, because apparently famous Saints were allowed one dramatic accessory per outing.
She looked smaller without the gold.
Not weaker.
Just less arranged.
Director Drey stood in front of them with a tablet in one hand and the grim expression of a man watching common sense lose a procedural argument.
“This is a limited civilian comfort outing,” he said. “Route approved. Duration approved. Location approved.”
Levi looked at Celeste. “Civilian comfort outing?”
“Fries,” she said.
“Right. Government fries.”
“Technically bowling alley fries.”
“That does sound more constitutional.”
Drey did not blink. “Mr. Vale.”
Levi turned back. “Sorry. Respecting the sanctity of fried potatoes.”
“This outing has been authorized on the condition that Saint Lumos remains under your direct observation at all times.”
“At all times,” Levi repeated.
“At all times.”
“Do I need to watch her chew?”
Celeste looked at him. “I would prefer privacy for that.”
“See? Boundaries.”
Drey’s expression tightened by a millimeter. “You are not to separate. You are not to permit unscheduled stops. You are not to discuss restricted topics. You are not to allow alcohol, tobacco, or contact with unauthorized civilians. You are not to let Saint Lumos leave your line of sight.”
Celeste’s mouth curved faintly. “He makes me sound so difficult.”
“You are difficult,” Drey said.
The smile stayed on her face, but something behind it sharpened.
There she was, Levi thought.
Not Daystar.
Not the gentle woman from the hospital broadcasts.
Someone older. Funnier. Meaner, maybe, but not cruel. The kind of woman who had spent centuries learning how to hide a knife in a silk glove.
Drey turned to Levi. “If anything changes, you call it in.”
“And if nothing changes?”
“You call it in.”
“Comforting. Very normal.”
Drey handed him a slim black phone. “Your personal device remains surrendered. This line is monitored and restricted to Department channels.”
Levi took it. “Does it explode if I try to order takeout?”
“That depends on what you order.”
Celeste glanced over. “Do you always flirt with authority like this?”
“Only when authority makes itself available.”
Drey looked between them. “This is not a social outing.”
Celeste’s smile became sweet enough to rot teeth. “Of course not.”
The driver opened the back door.
Levi waited for Celeste to get in first. She noticed. Of course she did. Her eyes flicked to him, amused now, a little too bright beneath the ordinary green.
“How gentlemanly,” she said.
“I’m from a dying breed.”
“Men with manners?”
“Men who don’t trust people behind them.”
That earned him another look.
Less amused.
More interested.
Celeste stepped into the car.
Levi followed, settling beside her with the Department phone heavy in his coat pocket and Drey’s rules still crawling around his skull like ants. The door shut with a soft, expensive click. The car pulled away from the Glasshouse and slid into the sleeping city.
For the first few minutes, neither of them spoke.
Civic Crown passed in glossy silence outside the tinted windows. White stone. Clean sidewalks. Government lights. Buildings that looked innocent because someone cleaned the blood before morning. Then the car turned south, away from the polished center, and Bellwether began to loosen its tie.
The streets grew older. Narrower. The gold banners gave way to flickering signs and closed laundromats, pawn shops, late-night diners, and apartment windows glowing blue from televisions left on too long. A delivery bike leaned against a bus stop. Steam curled from a manhole. Somewhere, a siren wailed once and disappeared into the dark.
Celeste watched it all like someone looking through glass at a country she had only read about.
Levi watched her watching.
“You’ve been quiet,” she said without turning.
“I’ve been professionally watchful.”
“No. The others are professionally watchful. You are suspiciously quiet.”
“That’s because I’m suspicious.”
“Of fries?”
“Of anyone who can bully the Department of Enhanced Affairs into a two a.m. snack run.”
Her lips twitched. “I didn’t bully them.”
“No?”
“I requested.”
“Must’ve been a terrifying request.”
“It had punctuation.”
“God help us.”
This time, she laughed.
Not the soft public laugh from the hospital. Not the camera-safe one that said, How charming, how kind, how grateful I am to exist in this moment for your comfort.
This laugh was short, dry, and a little rusty, like she didn’t use it often enough.
Levi liked it before he knew better.
Celeste turned from the window. “You looked bored today.”
“I was.”
“That’s rude.”
“You were acting.”
“That’s rude and accurate.”
He looked at her then.
The city lights moved over her face in thin bands of gold and shadow. Without the cameras, without the handlers, without the room full of watchers, she did not look less beautiful. She looked less finished. Like someone had finally stopped polishing her long enough for the cracks to become interesting.
“You know,” Levi said, “most people would be offended if someone accused them of performing basic human warmth.”
“Most people haven’t been trained for it.”
The answer came too fast.
Neither of them touched it for a second.
Then Celeste leaned back, gaze returning to the window. “Anyway, you were not bored the entire time.”
“No?”
“No.” Her voice softened into something more dangerous than teasing. “You were interested whenever they told you not to ask about something.”
Levi smiled despite himself. “That’s a character flaw.”
“That’s a survival trait.”
“Says the woman leaving a secured federal tower at two in the morning for bowling alley fries.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain paperwork.”
She looked at him, and for half a second, the joke fell away.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
The car rolled through Old Bellwether, past shuttered storefronts and murals half-covered by new campaign posters for the upcoming Redline Remembrance Gala. Celeste’s own face appeared on one of them, gold-lit and serene beneath the words:
HOPE RETURNS.
In the car, the real woman looked at the poster and said nothing.
Levi almost did.
He remembered the rules.
Do not discuss Redline.
Do not discuss family records.
Do not discuss containment language.
Do not promise anything.
