The room didn’t settle after.
It stayed exactly as it was the second Katarin hit the floor—heavy, thick, the air still carrying the sharp metallic scent that spread too quickly and didn’t fade. The quiet that followed wasn’t empty. It was full. Packed tight with everything that had just happened, everything that had been said and done and cut short before it could finish.
Katarin lay where she had fallen.
One arm twisted slightly under her, the other stretched out in a way that didn’t look intentional, fingers curled faintly against the floor as if they had tried to hold onto something that wasn’t there. The blood had already begun to spread beneath her, darker near her neck, thinner where it stretched outward, seeping into the seams of the wood.
Mira didn’t look at her for long.
Not because she couldn’t.
Because there wasn’t anything left to look at.
She stood near the edge of the bed, exactly where she had been when it happened, shoulders relaxed now in a way they hadn’t been a few minutes ago. The tension that had filled the room before—sharp, tight, pressing in from every direction—had disappeared completely.
Like it had never been hers.
Kane stepped back from the body.
Slowly.
Not rushed.
Not checking.
Just done.
The knife was still in his hand, angled slightly downward, blood dark along the blade and beginning to gather at the edge in uneven drops. One fell, then another, hitting the floor with soft, almost unnoticeable sounds.
Mira watched that instead.
The rhythm of it.
The way it slowed.
Then stopped.
She tilted her head slightly, considering.
“Was that good?” she asked.
Her voice was light.
Casual.
Like they were talking about something small, something that could be adjusted, improved.
Kane didn’t answer right away.
He stepped past Katarin’s body without looking down, moving further into the room until he stood just off to Mira’s side. Close enough to share the space. Not close enough to crowd it.
“I’ve been working on the whole—” Mira lifted one hand briefly, mimicking a loose, uncertain motion near her chest, like she was replaying it. “—‘oh no, my brother killed you’ look.”
She let the hand fall again, watching him instead.
Kane’s gaze moved to her.
Not quickly.
Not with surprise.
Just… deliberately.
“It was convincing,” he said.
There was no emphasis on the word.
No praise.
Just confirmation.
Mira’s mouth curved slightly.
Not wide.
Just enough.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I thought so.”
Her eyes flicked toward the mirror for a second, catching her own reflection at the edge of it—the tear tracks, the pale skin, the slight flush still sitting under everything from the rush of it. She lifted her hand again, brushing lightly under one eye, smearing what remained of the wetness there.
Then she let it drop.
“I might’ve overdone the shaking,” she added, more to herself than to him. “But I think it works.”
Kane didn’t respond to that.
Instead, he reached out.
The movement was simple.
Familiar.
His hand came down lightly on the top of her head, fingers pressing briefly into her hair in a small, almost absent gesture.
It lingered for just a second.
Then lifted away.
“Good job,” he said.
Mira’s eyes flicked up at that.
Not surprised.
But aware.
The smile returned, slightly sharper this time.
“Thank you!”
The room fell quiet again.
Not awkward.
Not heavy.
Just… still.
Like there wasn’t anything left in it that needed to be said yet.
Mira shifted her weight slightly, the movement small but enough to bring her attention fully back to him, to the knife still in his hand, to the way the scene had settled into something complete.
Her gaze lingered there for a second.
Then lifted back to his face.
Waiting.
The room didn’t rush to fill the space between them.
It held it.
The kind of quiet that wasn’t empty, just… settled. As if everything that needed to happen had already happened, and now the air itself was deciding what came next.
Kane didn’t move at first.
He stood where he was, the knife still angled loosely in his hand, the last of the blood no longer dripping but still wet enough to catch the light in uneven streaks. His gaze lingered on Mira—not in the way it had earlier, measuring or observing—but in something closer to recognition.
Like he was confirming something that had already been decided.
Mira didn’t look away.
She met it evenly, the faint smile still resting at the corner of her mouth, though it had softened slightly now. Not gone. Just… less pointed.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Kane said, almost offhand—
“She would’ve been proud.”
The shift was immediate.
Not loud.
Not explosive.
But absolute.
Mira’s expression didn’t fall. It didn’t twist into anger or recoil or anything that obvious. It just… changed. The softness left it. The small edge of satisfaction flattened into something colder, something cleaner.
Her gaze dropped for a fraction of a second.
Then came back up.
“Don’t,” she said.
The word was quiet.
But it wasn’t a suggestion.
Kane didn’t respond.
He didn’t apologize.
He just watched her.
Mira took a slow breath through her nose, the kind that didn’t quite expand her chest but still managed to shift something under her skin. Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, not tight enough to show tension, just enough to ground the movement.
“I don’t want that,” she added.
Her tone stayed level.
Controlled.
But there was something sharper under it now, something that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“I don’t want anything from our whore of a mother.”
Kane tilted his head just slightly.
Not in confusion.
In acknowledgment.
