Another month had passed.

The Black Bloom Bazaar was loud, packed, and cloyingly fragrant with flower rot and vine smoke as usual. Maeve stood at a rickety street stall, carefully holding a fake jade earring up to the light. It was lopsided and probably full of lead, but it had a nice glint. If Gael were here, he'd tell her to drop it and look at something more warlike instead, but he wasn't here. He'd wandered off to buy something on his own, which left her here, alone, holding the coin purse.

She felt the ankle chain between them tug again. Someone must've tripped on it in the crowd, but she didn't flinch at the sensation anymore. It happened often enough that the weight of Gael's presence now felt more like a long leash than a burden, so she merely adjusted her footing, humming softly under her breath as she returned the earring to the tray.

It's pretty alright, but it really doesn't suit me after all, huh?

Besides, every day for the entire month, they'd been going down into the deep and dark pipes. Cara may have charted out a complete map of the upper levels by now—meaning, they'd all but pinpointed the central command chamber under Blightmarch, which was why they had a day off to go shopping while Fergal went to report the information to Lorcawn—but there was still the chance that one day, she'd have to return to the pipes again, and she wouldn't want anything pretty to get dirtied while she did that.

She sighed and turned to the next stall. Maybe she should be looking for something more warlike, but she didn't want to give Gael the satisfaction of being right, so—

She bumped into someone from behind.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I wasn't…"

And she paused as the woman in front of her turned around. The ragged shawl and full-face metal mask may be a disguise good enough to fool anyone else, but not her with her 'Scent Latch' mutation. Those deep, ruby eyes behind the horizontal slits of her mask were unmistakably cruel, yet familiar.

"It's you," she breathed. "Ju—"

Juno raised a finger to her lips and gave a slow, playful shush. "Let's not cause a fuss," she said, voice soft and curling with silk. "I'm just browsing wares on my own. Would you like to walk with me?"

Maeve opened her mouth. Closed it.

The answer should've been no. Maeve wanted it to be no. Juno was a gangster, and not just any gangster. The lady was the head of the Rot Merchants, but…

Gael's voice echoed in her head.

'Read the room and respect the powers that be.'

'Are you really going to refuse an invitation from the head of the Rot Merchants?'

And the answer she came up with in her head was a resounding 'no', so—taking into account the fact that it was also far too coincidental for her to have just bumped into Juno—she swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded slowly.

Juno's eyes smiled behind the mask. "Good lady. Come with me?"

So that was how they wandered deeper into the market, past the velvet banners and fungus-glassed lamps where the stalls grew stranger and more exotic. One offered albino leech brooches. Another, perfume made from liquefied cicada shells. Juno moved with disinterest, pausing only for the oddest of curios, while Maeve trailed behind her like a dutiful assistant, trying not to gawk too openly at the warped goods laid out like butchered dreams.

She tried to make sense of what Juno was looking for. None of it made sense. It wasn't food, or fashion, or anything remotely useful.

Eventually, Juno turned her head slightly.

"You're confused," she said. "I can smell it."

Maeve blinked. "A little."

"I like to shop like this sometimes," Juno said casually. "Guards can be troublesome, and prying eyes can be irritating, especially when I'm looking for the more... provocative wares."

"Provocative?"

Juno didn't answer. Instead, she stopped at a crooked stall manned by a man with mismatched gloves and breath that fogged the air sweet. While the man immediately went off on his marketing tangent, she rifled through a stack of books until she found one with a rotted leather spine. The title, scrawled in ornate red ink, read 'The Mourning Courtesan's Devotions.'

"Is that a religious text?" Maeve asked, still tilting her head. "What's it about?"

Juno leaned into Maeve's ear. "It's a guidebook," she whispered. "It teaches pretty young things how to seduce the wealthy and wring them dry, but perhaps you already know a thing or two about that?"

Maeve flushed, the tips of her ears burning beneath her veil as the implication settled.

"I… no, I don't," she said, maybe a bit too quickly.

Juno's ruby eyes glittered behind her mask. "Are you certain? Because I wouldn't mind buying this book for you. A gift from one lady of the night to another, I say—"

"No, thank you," Maeve said, flustered still. "That's… really not necessary."

Her reaction must be amusing, because Juno chuckled and placed the book back with the care of someone handling something fragile and obscene.

Then they continued walking on.

The crowd surged and spun around them in vibrant disarray, but Juno walked easily, drifting through the chaos with her hands tucked behind her back like she was inspecting a personal garden. Maeve trailed a step behind, trying to understand what exactly this was. She couldn't quite tell if she was being tested or teased.

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Eventually, her curiosity outweighed her nerves.

"Forgive me for asking," Maeve murmured, "but why are you so interested in me?"

Juno didn't look at her. "Because I'm surprised," she said simply.

"Surprised?"

"That the wannabe doctor actually managed to snag a wife." Juno tilted her head at a stall selling glass jars full of mummified moths, then dismissed it with a glance. "Frankly, I didn't think he had it in him, so as per my duty as the number one gossiper in the southern ward, it is only natural I take an interest in the lady who managed to catch his eye, no?"

Maeve looked down. The chain tugged faintly at her ankle again. Gael was nearby.

She hesitated, then said, "But is the Doctor having a wife… really that surprising?"

Juno glanced sidelong at her.