So he said, “You really like fries that much?”
Celeste kept looking out the window. “No.”
Levi waited.
She smiled faintly at her reflection in the glass.
“I like things no one chose because they photograph well.”
The car turned onto a side street where the old neon sign of Nine Pin Lanes buzzed tiredly above the sidewalk, half the letters flickering like they were trying to die but lacked the funding.
Celeste sat forward.
For the first time all night, she looked genuinely awake.
Levi noticed.
That, more than the sealed doors and fake windows and Drey’s long list of rules, made something in his chest tighten.
The car slowed at the curb.
Celeste opened her door before Levi could try and be gentleman enough to open it for her.
He swore under his breath and got out after her.
She stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the broken neon with a smile no camera would have known what to do with.
Nine Pin Lanes looked exactly like the sort of place the Department would hate.
The building sat low and stubborn between a closed laundromat and an all-night pawn shop, its brick face stained by old rain and older smoke. The neon sign above the entrance buzzed in tired red and blue, missing enough letters that NINE PIN LANES occasionally became NIN PI LAN S, which Levi suspected was either a maintenance problem or a threat. A paper sign had been taped to the glass door at some point, handwritten in thick black marker:
YES, WE’RE OPEN. NO, WE DON’T KNOW WHY EITHER.
Celeste read it and smiled like she had found scripture.
The driver remained by the curb, one hand still on the wheel, watching them through the rearview mirror. He had not been given the clean blankness of the watchers in the Saint Wing. He looked older, bored, and deeply committed to not having opinions he could be punished for. Levi leaned down toward the passenger window when it rolled halfway open.
“You’re not coming in?” Levi asked.
The driver looked at him as if Levi had suggested they hold hands. “I was instructed to wait for call-back.”
“Call-back.”
“When you’re ready for pickup, use the Department line. Saint Lumos is not authorized to remain off-site longer than one hour.”
Celeste turned around slowly, her expression bright and innocent in a way Levi was already beginning to distrust. “A whole hour?”
The driver stared at the steering wheel. “Ma’am.”
“That’s almost generous.”
“It is policy.”
“Yes,” Celeste said softly. “Those are often mistaken for each other.”
Levi glanced at her. She did not look back. Her eyes were on the bowling alley now, the broken neon, the scratched glass, the dim arcade lights blinking through the windows. She had looked at hospital children with warmth. She had looked at donors with grace. She had looked at survivors with a gentleness that made Levi almost forgive the cameras for wanting her.
But this was different.
This was want.
Small, ridiculous want, maybe. A greasy paper tray of fries at two in the morning. A flickering bowling alley. A place where no one had arranged flowers before she arrived. But want all the same, and it looked almost dangerous on her.
Levi lifted the Department phone toward the driver. “We call when we need you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir. It makes me feel like I own a boat.”
The driver did not respond to that, which was probably wise.
Celeste was already pulling open the door. The bell above it gave a sad little jangle as they stepped inside, and the warm stale smell of the place wrapped around them immediately: fryer oil, old carpet, shoe spray, soda syrup, dust, and something vaguely sweet from the arcade machines. The sound of pins crashing rolled from the far end of the building, followed by a cheer from someone who sounded far too awake for the hour.
Nine Pin Lanes was not empty, but it was close enough to feel like the world had forgotten to lock up after itself. Only four lanes were active. A group of night-shift workers occupied one, still in utility uniforms, laughing too loudly over baskets of wings. Two teenagers sat near the claw machine pretending not to be on a terrible date. At the counter, an old man in suspenders was asleep beside a half-finished crossword puzzle, one hand resting protectively on a cup of coffee that looked older than some governments.
Celeste stepped farther in and tilted her head, taking it all in with an attention that made Levi strangely uncomfortable.
Not because she looked out of place, though she did. She looked wildly out of place. Even dressed down in a gray sweater and jeans, with sunglasses perched uselessly on her head, she carried too much light into the room. Not glowing. Not literally. Just… impossible to miss. The place around her seemed more real for having her inside it, and also less prepared.
She looked like a Saint trying to haunt a bowling alley.
Levi moved beside her, not in front of her, because he had a feeling she would notice and mock him if he tried to herd her. “Try not to look directly at the carpet. It’s probably legally evidence.”
Celeste’s eyes lowered to the patterned carpet, a violent old swirl of red, purple, and yellow shapes that might once have been considered fun by someone with a grudge against sight.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“That’s concerning.”
“It looks like someone designed a migraine.”
“That’s the Nine Pin promise.”
She laughed again, that dry little sound from the car, and walked toward the food counter with the contained excitement of a person approaching something forbidden and deeply stupid. Levi followed, scanning out of habit. Front door. Side exit near the bathrooms. Emergency door by lanes fourteen through sixteen. Two cameras, one real, one probably decorative or broken. Staff-only door behind the counter. Grease trap smell from the kitchen. No obvious threats unless one counted the hot dog rotating under a heat lamp with the grim perseverance of a doomed soldier.
Behind the counter, a woman was leaning over a register with her chin propped in one hand, poking at the screen like she was trying to annoy it into cooperation. She had tan skin, violet eyes, and brown hair with a purple sheen pulled into a messy ponytail, bangs falling over her forehead. She wore a black turtleneck under a baggy shirt, a skirt over black leggings, and calf boots that looked like they had kicked several vending machines and won. A purple stone hung on a chain around her neck.
She looked up when they approached.
Her gaze landed on Levi first, flicked over him, dismissed him as government-adjacent trouble, then moved to Celeste.
There was one single second of recognition.