“She made us,” he said.
Mira’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
Not a smile.
Not quite a frown either.
Just a rejection.
“No,” she said.
She took a step forward as she spoke, closing the slight distance between them—not abruptly, not aggressive, just enough to make the space feel more deliberate.
“She tried to.”
The words landed heavier than the ones before them.
Because this time, they carried something behind them.
Not just disagreement.
History.
Mira’s gaze drifted briefly—past him, past the room, to somewhere that wasn’t there anymore. For a second, the stillness of the present slipped, and something older pressed in around the edges.
“You remember what she used to say,” she murmured.
Mira’s expression didn’t soften when she spoke again.
If anything, it went colder.
“‘Do it again,’” she said quietly, voice almost flat in its precision. “Every time we got it wrong.”
Her eyes flicked to the knife in his hand.
Then back to his face.
“Every time it wasn’t clean enough.”
The room seemed to contract around the words.
Katarin’s body was still there.
Still bleeding.
But for a second, it wasn’t the center of the space anymore.
Something else was.
Kane’s grip on the knife shifted slightly.
Not tightening.
Just adjusting.
“You were better at it,” he said.
Mira let out a small breath.
Not quite a laugh.
Not quite anything warm.
“I listened,” she said.
There was no pride in it.
No shame either.
Just fact.
Her gaze moved again, this time landing briefly on Katarin.
The body hadn’t changed.
But the way Mira looked at it did.
There was no curiosity there.
No guilt.
Just a passing acknowledgment.
Like looking at something already finished.
“She was loud,” Mira said after a second.
The comment felt disconnected at first.
Until it wasn’t.
“Katarin,” she clarified, almost absent.
Her gaze dropped to the spreading blood again, then lifted back to Kane.
“Messy,” she added.
Kane didn’t argue.
Didn’t defend it.
He just stood there, watching her the same way he had before.
Mira’s fingers flexed slightly at her side.
Then stilled.
The moment stretched again—not empty, but full of small, unspoken understandings that didn’t need to be said out loud to exist.
Outside, faintly, the house shifted.
A floorboard somewhere below.
Movement.
Distant.
But there.
Mira’s attention snapped back to the present instantly.
Sharp.
Focused.
The softness that had slipped in for even a second disappeared completely.
Replaced with something purposeful.
“They’ll start looking,” she said.
Not worried.
Just aware.
Kane nodded once.
Mira stepped closer again.
This time, her attention wasn’t on him.
It was on the knife.
On the blood still coating it.
Her expression shifted again.
Not cold.
Not sharp.
Something else.
Something bordering on mild irritation.
And for the first time since Katarin hit the floor—
Mira looked… bothered.
Her eyes stayed on the knife.
Not the way they had a minute ago, when it was just part of the room, part of what had happened. Now she looked at it more closely, with the same particular focus she gave things that irritated her in small, fixable ways. The blade had gone darker as the blood began to thicken on it, gathering in uneven streaks that clung to the metal and the handle alike. One side caught the light from the window in a dull red shine. The other remained dark.
Mira’s mouth tightened.
Then she held out her hand.
Palm up.
Waiting.
Kane glanced at it once, then at her face.
Neither of them spoke for a second.
The room was so still that Mira could hear the faint drag of Katarin’s blood continuing to settle into the cracks between the floorboards, slower now, thicker, almost soundless but not entirely. Somewhere downstairs the house gave a soft, old sigh through its pipes or beams—one of those half-living noises older places made when they had been left alone too long. None of it mattered as much as the knife in Kane’s hand.
“Well?” Mira asked softly.
Kane passed it to her without ceremony.
The weight landed cleanly into her palm, familiar enough that her fingers closed around it automatically. The handle was warm from his hand. The blade was not. She lifted it slightly, angling it to catch the light from the window, inspecting the streaks of blood with a look that could have passed for annoyance if someone had walked in at exactly the wrong moment.
Which, Mira thought distantly, would have been funny.
If anything about this room still allowed for funny.
“Why didn’t you wipe it off?” she asked.
Her tone had gone flat again—not emotional, not dramatic, just edged faintly with disgust. She turned the knife in her hand, studying the wetness still clinging near the base. “That’s disgusting.”
Kane leaned one shoulder lightly against the wall beside the bed, gaze moving from her face to the knife and back again. “You told me to be fast.”
“Fast doesn’t mean sloppy.”
He didn’t answer.
Mira’s nose wrinkled faintly as she looked down at the blade again. There was something strangely intimate about blood on a knife after the act was done, something she disliked in a way she never bothered explaining to anyone. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t squeamishness. It was the residue of someone else. Too personal. Too clingy. Like the body was still insisting on itself after it had already become irrelevant.
“I don’t want her whore blood on our knife,” she said.
The words landed into the room with the same casual precision as everything else she’d said since the kill, but there was something especially cold in them now.