Maeve tucked her hands together and added, a little more softly, "He's not too bad, all things considered. He's… intelligent. Clever. Sometimes he can be a little—well, he can be very forceful—but not in a cruel way. He's not violent like the Repossessors, and his tongue isn't as sharp as—"

"Mine?"

That made Juno laugh—a short, dark sound.

"Do you really believe that?" she asked, not unkindly. "I suppose it only makes sense, after all. You are his wife. You see the charming parts, but still, you'd do well to never lower your guard around him. It doesn't matter that he's only wearing half of a Raven's mask. All Ravens are servants of miracles and calamities, so for all the kindness you see in him, there is an equal cruelty in him that will make even me shudder. Be careful now, won't you?"

The scent of crushed vinefruit and spore-oil smoke hung heavy in the air, thicker now that the crowd had swelled for some reason.

As Maeve continued walking alongside Juno, still clutching her coin purse a little too tightly, she watched Juno glide forward, calm and assured in the chaos.

There was something else Maeve wanted to ask.

Her hands twitched, and then she spoke.

"... Do you know anything about him and Cara?"

The question hung a moment. The air between them tensed, stretched taut by the quiet.

Juno didn't stop walking.

"Is this his concerned wife asking," her tone was lazy, amused, "or is this a customer looking to pay for information?"

Maeve didn't hesitate. She pulled a small handful of Marks from her purse, handed it over, and Juno pocketed the coins without stopping.

"Hmm. You've gotten used to these parts, haven't you?" Juno murmured. "In any case, I don't know anything."

Maeve blinked. "What?"

"I do mean that literally." Juno looked over her shoulder, eyes glinting behind her mask. "'Gael Halloway' and 'Cara Halloway' didn't exist until three years ago when they first appeared in Blightmarch."

They passed a flowerbed sprouting directly from a rusted stall's roof. Maeve slowed again, caught between listening and marveling at the bloom.

"They simply showed up that one night," Juno continued, "and claimed that abandoned church as their own, and then they started running a clinic out of it. Naturally, I was curious. I went there myself to check if they even had the permit to be there. I thought I'd have to kill two squatters for desecrating that unholy space, but it turned out they did have a permit. Cara had it in her name, at least."

"A… permit?"

Juno hummed. "An old one. And it was signed by me. Bought from me by a Vharnish man I'd made a deal with ten years ago, who'd brought his sole daughter along with him. He must've passed the permit down to her."

"... So, at the very least, Cara is from the City of Splendors."

Maeve fell quiet for a moment. She'd suspected as much ever since her last dream—and during this past month of crawling through pipes and tunnels, since Cara had a mind like a sharpened scalpel like none she'd met in Bharncair so far—but to have Juno confirm her suspicions was…

She looked up again.

"What about Gael?"

"Well, anyone with half a nose can tell they're not blood. They smell different. Their rhythms don't match… but there are records," Juno offered. "After Cara showed me her permit, I went to my archive and found traces of a 'Gael' who'd grown up in the southern ward. He was eight years old when he was admitted into the Sallow Hearth orphanage, and at ten years old, he vanished mysteriously for five years. Then, three years ago, he returned here—with a new big sister."

Juno glanced around again, her eyes sharp as daggers.

"Whatever happened during those five years, it wiped his trail clean, and he came back a Raven."

They passed another crooked alleyway. A boy with beetle-slick hair was selling flame-colored mushrooms from a cart full of compost. Maeve barely saw him.

"So he was taken up there," she murmured. "By Cara's real father? A… Mister Halloway?"

Juno didn't reply to that—probably because there wasn't much the gang boss could offer—but her thoughts raced. The puzzle pieces rearranged themselves in her mind. In her dream, she'd seen Gael taken away after the Myrmur killed his mother and father. She'd seen the man in the top hat adopting him, and she'd seen Cara there as well, but as far as what he'd done up in Vharnveil that led to him running back down…

It had to have something to do with that symbiote elixir of his. It had to have something to do with his dream of running the greatest clinic in Bharncair.

She clenched her jaw, her breaths catching faintly. She felt she was so, so close to piecing together the whole story, but without another dream—another glimpse into the past—she felt the final puzzle piece was going to continue eluding her still.

"... Well, don't you look happy to know more about your dearest husband," Juno teased. "Funny thing, though. You've never once called him by name."

Maeve opened her mouth to object—on instinct, almost indignantly—but the words faltered on her tongue, and her mind stuttered.

Because Juno was right.

Five months since they'd met. Five whole months. And not once—not once—had she called him by name.

And neither had he.

It was always 'Doctor' and 'Exorcist' with the two of them. Title for title, role for role. Never anything else.

So she closed her mouth.

Before the silence could linger too long, though, a familiar voice cut through the crowd.

"Oi! Where'd you wander off to, dearest wife?"

Maeve turned her head, and there Gael was, shouting and pushing through the bodies with his coat swaying behind him, a paper-wrapped bundle clutched under one arm.

Juno, however, didn't wait. The Ladybug raised a gloved hand, gave Maeve a gentle wave, and leaned in one last time.

"Do remind him about our contract, yes?" she murmured. "Whatever you two decide to do down there in those charming pipes, make sure he doesn't put on both halves of that mask. He mustn't become a full Raven. Do you understand?"

Maeve swallowed and nodded slowly. Carefully. Juno's eyes gleamed behind the metal slits. A soft chuckle escaped her, almost musical, before she turned without another word and slipped into the swell of bodies.

In the space of a breath, she was gone.

Leaving Maeve with more questions than answers.

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