Then the woman’s customer-service face slammed down so fast Levi almost respected the athleticism of it.
“Welcome to Nine Pin Lanes,” she said. “Where dreams go to rent shoes. What can I get you?”
Celeste glanced up at the menu board.
The menu was handwritten in chalk and aggressively unhelpful.
FRIES
BAD FRIES
CHEESE FRIES
MYSTERY DOG
NACHOS, PROBABLY
SODA IF THE MACHINE LIKES YOU
Celeste stared at it with something like reverence.
Levi leaned toward her. “You sure you don’t want Harbor Table’s roasted fingerling medley?”
“I would rather be shot.”
“Don’t say that in public. It creates paperwork.”
The woman behind the counter pointed at Celeste. “Correct answer. Harbor Table once served me a potato the size of a cough drop and called it rustic.”
Celeste brightened. “Exactly.”
The woman looked pleased to have found an ally in potato politics. “You want the good fries or the emotionally accurate fries?”
Celeste blinked. “Emotionally accurate.”
“Great. Those are the bad ones.”
Levi looked at the menu. “Is there a reason good fries and bad fries are separate?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “Honesty. Good fries are fresh. Bad fries have been sitting under the lamp questioning their choices. People who come in at two in the morning usually want the ones that understand them.”
Celeste placed both hands on the counter, utterly serious. “I want those.”
“Excellent. Trauma fries. One order or tragic amount?”
“Tragic,” Celeste said.
The woman hit a button on the register. “Knew I liked you.”
Levi glanced at Celeste. “You’re making friends.”
“I’m ordering correctly.”
“You’re bonding with a stranger over depressed potatoes.”
“A foundation for many lasting alliances.”
The woman snorted and reached for a paper tray. “You want cheese on that?”
Celeste considered this with the weight of a state decision. “Should I?”
“Depends. Are you trying to enjoy yourself or punish your stomach?”
“Both.”
“Cheese it is.”
Levi looked at the fryer. “I’m going to regret being here medically.”
“Then don’t eat them,” Celeste said.
“That’s not what I said.”
The woman shoveled fries into a tray, then covered them with a bright orange cheese sauce that looked like something a laboratory had invented and immediately denied. She added salt with a heavy hand, glanced at Celeste again, and then, with the discreet mercy of someone who had decided not to make a scene, slid the tray across the counter without saying the name everyone in Bellwether knew.
“That’ll be four seventy-five.”
Celeste reached into her pocket.
Levi stopped her without touching, lifting his Department-issued phone. “Official outing. Official fries.”
Celeste looked mildly offended. “I can pay for my own fries.”
“Can you?”
“I have money.”
“Do you have money that wasn’t approved, monitored, budgeted, or handed to you by someone using the word stipend?”
Her mouth closed.
The woman behind the counter made a small sympathetic wince and suddenly became very interested in organizing ketchup packets.
Levi regretted the words almost as soon as they left him. Not because they were untrue. Because they had landed too close to something raw.
Celeste’s face smoothed.
There it was again: Daystar’s calm settling over Celeste’s features like glass over a flame.
“Use the phone,” she said lightly. “I would hate to steal from the Department in such a financially devastating way.”
Levi paid.
The receipt printed with a sad little screech. The woman handed it to him, then tipped her head toward the seating area. “Tables are open. Don’t sit under the speaker unless you want to hear the same 90s song fight for its life every six minutes.”
Celeste picked up the tray of fries. “Thank you.”
The woman held her gaze for half a second longer than necessary. “No problem.”
Then, softer, almost buried under the clatter of pins, she added, “Enjoy being out.”
Celeste did not answer immediately.
Levi saw her fingers tighten around the paper tray.
Then she smiled, not the public one, not quite the private one either. Something in between. “I intend to.”
They took a booth near lane three, far enough from the workers to avoid attention and close enough to the arcade that the blinking lights washed the table in tired blues and reds. The vinyl seat had a rip patched with duct tape. The table wobbled when Levi set his coffee down. Someone had carved MEL LOVES RAE into the edge, then someone else had scratched underneath it MEL IS A LIAR.
Celeste ran her thumb over the words with interest.
“Romantic,” she said.
“Educational.”
She sat across from him and pulled the tray close like someone afraid it might be confiscated. The fries were limp, over-salted, half-crushed under cheese, and possibly the saddest food Levi had ever seen.
Celeste ate one.
Her eyes closed.
Levi stared at her. “That bad?”
“No,” she said after a moment. “Perfect.”
“It’s bowling alley cheese, Celeste.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve had food cooked by private chefs.”
“Constantly.”
“And this is better?”
Her eyes opened. There was amusement in them, but also something quieter, something that had been there when she looked at the broken neon outside. “No one made this to please donors.”
Levi did not have an answer for that.
Celeste ate another fry, slower this time, like she was memorizing the salt. “Private chefs ask what I would like, then make something beautiful enough to be photographed from three angles. The fruit is sliced into shapes. The soups have garnish. The plates have empty space on purpose. It is all very tasteful.”
“You say tasteful like an insult.”
“It often is.”
He leaned back in the booth, watching the lane lights ripple over her face. “So the bad fries are a rebellion.”
“The bad fries are fries.”
“That’s what makes them dangerous.”
Her lips twitched. “Exactly.”
For a while, they sat without speaking. A ball rolled down lane four, slow and uncertain, before knocking over a single pin with the exhausted resignation of a person doing their best. The night-shift workers cheered as if someone had won a war. The old man at the counter snored softly. The teenagers near the claw machine finally managed to win a stuffed bat with one crooked wing, and the girl hugged it like treasure.