Because they were not metaphor.
Not a figure of speech.
Ownership sat plainly in the sentence.
Mira reached toward the bedside table and picked up the discarded shirt she had peeled off earlier, the one she had meant to throw into her bag before anything in this room had changed shape. She looked at it once, weighed it in her hand, then used one cleaner section near the hem to begin wiping the blade.
Slowly.
Carefully.
She started at the flat of it first, drawing the fabric down the metal with measured pressure, rotating her wrist to keep from cutting through the shirt. The blood smeared before it lifted, streaking darker across the cloth. Mira’s expression didn’t change, but her focus sharpened. She adjusted the angle and tried again, this time working closer to the edge, the gesture precise enough to feel almost meditative.
Kane watched without interrupting.
There had always been something about that—about being seen while she worked—that made the air feel different. Not heavier. Cleaner. More exact. Their mother had liked accuracy, but she had liked spectacle more. Kane understood something else entirely: that the neatness mattered because it made the next step possible. Because panic had no place in cleanup. Because what came after was as important as what came before.
Mira scraped her thumbnail lightly against the metal near the hilt where a darker clot had begun to gather, then wiped again. “You should’ve been more careful.”
“You’re the one who let her get that close.”
Mira looked up at him.
Not sharply.
Just enough.
“I wanted her close.”
The answer came easy.
Too easy.
Kane’s gaze held hers for a second longer, then he glanced toward the body instead. Katarin had not moved, of course. But with the blood settling and the room quiet again, there was something especially final about the angle of her neck now, the fallen looseness of her limbs, the way death made people look less like themselves almost immediately and more like abandoned shapes.
Mira followed his gaze briefly.
Then looked away.
Mira finished wiping one side of the blade and turned it again, checking the edge. A thin crescent of red still sat near the tip. She folded the shirt to a cleaner patch and removed that too, this time more gently. Only when the metal reflected light without interruption did she seem satisfied enough to lower it.
Then she noticed blood on the handle.
A quieter, more irritated exhale left her.
“God.”
She wiped that too.
The detail mattered. The handle mattered more, if anything. Sloppy blades could be explained by haste. Slippery grips suggested carelessness, and carelessness had always been more offensive to her than the act itself.
Downstairs, there was another sound.
A door, maybe.
Or a voice too muffled to make out.
Mira paused this time, head tipping slightly as she listened. The knife remained steady in her hand.
Kane straightened from the wall.
Neither of them looked alarmed.
Just aware.
“How long?” he asked.
Mira considered.
Her eyes drifted to the window, to the angle of light, to the edges of the room as if timing lived there physically. Then she looked at Katarin again. At the blood. At the drag they would need. At the story that still had to be told to the right person in the right order.
“Not long,” she said. “Ymir first.”
The words did not frighten her.
If anything, they steadied her.
Kane nodded once.
Mira lowered the knife, looking at it one final time now that it was clean. Her fingers settled around the handle more comfortably, the cloth wrapped once around the blade before she folded it over and set the stained shirt aside on the chair instead.
“I think I’ve got the crying down,” she said after a moment, almost thoughtfully.
Kane’s gaze lifted to her face again.
There were still traces of it there if you didn’t know what you were looking at. The dampness at her lashes. The slight flush under her eyes. The blood on the sweater helped. So did the fact that she never overdid fear when it mattered. Most people thought crying meant noise, shaking, collapse. Real panic often went smaller. Thinner. More disbelieving.
She was good at that part.
“It worked on her,” Kane said.
Mira’s mouth curved again, just faintly. “She wanted it to.”
She crossed to the mirror then, knife still in hand but lowered, and studied herself in the glass. Her reflection looked almost exactly like the girl who had stood there earlier with Katarin too close and the room too tight around them—except now there was no uncertainty in her face at all. She touched the skin beneath one eye, smudging the remnants of a tear track just enough to keep it believable. Then she loosened her mouth, softened her shoulders, and let something frightened drift back into her expression for half a second.
It was immediate.
Perfect.
Then it was gone.
“Better,” she murmured.
Behind her, Kane glanced once toward the door. “You’ll need the blood.”
Mira followed his gaze, then looked down at her sweater. Katarin’s blood had dried darker at the center, soaked through in one uneven patch and splashed lightly near the shoulder. Enough to read as proximity. As shock. As exactly what she needed.
“I know.”
She turned back to him.
The knife rested easy in her hand now, clean and familiar again, as though Katarin had never touched it at all. That seemed right. Necessary.
Mira held his gaze for one quiet second more, then said, with the same even certainty as if she were commenting on the weather:
“Go.”
Kane waited.
Not because he needed permission.
Because this part belonged to her.
Mira stepped around Katarin’s body carefully, not looking down. “I’ll take care of the rest,” she said.
Then, after the smallest pause, quieter and colder:
“Like always.”