There was no throne at the centre of the Crown.
A ring of contracts hung above black water. Every sheet, seal and collar sent a fine white thread into the city. Inside the ring, the old Wang family node pulsed.
Mira had been wrong about one thing. My parents had not left behind a ready-made right to shut down the web.
They had left an unfinished test.
On one side of the node was a human palm. On the other, a place for a beast. Kane's white line connected them in advance and substituted silence for the second answer.
To restore the question, both sides had to be held open while the city answered. The Crown could close the node through any of our memories.
I placed my palm on the human plate. Styx settled opposite me.
Kane appeared above the water.
"Show them everything," he said. "If you want to judge my power by memory, start with your own."
The ring opened.
The city saw the dead end.
Brutus lay in the mud, and I could have stopped Styx. This time the Crown did not allow me to hide the moment behind talk of self-defence. The people heard my decision and the dispassionate voice crediting ten points for a human death.
Arden appeared next. His fingers opened against his will, his body stepped forward, and I used someone else's memory to take the core.
Someone in the square shouted that Kane had been right.
My palm trembled.
If I closed the node now, the city would remember only the murder and the parasite. Kane would keep the Crown and gain proof that any free beast became a human's weapon sooner or later.
Styx held her side open.
Through her came a wordless question: would we continue the bond, knowing what we had done to each other?
I could not answer for her.
"Yes," I said, speaking only for myself.
Styx touched the plate.
Her answer was the image of an open door.
The white bridge cracked.
Now the question travelled down every line: did the human want to continue the bond, did the beast want to stay, and did they both understand what they would lose if they refused?
Kane struck the node. The water rose into a wall, and the ring of contracts began to close. With one last impulse, he opened his own memory of the gates.
This time the city saw the white line beneath the bear's fur.
Kane tried to close the fragment, but to do that he would also have to close the record of our crimes. Once the test had become two-sided, the Crown could not preserve one truth and cut out the other.
The people saw everything: the child by the wall, the first command from someone else, Brutus's death, Arden's fear, Styx's cage and the debt contracts.
Not a verdict.
The evidence for their own answer.
The first bonds lit up green. Others turned red. Several went dark because one side could not answer.
Kane screamed and hurled us out of the web.
I came to on the academy floor. Blood ran from my nose, and Lily's name vanished again for several seconds. Styx lay beside my fingers, unable to lift her wings.
The city screens no longer showed two neat columns. The map flashed with separate points: bond retained, human refusal, beast refusal, answer unknown.
Skyfall City did not choose one side.
It began to break apart into thousands of decisions.
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