Celeste watched all of it.
Not hungrily, exactly.
Tenderly, maybe.
Like ordinary life was something she had been told about but not trusted to handle unsupervised.
Levi stirred his cold coffee, though he had no intention of drinking more of it. “You know, for someone who spent all day being adored, you look more impressed by a broken claw machine.”
“Adoration is loud.”
“And claw machines?”
“Honest. They want your money and make no moral claims.”
“That might be the best defense of arcade gambling I’ve ever heard.”
Celeste picked up another fry. “Do you gamble, Mr. Vale?”
“No.”
“That answer came quickly.”
“I know gamblers.”
“One in particular?”
Levi’s expression shifted before he could stop it.
Celeste noticed, because of course she did.
“A criminal one?” she asked.
He looked at her. “That’s a very specific guess.”
“You said it like someone with a cautionary tale.”
“I said one word.”
“You said it with history.”
Levi laughed once, but it did not land right. “You always listen this hard?”
“When I’m not being photographed.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
He looked across the bowling alley, toward the glowing arcade machines. “Yeah. There’s a gambling criminal in mind.”
“A friend?”
“Large word.”
“Enemy?”
“Cleaner word.”
“But not accurate.”
Levi looked back at her.
She held his gaze with mild interest, not pushing, not yet. Just noticing. Sorting him into pieces he did not remember handing over.
“No,” he admitted. “Not accurate.”
Celeste studied him for another moment, then let him have the silence.
That surprised him more than if she had pressed.
She did not seem like someone who missed openings.
She seemed like someone who chose which ones to walk through.
She pushed the tray toward him. “Have one.”
“I’m working.”
“You are watching me eat fries in a bowling alley at two in the morning. If this is work, civilization is already lost.”
“Drey said no unscheduled contamination.”
“I’m almost certain he didn’t.”
“He implied it with his face.”
Celeste held up one fry, limp with cheese. “Mr. Vale.”
He stared at it.
Then at her.
Then back at the fry.
“This feels like how ancient curses start.”
“It is a potato.”
“It is glowing.”
“So do I, allegedly.”
He took the fry from her fingers carefully, making sure not to touch her.
She noticed that too.
He ate it.
It was terrible. Too salty, too cold in the middle, cheese sticking to his teeth with hostile intent.
Celeste waited.
Levi swallowed. “That fry has seen things.”
Her smile broke open, quick and real, and for a second she looked so delighted that the whole ugly booth seemed to brighten around her.
Not with power.
With the terrible, simple force of being allowed to enjoy something stupid.
Levi looked away first.
Dangerous, he thought.
Not because of the file.
Not because of Daystar or Saint of Dawn or whatever gold-lit chamber he was not allowed to ask about.
Because there was a person under all that performance, and he had a bad habit of wanting to save people who made jokes while drowning.
Celeste pulled the tray back. “See? Perfect.”
“Your standards are alarming.”
“My standards are heavily monitored. I take what I can get.”
The words were light.
The meaning was not.
Levi picked up the Department phone and checked the time. They had been inside less than half the allotted hour, assuming the driver had told the truth and the Department had not revised time out of spite.
Celeste followed his glance. “Am I late?”
“Not yet.”
“Disappointing.”
“You want to be late?”
“I want to know what late feels like when it matters very little.”
He put the phone down. “Late usually feels like someone yelling.”
“That part I know.”
“Then why chase it?”
Celeste looked at the remaining fries, then at the old man sleeping beside his crossword, then at the teenagers taking blurry photos with their stuffed bat, then at the night workers laughing over another bad roll.
When she answered, her voice was quieter.
“Because most of my consequences are chosen by other people.”
Levi had been given a long list of things not to say.
He was starting to understand that the more important list was the one nobody had written down.
Celeste stood suddenly, picking up the tray. “I want air.”
Levi slid out of the booth. “You have air.”
“Different air.”
“The Department authorized fries, not atmospheric variety.”
She gave him a look over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
He should have said no. He should have called the driver, told him to pull around, ended the outing before it became whatever shape Celeste was clearly trying to bend it into. That would have been proper procedure. Sensible, even.
Unfortunately, Levi had a long and complicated history with sensible choices, mostly involving their absence.
He grabbed the Department phone, the receipt, and his terrible coffee. “I’m coming.”
Celeste smiled as she walked toward the side exit near the arcade, where a red sign buzzed weakly above the door.
“Good,” she said. “I’d hate to be unsupervised.”
Levi followed her, already regretting whatever came next.
The side exit opened into a narrow alley that smelled like rainwater, old grease, cigarette ash, and the kind of city air no one bothered bottling for donors.
Celeste stepped out first, carrying the paper tray of half-dead fries like contraband. The door eased shut behind them, muffling the bowling alley’s tired music until it became a dull thump through the brick. For a moment, the world was only wet pavement, humming neon, and the distant roll of traffic several streets over. A security light flickered above the exit, buzzing every few seconds as if considering whether life was worth the effort.
Levi came out behind her and let the door close with his shoulder. “This your idea of different air?”
Celeste breathed in deeply. “Yes.”
“It smells like a fryer died in a puddle.”
“Exactly.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“It was to me.”
She walked farther down the alley, boots splashing lightly through a thin sheet of rainwater gathered near the wall. The alley ran behind Nine Pin Lanes and the laundromat next door, cutting toward a side street where the old brick opened up into a stretch of closed shops, dumpsters, and one flickering streetlamp. Someone had painted a little halo on the wall beside the dumpster, then crossed it out with black spray paint.
Celeste stopped beneath it and looked at the mark for a second too long.
