Chapter 4 — Names Have Teeth

The scale was still warm when Lira woke.

It lay nestled in a square of silk on her bedside table, pulsing faintly in the pale morning light — like a small piece of sky that had forgotten how to be blue.

She had tried — foolishly — to put it away in a drawer the night before. But even through wood and shadow, she’d felt it thrum.

It didn’t want to be hidden.

Or maybe she didn’t.

Lira wrapped it in cloth, slipped it into her apron pocket, and told herself she wasn’t going to go looking for him.

But when she set her stall up at the Night Market that evening, her hands moved a little slower. Her eyes flicked more often toward the shadows between the lanterns. And she laid out the honeylace candies with a nervous kind of care — all while telling herself it was just caution.

Not hope.

Certainly not hope.

He came after third bell.

No hush this time.

No strange ripple in the crowd.

Just footsteps — quiet, purposeful — and then Kael stood across from her again, eyes shadowed, cloak damp with mist.

Lira didn’t flinch.

She didn’t offer him sweets.

She didn’t smile.

“You left it,” she said flatly.

“I gave it,” he replied.

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“You didn’t need to.”

A pause. She crossed her arms. “So now what? I keep a scale in my pocket and owe you a favor?”

He tilted his head. “That’s not how this works.”

“Then how does it work?” Her voice was sharper than intended, but she didn’t soften it. “Because you don’t strike me as the charity type.”

“I’m not.”

He stepped closer. Not threatening — just present. He didn’t smell like stone or blood or incense, as she might’ve imagined.

He smelled like ash.

And the desert, maybe. Or the silence before a storm.

“You were in danger,” Kael said simply. “I chose to interfere.”

Lira held his gaze.

“You chose me,” she said, and the words hung heavier than she meant.

He didn’t deny it.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

So she reached into her apron and placed the scale back on the counter between them.

“Then take it back.”

Kael looked down at it. His expression unreadable.

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I mean,” he said slowly, “that once a piece of me is given, it either returns freely, or it becomes… bound.”

The word curled around her bones like smoke.

Bound.

“To what?” she asked.

His eyes lifted. “To you.”

Lira’s mouth went dry.

She looked down at the scale. It shimmered softly in the lanternlight, innocuous, beautiful. It didn’t feel dangerous.

But sugar didn’t either — until it burned.

“I didn’t agree to any bond,” she said, forcing her voice steady.

Kael’s expression didn’t change. “Then return it.”

“I—”

She hesitated.

Her hand hovered.

And didn’t move.

Kael watched her for a long moment. His eyes, so often veiled in gold, softened.

“Do you know what names do, Lira?”

She blinked. “They… identify people?”

He shook his head.

“Not just that. A true name doesn’t identify. It defines.”

His voice lowered.

“When someone speaks my name and means it, it’s like a key turning in a lock I forgot I built.”

She stared at him.

“You told me your name already.”

“I told you a name,” he said. “Not the name.”

Lira’s breath caught.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Then… what is Kael?”

His lips curved slightly. “A courtesy.”

“You mean it’s not real?”

“It’s real enough to use,” he said. “But it’s not the one with teeth.”

He stepped forward again — so close now, the scent of ash curled around her like a question she didn’t know how to answer.

“Would you like it?” he asked.

“What?”

“My true name.”

Lira shook her head, stunned. “Why would you offer that?”

“Because names define,” Kael said. “And I would like… to be known.”

The way he said it — not desperate, not soft — quietly brave, like someone opening a door they’d kept locked for centuries.

Lira swallowed.

“What happens if I know it?”

“You’ll be able to call me,” he said. “Even if I don’t want to come.”

“And if I use it wrongly?”

“You won’t.”

She hesitated.

Then whispered, “How do you know?”

He met her eyes.

“Because you haven’t already.”

She didn’t ask him to speak it aloud.

Instead, he leaned forward — hand cupping hers gently, fingers brushing her palm — and breathed it softly against her wrist.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a sensation.

The shape of a word with no edges.

It bloomed through her like warm honey dissolving through bone. Her pulse stuttered. Her throat dried. She didn’t understand the syllables — not in any known tongue — but they carved themselves into her memory with unshakable certainty.

Kael stepped back.

Lira didn’t move.

Her hand still tingled.

“What does it mean?” she asked, voice hoarse.

“In my oldest tongue?” he said. “It meant keeper of the last warmth.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

Didn’t know how to carry the weight of something sacred in her blood.

So instead, she asked softly, “And Lira? Does my name have teeth, too?”

He looked at her — not with fire, but with reverence.

“I think it does,” he said. “But yours are not the kind that bite.”

“Then what kind are they?”

He smiled faintly.