Alfia paused on the landing, her silent descent masking just how closely she had been listening.
Her face was perfectly blank—a look that, for her, screamed volumes.
"You aren't sending her out there," she said softly.
"Obviously not," Rayleigh muttered, scrubbing a heavy hand over his eyes. "If I turn her loose, she'll be dead in three days, and she knows it better than I do. That's the beauty of Ishtar's little trick. You can't free someone just by opening a door when the entire street is the cage."
"Then keep her here."
Rayleigh shot her an incredulous look. "Here? In this house, with a dead woman hiding on the third floor?"
Alfia fell quiet as the true shape of the trap settled over them.
Rayleigh's home had one absolute rule: no one could ever know the world's strongest woman was living upstairs.
Knowing this, Ishtar had just paraded a terrified girl through his front door in broad daylight, in front of the whole neighborhood, and made her his permanent responsibility!
"She isn't a gift," Alfia murmured. "She's a hook."
"She's both, which is why it's a good play." Rayleigh let out a ragged breath.
"If I throw her out, Ishtar wins and the girl dies. If I keep her, Ishtar gets a permanent set of eyes sitting exactly one floor below the biggest secret in Orario. And if I try to make a public fuss, the Guild will just shrug because it's technically legal, leaving Ishtar to laugh at me in front of the whole city."
"So you go to the Pleasure Quarter."
"Thats the plan."
Alfia stepped down the last few stairs.
Through the archway, they could see Nira sitting exactly where he had left her—hands folded tightly in her lap, waiting for an order.
"You know what she'll do when you get there," Alfia warned, her tone shifting into something almost maternal.
"She'll offer you the world."
"When you refuse, she'll offer you a war. You'll say no to both, and then you'll do something immensely stupid, because you've been exactly like this since the day I met you."
Her mismatched eyes caught the light, shimmering with a sudden, unspoken grief.
"You saved me from a fate I had already accepted, Rayleigh.... you just did it."
"That was different."
"It was identical." She turned away from him, her gaze softening as she looked at the terrified girl in the living room.
"Go hit your steel or something. I'll talk to her. She's terrified of men and she's had a horrific morning, and you are spectacularly bad at this part."
Rayleigh watched the strongest woman in the Lower World walk into his living room with slow, deliberate grace.
He listened as Alfia sat across from the shaking nineteen-year-old and said, in a gentle voice he had never once heard her use,.
"Hello. My name is Alfia, and nobody in this house owns anybody. Would you like some tea?"
Rayleigh went to the forge.
He worked until the light bled out of the sky, but he didn't actually create anything.
His hands were shaking too badly with suppressed rage, and a smith with unsteady hands only ruins good steel.
'The whole street is the cage.' He gripped the edge of his anvil, his knuckles turning white. '
Fine. Then I'll take the whole street.'
...
He arrived at the gates of the Pleasure Quarter at dusk, carrying five swords and no plan he would ever admit to out loud.
Belka was already waiting for him, dressed in elaborate silks that proved Ishtar had been anticipating this all day.
"You actually came," Belka grinned, falling into step beside him. "Phryne owes my Lady money. She bet you'd chicken out."
"Tell Phryne I expect a cut of the winnings."
The Quarter at dusk was intoxicatingly beautiful, which was the cruelest trick of all.
As the sun set, thousands of colored lanterns flared to life.
Music drifted from open balconies, mingling with the heavy scent of roasting meat and expensive perfume.
The entire district glittered like a spilled jewelry box.
Rayleigh walked through the crowds and read the threads.
It was the one thing nobody could hide from him.
He could look at a street full of laughing people and see straight down to their foundations.
A stumbling merchant brushed past, his thread thick and sloppy with drink. Two Amazons leaned against a wall, their threads bright and arrogantly sharp.
And then he saw the others.
Once he allowed himself to look, they were everywhere.
Serving drinks, laughing on cue, draped over balconies.
Dozens of women, and every single one of their souls carried the exact same thread—rubbed raw and fraying, worn down in the exact same spot like a rope dragged across a jagged rock for years.
It was Nira's thread, repeated endlessly down the block.
'They aren't all like this,' he reminded himself, needing the grounding honesty to stay sane.
Some of the women here had chosen this life, thrived in it, and would have spat in his face for offering pity.
But underneath the silk and the music, one in three of them wore that frayed rope.
One in three.
...
Phryne Jamil was waiting at the bottom of Ishtar's private staircase, eyeing him like a bloated toad sizing up a fly.
She was wide as a door, carrying her Level 5 status like a bludgeon, with a mouth crowded by too many teeth.
"So this is the famous smith," she rumbled, her voice like a wet sack hitting stone.
She looked him up and down and sneered. "Skinny."
"Everyone says that."
"My Lady is waiting. Leave the swords down here."
"Nah."
Phryne's nasty grin vanished. "That wasn't a request, boy."
"It never is." Rayleigh looked up at her, his posture entirely loose, thoroughly unimpressed. "I'll say this once so we don't waste each other's evening. I don't surrender my blade to anyone—not a goddess, not you, not anybody. If Ishtar wants me disarmed, she can walk her divine ass down here and try it herself. Then we'll all find out exactly how the rest of the night goes."
The stairwell fell dead quiet.
Then Phryne threw her head back and barked a massive, ugly laugh.
"Hah! She said you'd say that! Go on up, then. Keep your little knives. But if you draw one inside her house, I'll eat you alive."
'She isn't even the worst thing in this building,' Rayleigh thought as he took the stairs.
...
Ishtar's hall was a suffocating display of gold, designed specifically to serve as a picture frame for the goddess lounging on the throne in the center of it.
She was undeniably extraordinary—dark skin, cascading silver hair, and a presence that demanded absolute submission.
She was the most beautiful woman in Orario, provided you didn't count the silver-haired rival across the city that Ishtar spent her entire existence refusing to count.
She watched him cross the floor, a slow, hungry smile curving her lips.
"Well. You're prettier than they said, and ruder than they said.. but.. i've decided I like both. Sit down."
"I'll stand."
"Of course you will." Ishtar waved a dismissive hand, settling deeper into her cushions. "You received my gift."
"I got your message."
"Same thing," she purred, propping her chin on her knuckles. "So, Yōtōsai. Let's skip the dancing. You know why you're here."
"Because Freya interested at me?"
Something vicious and ancient flashed behind Ishtar's eyes, there and gone in a fraction of a second.
"Because I looked at you," she corrected sweetly. "But yes. She looked first. She sits up in that ivory tower picking over this city like it's her personal larder, and everyone lets her because she's beautiful.
But then she found you. She sent her pet boar to watch you work, and she hasn't made a single move since. That means she wants you so desperately she's terrified of scaring you away."
"You've clearly thought about this a lot."
"I think about her constantly; it's a very healthy relationship." Ishtar laughed, trailing her nails down the armrest.
"Here is what I am offering, boy. I'm going to list it, and then you are going to say yes. I'll give you our familia money—triple whatever Hephaestus pays you to never touch a hammer again. Absolute protection from every gods whining, the Guild's little investigations, and Freya's grasping hands. As many girls as you want, whenever you want them. And above all... an alliance."
She leaned forward, and the sheer gravity of her presence made the room feel smaller.
"You forge unique... swords. put those blades in my daughters' hands, and we will tear this city apart from the bottom up! When the dust settles, I'll be sitting in her tower, and she will be gone. You'd like that, wouldn't you? I'd be doing you a kindness."
Rayleigh let the silence drag. It was, objectively, a phenomenal offer.
The greatest wealth and power anyone in Orario had ever slid across a table to him.