Levi noticed, because he noticed things he was not supposed to. “You cold?”
She glanced over. “That was almost a normal question.”
“I’ve heard them used in conversation.”
“How did it feel?”
“Unnatural.”
She smiled and set the fries on the flat lid of a metal utility box. The cheese had started to harden into something structurally concerning, but she still picked one up and ate it with the grave appreciation of someone honoring a ritual. Then, from the pocket of her oversized sweater, she pulled out a cigarette.
Levi stared.
Celeste held it between two fingers, completely unapologetic. “You look scandalized.”
“I’m trying to decide which rule this violates.”
“Only one?”
“No tobacco. No unscheduled stops. No contact with unauthorized substances. Possibly no looking mysterious beside dumpsters.”
“That last one seems difficult to enforce.”
“I’ll draft a memo.”
She produced a lighter next, cheap and red, the kind sold beside gas station gum. The flame caught on the second try, small and orange in the damp air. For half a second, the light warmed her face from below, catching the white specks in her green eyes and turning the gold in her hair almost copper. She did not glow. She did not become Daystar. She was only a woman in an alley at two in the morning, lighting a cigarette she was absolutely not allowed to have.
That somehow felt more dangerous than half the things in her file.
Celeste took a drag and leaned back against the brick wall. Her shoulders lowered as she exhaled, smoke slipping from her mouth in a slow pale ribbon. The relief on her face was small, almost private, but Levi saw it anyway.
“You smoke?” he asked.
“Sometimes.”
“That seems medically unwise for a national treasure.”
“I’m not a vase.”
“No. Vases are allowed fewer handlers.”
She pointed the cigarette at him. “Careful, Mr. Vale. That almost sounded like sympathy.”
“Must be the alley fumes.”
“Or the fries.”
“Those fries are doing chemical warfare inside my body as we speak.”
Celeste laughed quietly and took another drag. The smoke curled up between them, softening the harsh edges of the security light. From inside the bowling alley came the muted crash of pins, followed by applause that sounded half-hearted and heroic anyway. Somewhere overhead, water dripped from a rusted fire escape in steady little taps.
For a while, neither of them moved.
Levi checked the mouth of the alley out of habit. No one there. The side street beyond was almost empty, just one parked delivery van, a sleeping row of storefronts, and a city trash can overflowing with paper cups. No driver. No Drey. No watchers with tablets pretending furniture had opinions. The Department phone sat heavy in his pocket, monitored and waiting.
Celeste noticed the glance. “You’re very committed to looking for threats.”
“That’s the assignment.”
“Is it?”
“Pretty sure that’s what watching someone means.”
“No,” she said, studying the ember at the end of the cigarette. “Watching can mean many things.”
Levi leaned against the opposite wall, keeping a polite amount of space between them. “That sounds like something written on a poster in a very expensive therapy office.”
“I have been in very expensive therapy offices. The posters are worse.”
“Noted.”
Celeste looked toward the street. The smoke thinned around her face. “Some people watch because they are afraid. Some because they are curious. Some because they are waiting for you to make a mistake. Some because they have been told there will be consequences if they blink.”
“And me?”
She turned back to him. “You watch like you expect the world to confess if you stare long enough.”
Levi huffed a laugh. “Hasn’t worked yet.”
“No?”
“World’s stubborn.”
“So are you.”
“Professional requirement.”
“Mm.” She looked at the cigarette, then held it out to him. “Want a drag?”
Levi stared at it.
The offer was casual. Too casual. Two fingers, red-painted lighter tucked against her palm, smoke lifting in a thin line. But nothing about Celeste Lumos felt casual once he looked long enough. Even this, a cigarette in an alley, had the shape of a test.
“You trying to get me fired?” he asked.
“Would a cigarette do it?”
“With my file? Probably not. But I admire the effort.”
“I’m not trying to get you fired.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m trying to see what you do when no one tells you what to do.”
There it was.
Levi looked at her, then at the cigarette.
He should not take it. That was obvious. Obvious in the way most things Levi eventually did anyway were obvious. The Department line was in his pocket. The driver was waiting for a call. Drey had told him not to allow tobacco, and Celeste had somehow gotten tobacco anyway, which meant either the watchers were incompetent or she had spent a long time learning where rules had loose seams.
Probably the second.
He took the cigarette carefully.
Their fingers did not touch.
Celeste noticed that too.
“You’re very careful,” she said.
“No one has ever accused me of that before.”
“With me.”
Levi lifted the cigarette but did not smoke yet. “You say that like it’s strange.”
“It is.”
“You’d rather I wasn’t?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He took a drag.
It had been a while. Long enough that the smoke hit wrong, hot and bitter at the back of his throat. He managed not to cough because pride remained one of mankind’s stupidest inventions and he was, unfortunately, a participant.
Celeste’s mouth curved. “You hate it.”
“Deeply. I haven't done it in a long time.”
“And yet you did it.”
“I’ve made a career out of choices that look bad in retrospect.”
She accepted the cigarette back. This time, her fingers brushed his.
Barely.
Less than a second.
Levi felt the contact anyway.
Not like electricity, thank God. He hated when people described touch like that. This was subtler. A human warmth where the room, the file, the cameras, the rules, and the gold-lit chamber all said there should be distance. It made him aware of the damp air, the brick at his back, the night leaning around them.
Celeste looked down at their hands before lifting the cigarette to her lips again.
“Most of them avoid touching me,” she said.
“The watchers?”
“Everyone.”
Levi did not answer too quickly. He had learned, over several careers and a heroic number of mistakes, that some sentences were traps and some were doors. This one felt like both.
“You famous people are intimidating,” he said finally.
It was a dodge.
She let him have it, but only because she wanted him to know she was letting him have it.
“How kind of you to pretend that is the reason.”
He glanced toward the end of the alley. “What reason would you prefer?”
Celeste exhaled smoke and watched it disappear into the wet dark. “Fear is honest. Pity is worse. Reverence is unbearable.”
“And careful?”
Her eyes came back to him. “Careful is suspicious.”
“Then I’m definitely not that.”
“No.” She smiled faintly. “You are reckless wearing a careful coat.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“I had time to observe today.”
“You were busy being adored.”
“I multitask.”
The old security light buzzed above them, flickering once, twice, then steadying again. It made the shadows around Celeste shift strangely for a heartbeat, stretching her shape long across the alley wall. The crossed-out halo behind her sat just above her shoulder like a joke no one had the courage to tell.
Levi nodded toward the cigarette. “How’d you get that past them?”
Celeste looked offended. “Mr. Vale.”
“What?”
“A lady has secrets.”
“You’re a Saint in a secured federal tower with four watchers and nine cameras in your room.”
“Exactly. I require hobbies.”
“Smuggling cigarettes is a hobby?”
“It is more rewarding than embroidery.”
“You embroider?”
“No.”
“Then that’s a low bar.”
She laughed again, softer this time. The sound warmed the alley more than the security light did. Then she looked away, toward the side street, and the smile faded slowly.
Levi followed her gaze.
Nothing moved except the rainwater sliding along the gutter. A plastic bag clung to a fence. A neon sign from the pawn shop blinked weakly around the corner. The city at two in the morning looked less like a place and more like a held breath.
Celeste crushed the cigarette against the utility box and dropped the butt into an empty soda can someone had left near the wall.
Levi arched a brow. “Litter-conscious rebellion.”
“I may be reckless, Mr. Vale. I am not rude.”
“That’s where you draw the line?”
“I draw many lines. I simply move them when inconvenient.”
He should have heard the warning in that.
Maybe he did.
Maybe some part of him understood half a second before the rest of him caught up that Celeste had been watching him just as carefully as he had been watching her. She had catalogued his habits. His distance from the door. The hand with the Department phone. The way he kept his body angled toward the alley mouth. The fact that he did not block her because he did not want to treat her like a prisoner.
He had mistaken that for kindness.
She had mistaken it for opportunity.
Celeste picked up the tray of fries and walked toward the mouth of the alley.
Levi pushed off the wall. “Where are you going?”
“To look at the street.”
“You can look from here.”
“I want a better angle.”
“Of the street?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the worst lie I’ve heard tonight, and I spent part of it with a crime boss.”
She stopped just before the alley opened onto the sidewalk. Her shoulders shook once, like she was holding back a laugh. When she glanced over her shoulder, her expression was all innocence and wicked amusement.
“You have a crime boss?”
“No.”
“You said with.”
“I said near.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“I’m revising.”
“How official of you.”
“Celeste.”
Her name came out sharper than he intended.
She noticed. Her smile softened at the edges, but not enough to become safe.
“I only want thirty seconds,” she said.
“For what?”
She looked past him, toward the alley walls, the security lamp, the side door, the invisible line of approved movement wrapped around her throat.
Then she looked back.
“To see if I can still choose a direction.”
That one landed.
Levi had no joke ready.
That was his mistake.
Celeste moved.
Not with super speed. Not with a flash of power. Nothing that would make a report easy. She simply stepped out of the alley and into the open street with a suddenness so clean it felt rehearsed, crossing from shadow into streetlight before Levi’s hand could close around the air she had left behind.
“Celeste—”
She did not run at first.
She walked.
Fast, yes, but not frantic. Down the sidewalk, away from the bowling alley, away from the approved route, away from the driver waiting somewhere around the block. Her hair lifted in the night wind. The paper tray of fries was still in her hand, absurd and bright with orange cheese under the streetlights.
For one stunned second, Levi could only stare.
Then he swore and went after her.
“Are you kidding me?”
She looked back once, smiling now. Not Daystar’s smile. Not the polite private one. This was something wild and young and ancient at once, reckless enough to make the whole sleeping street feel awake.
“You said you were professionally watchful,” she called.
“I’m about to become professionally furious.”
“Then watch faster.”
She turned the corner.
Levi broke into a jog, then a run.
The Department phone felt heavy in his pocket. He could call it in. He should call it in. That was the assignment. That was the rule. Saint Lumos leaves line of sight, notify immediately. Do not permit separation. Do not allow unscheduled route deviation.
But if he called now, the hour ended. The fries ended. The sky ended. The only real laugh he had heard from her would become an incident summary before morning.
So he ran.
Around the corner, the street opened wider, slick with old rain and almost empty. A row of closed storefronts lined one side. On the other, a fenced construction lot sat dark and hollow, machines sleeping behind chain-link. Celeste was halfway down the block, no longer walking, not quite running, moving with the giddy determination of someone who had not been alone with her own feet in far too long.
Levi caught up enough to see her lift her face to the wind.
Enough to hear her laugh once.
Enough to realize, with sudden cold certainty, that she had not been trying to escape him forever.
She had been trying to feel the possibility of it.
That was somehow worse.
“Celeste!” he shouted.
She slowed at the crosswalk.
Only for a heartbeat.
The pedestrian signal glowed red.
The street looked empty.
Then the world inside Levi’s skull tilted.
Not visibly. Not to anyone else. But something in him lurched hard, that ugly familiar warning scraping behind his eyes before the danger had the decency to arrive.
The night stretched thin.
A black vehicle turned the far corner without headlights.
Too fast.
Too quiet.
A line of water on the asphalt trembled beneath its tires.
Celeste stepped off the curb.
Levi saw the impact before the vehicle reached her.
Not clearly. Not like a vision with clean edges and useful labels. It came to him the way danger always did, ugly and sudden, a bruise blooming beneath the skin of the night. Celeste in the street. The black vehicle cutting through the dark without headlights. Tires slicing through wet pavement. Her body turning too late. The tray of fries hitting the asphalt first, bright orange cheese scattering like something obscene under the streetlight.
Then the rest.
Bone. Glass. Blood. Gold.
“No,” Levi breathed.
The word had barely left his mouth before his body moved.
He was not fast. That was the cruel part, the joke buried in whatever strange thing had lived inside him since he was sixteen and the world had burned around him. He could see the shape of disaster before it arrived, could feel the split-second opening where survival might fit, but his body still had to cross the distance like any other man’s. Muscle, breath, pavement, panic.
It was never enough time.
Except sometimes it was.
He ran.
The night dragged around him, thick as tar. The black vehicle slid closer, silent and wrong, its windshield dark, its shape too smooth to belong to any drunk driver or late delivery truck. Celeste was still turning, her hair lifting around her face, one hand halfway raised as if the air itself had warned her too late.
Levi reached her just as the vehicle entered the crosswalk.
He did not think. Thinking was too slow.
He slammed into her from the side, one arm locking around her waist, the other bracing against her shoulder as he drove them both backward and down. Celeste made a sharp sound against his chest, more anger than fear, and the tray of fries flew from her hand. The black vehicle screamed past close enough that the displaced air punched the breath out of him.
For half a second, Levi saw his own reflection in its dark side window.
Wide eyes. Bared teeth. Celeste’s hair like a streak of gold against his coat.
Then the car was gone.
No brakes.
No horn.
No headlights.
It vanished down the street and turned hard at the next corner, swallowed by the sleeping city before Levi could catch a plate, a badge, anything useful.
They hit the pavement badly.
Levi took most of it on his shoulder and hip, because apparently his body had decided gallantry was worth bruising over. Pain cracked through him white and immediate. His elbow scraped across wet asphalt. His skull missed the curb by less than an inch, which felt rude of the universe, like it wanted credit for restraint.
Celeste landed half on top of him, breath knocked loose, one hand fisted in his coat.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The street settled around them.
Somewhere behind them, the fries lay murdered in the crosswalk.
Levi stared up at the cloudy strip of sky between buildings and tried to convince his lungs to resume their government-mandated duties. His head throbbed behind his eyes, hard enough to make the edges of the street blur. The warning feeling had not fully faded. It clung to him, bright and sick and metallic, the way it always did when he forced his body to catch up to what his mind already knew.
Celeste lifted her head.
Her hair had come loose around her face. Her sweater had slipped down one shoulder. One knee of her jeans was wet from the pavement. She looked less like a Saint than she had all night and more like someone who had just remembered the world had teeth.
“What,” she said, breathing hard, “was that?”
Levi blinked at her. “A car.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I know what a car is.”
“Good. We’re both educated.”
She pushed herself up, then winced. Levi sat up too quickly and immediately regretted having a spine. Pain went through his shoulder, down his arm, and settled somewhere near his ribs with the confidence of a long-term tenant.
Celeste noticed.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It’s close enough for fieldwork.”
She looked past him, toward the corner where the vehicle had disappeared. The reckless brightness from moments ago had drained from her expression, replaced by something sharper and colder. Not fear. Calculation.
“That was not an accident,” she said.
“No.”
Levi said it before he remembered he was supposed to be careful.
Celeste looked back at him.
Too quickly.
There it was.
The shift.
Not suspicion yet. Something more precise. Her eyes moved over his face, his breathing, the angle of his body, the way his hand had already gone to his pocket where the Department phone sat heavy and useless. Then her gaze lifted to the street behind him, measuring distance.
From alley to corner.
From corner to crosswalk.
From crosswalk to where the vehicle had appeared.
Levi knew what she was doing because he was doing the same thing.
And because the math was bad.
Very bad.
He had moved before the car was visible from where he had been standing.
Celeste went still.
Not frozen. Still.
There was a difference.
The kind of stillness people used when the room was full of watchers. The kind she had probably learned long before Levi was born, if the files and the forbidden questions and the gold-lit chamber meant even half of what he suspected.
She lowered her voice. “You saw it before it turned.”
Levi forced a laugh, though it came out thin. “I heard it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“It was a car, Celeste. They’re loud.”
“That one wasn’t.”
The quiet after her words was worse than the argument.
A drop of water fell from the fire escape above them and struck the pavement near Levi’s boot. Somewhere far away, the bowling alley door opened and closed, spilling a brief ribbon of muffled laughter into the night before shutting again. Ordinary life continued ten yards away as if Celeste Lumos had not nearly been flattened by an unmarked vehicle and Levi had not just exposed the one secret he had successfully kept from the Department, his superiors, most of his family, and himself on particularly optimistic mornings.
He reached for the Department phone.
Celeste’s hand closed around his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Levi looked at her hand.
Then at her.
“You want me not to report that someone just tried to hit you with a car?”
“I want you to think before you hand them the shape of what happened.”
“The shape is attempted vehicular murder.”
“Then why were there no headlights?”
“Because criminals are dramatic.”
“Why did it turn only after I stepped off the curb?”
“Because you stepped into the street like a suicidal deer.”
Her grip tightened.
Not painfully.
Just enough.
“Why did you move before I was in danger?”
Levi opened his mouth.
Nothing useful came out.
Celeste’s eyes searched his face with unsettling patience. Her usual warmth was gone now, not replaced by cruelty but by attention. Real attention. The kind that made him feel less watched than read.
There was something in her gaze he had not seen before. No black star-filled eyes. No golden glow. No visible power. Just a depth to her focus that made the air seem quieter around them, as if the night had leaned in to listen.
Levi pulled his wrist back gently.
She let him.
“I got lucky,” he said.
Celeste’s mouth curved without humor. “Do not insult me after saving my life.”
That landed harder than he wanted it to.
He looked toward the ruined fries because it was easier than looking at her. The paper tray had flipped upside down near the curb. Cheese streaked the wet street. One fry clung to the crosswalk stripe with tragic dignity.
“You ran,” he said.
“I walked quickly.”
“You ran.”
“I wanted thirty seconds.”
“You almost got killed in fifteen.”
Her face changed.
Only a little.
But enough.
The sharpness cracked, and underneath it was something raw enough that Levi wished he had chosen different words and knew he wouldn’t have.
“I was not trying to die,” she said.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I was trying to see if I could still run.”
The street seemed to go quiet around that.
Levi looked back at her.
Celeste stood in the spill of the streetlight, sweater damp, hair loose, face pale and furious in a way that had nothing to do with him. She looked young for once. Not twenty-five-young, not public-record-young, but wounded-young. The kind of young that had nothing to do with years and everything to do with wanting something simple so badly it became humiliating.
“I have been escorted,” she said, voice low, “scheduled, watched, handled, prepared, approved, briefed, corrected, softened, brightened, and returned. I am told when to smile, when to sleep, when to answer, when to stop answering, when to wave, when to grieve, when to glow, when not to glow too much.”
Levi did not speak.
She looked down the street where the car had vanished. “I wanted to choose a direction. Just once. Without asking permission first.”
The anger in him faltered.
Not vanished. Absolutely not. He was still furious. His shoulder screamed, his head throbbed, and the Department phone in his pocket was probably moments away from vibrating itself into a federal tantrum.
But the anger no longer knew where to stand.
“You picked the direction with the murder car,” he said.
A laugh escaped her.
Small. Unsteady. Real.
“That was unfortunate.”
“Catastrophic, actually.”
“I still had twenty seconds left.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Yes.”
No apology.
No denial.
Just yes.
Levi almost admired it. He definitely hated it.
The Department phone buzzed.
Once.
Then again.
Both of them looked at his pocket.
Levi pulled it out. The screen glowed with a restricted incoming call.
CHECK-IN REQUIRED. STATUS?
He stared at it.
Celeste stared at him.
The rules returned in Drey’s voice.
If anything changes, call it in.
If nothing changes, call it in.
Do not separate.
Do not allow unscheduled deviation.
Do not promise anything.
Levi’s thumb hovered over the screen.
He could report the vehicle. He should. Whoever had been behind the wheel might still be nearby. There might be cameras, backup, another attempt waiting two streets over. Reporting it would bring the driver, Drey, a response team, maybe Compliance. It would also bring questions. Too many questions. Why had Celeste left the approved route? Why had Levi not called it in immediately? How had he reached her in time? What exactly had he seen?
Celeste watched his face, and for the first time all night, she did not look like she was testing him.
She looked like she was waiting to see what kind of cage he would choose.
Levi declined the call.
The screen went dark.
Celeste’s breath caught softly.
He shoved the phone back into his pocket. “We call the driver from inside. We say you wanted air, slipped, almost stepped into traffic, and I pulled you back.”
“That is almost true.”
“My favorite kind of lie.”
“The vehicle?”
“I didn’t see enough to report.”
“That is not true.”
“No,” he said. “But it will be.”
She studied him, and something unreadable moved behind her eyes.
“You are very bad at your job, Mr. Vale.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Repeatedly, I imagine.”
“By professionals.”
The faintest smile touched her mouth, then faded. Her gaze moved over his face again, slower this time.
“You moved before the danger arrived,” she said.
Levi sighed. “Are we back to this?”
“We never left it.”
“I have good instincts.”
“People keep using that word around you.”
That made him go still.
Celeste noticed.
The corner of her mouth lifted, but there was no triumph in it. Only recognition.
“I wondered what they had missed,” she said.
He said nothing.
The air between them seemed to thin.
Celeste took one step closer, careful now, as if approaching a skittish animal or an armed man. Both, maybe. She did not reach for him again. She did not need to.
Her eyes were only green, soft and forest-deep, but for a moment Levi had the uncomfortable feeling of standing beneath a night sky.
“You are not fast,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“You did not hear it.”
“Still rude.”
“You knew.”
Levi’s jaw tightened.
She was too close to the truth. Not the whole truth — he wasn’t sure he knew the whole truth himself — but close enough to touch the outline. Close enough to become dangerous.
A Saint. A prisoner. A woman who wanted fries and cigarettes and thirty seconds of direction. A Department asset with enough perception to find the one thing in him no file had yet named.
He should deny it.
He should laugh.
He should call Drey.
Celeste tilted her head.
And very softly, almost gently, she said, “You do have an ability.”
Levi forgot the joke he had been preparing.
The wet street gleamed around them. The broken neon of Nine Pin Lanes flickered at the corner. Somewhere inside, people laughed over gutter balls and terrible fries, unaware that the Saint of Dawn had just found a secret the Department had missed.
Levi looked at her.
Celeste looked back.
Neither of them moved.
The Department phone buzzed again in his pocket.