Unclaimed

In Laceloom, even kindness has teeth.

My office sat above a perfumer’s shop that sold bottled nostalgia to people who couldn’t trust their own memories. The stairwell smelled like bruised lilac and old smoke, which suited me fine. Down on the street, the city glowed the way a lie glows when it’s almost convincing. Lanterns hung from living branches. Cobblestones shone. Every passerby looked like they’d been sculpted by an artist.

I kept my door unmarked. Names were invitations here. Names are leverage. Names are a way to get hauled into court because somebody decided your syllables constitute a promise.

Still, word got around. In a city where words are a currency, gossip was the closest thing to weather.

A knock sounded, precise as a judge’s gavel and just as dangerous. I didn’t say come in. That’s how you ended up with guests you couldn’t legally ask to leave. The door opened anyway, because of course it did. Laceloom did not require your consent.

She stepped inside like the room had been waiting for her. Not tall nor small. Not young nor old. Hair the color of honey set in sunlight, braided with something that might’ve been thread or might've been bone. Her face was the kind that made painters go hungry and poets go broke. She wore a cloak of pale velvet and the air around her changed. She was no ordinary fae, a Lady, Princess or Queen, almost certainly.

She didn’t look at my desk. She looked at the threshold.

“May I enter?” she asked.

Finally. A rule I could use.

“You’re already in,” I said.

Her smile made no claim to warmth. “Then may I be welcome.”

There it was. Hospitality wasn’t a custom here. It was jurisdiction. If I welcomed her, I was under house-law whether I liked it or not. If I refused, I insulted her and lost the access she represented. Either way, I was bleeding.

I leaned back in my chair. “Depends,” I said. “Are you here as yourself, or as your title?”

“A prudent question.” She took one small step deeper into my office, still technically standing on the edge of my worn rug. “As myself.”

That didn’t help. People lied without lying all the time. “Myself” could mean a courtesy name. It could mean the role she wore. It could mean the mask she’d chosen today.

I gestured to the chair without saying sit. “Speak,” I said. “Try not to gift me anything, I’ve got enough hooks in me as is.”

She sat. “I am Miravel,” she said, placing her gloved hands lightly on her lap. “Of the Courtyard-of-Second-Breaths.”

My tongue wanted to repeat it. Names were sticky. The more you said them, the more they clung to you. I didn’t give her that satisfaction.

“What brings you to my charming hole?” I asked instead.

She blinked slowly. Like she was considering whether “hole” was an insult she could prosecute.

“A missing girl,” she said.

“People go missing here,” I told her. “The city eats them, or the courts do.”

Miravel’s fingers tightened, just slightly, on the fabric of her glove. “Fiyera has been gone three nights.”

“Fiyera,” I repeated before I could stop myself.

Miravel’s smile deepened. Satisfaction. “Yes,” she said softly. “Fiyera.”

I felt the word settle in the room. A tag tied around my wrist.

“Who is she to you?” I asked.

Miravel’s gaze lifted, and her eyes were not honey at all. They were the color of melted gold. “She is mine.” A clean statement. A simple claim. In Laceloom, simplicity was always a trap.

I stared at her until the silence got uncomfortable. Then I made it worse.

“Mine how?” I asked.

“My handmaid,” Miravel said.

“Your servant.”

“My companion,” she corrected.

“Your property,” I said and watched her expression tighten like a corset.

“A guest,” Miravel replied, voice still calm, still precise. “Under my roof.”

That was the trick. If someone accepted your roof, your food, your warmth, you had rights to them. Not ownership, but rights. Rights were enough to ruin a life. I should know. It also meant you had obligations to them too. Miravel was under those obligations.

“Tell me where she disappeared,” I said.

Miravel inclined her head. “At the Masquerade of Moths.”

Of course. A party that wasn’t a party. A legal event dressed in silk and music.

“Why come to me?” I asked. “There are a few dozen seekers here who’ve been trained for your rules?”

“Because you are human,” Miravel said. Human, she said it like an ingredient. “You lot don’t dream the same. Don’t drift.”

“Drifting keeps people alive,” I said.

“Not here,” Miravel replied. “In Laceloom, drifting is how you become unclaimed.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Payment,” I said, because my job didn’t exist without money and trouble, and she had brought plenty of one already.

Miravel’s gloved hand moved to the clasp of her cloak. She drew out a small object between two fingers. A button. Black, glossy, carved with a tiny moth pattern that shimmered.

“For luck,” she said. I didn’t touch it.

“No gifts,” I said.

“It is not a gift,” Miravel replied, and I hated her for how smoothly the words came.

“It’s in your fingers and aimed at my life,” I said. “That’s a gift where I’m from. This is a service, and a service requires an exchange. Payment, not a gift.”

She set the button on my desk anyway.

I leaned forward, careful not to let my sleeve brush it. “If you leave it there,” I said, “it becomes litter. I am not responsible for your litter, you aren’t my guest here. You’re just a customer.”

Miravel’s smile turned sharp. “You are witty,” she said.

I didn’t accept the compliment. Compliments could be gifts too. The city loved nothing more than a man who thanked someone for their own doom.

“Tell me about Fiyera,” I said. “What was she wearing?”

Miravel gave me the description. She answered each of my questions in turn. When she stood, her hand hovered near the button, but did not pick it up.

“You will find her,” she said. That wasn’t a request. It was the beginning of a binding.

I held her gaze. “I’ll look,” I said. “No promises on the result.”

She moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold.

“I have heard your name,” she said. “Ryker Lawless.”

My stomach tightened, but no magical binding settled over me. She hadn’t heard the name from my own lips, nor anyone who knew it. She had heard my name, but she hadn’t really heard it.

“You can call me Seeker if you need to address me.” I gave her a winning smile. She did not return it, disappearing into the city.

The Masquerade of Moths was held in the Court of Silk, a plaza that never saw direct sunlight from Laceloom’s eternal sunset. The buildings rose around it like pale ribs. Above, moths the size of hands drifted through the air, wings dusting the lanterns with glitter. Music floated from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Everyone wore masks here. Some were delicate, others painted smiles. I wore mine too. Plain black, half face, no ornament. The kind that said I had nothing worth taking, which was a lie, but at least it was a familiar one.

A bailiff stood at the entrance, fey, draped in ribbons, eyes pale and bored. Face immaculate, as if carved from the finest marble.

“Name,” she said.

“Seeker,” I replied.

Her gaze slid over me. “Purpose?” she asked.

“To find what is missing,” I said.

The bailiff nodded once, and with that nod, the Court accepted me into the masquerade’s rules. I stepped through the archway and felt the invisible line close behind me like a clasp.

The first thing you learn as a proper Seeker is that everyone wants something. The first thing you learn in Laceloom is that everyone will tell you what they want. They just won’t tell you what it costs.

I moved through the crowd, watching hands, watching eyes, watching the small tells people forgot to control when they believed etiquette would protect them. I listened for the shape of Miravel or Fiyera’s name in conversation. Fiyera had been wearing a dress of pale green, a veil of silver netting and a mask depicting the visage of a swallow. Swallows left in the winter and returned in the spring. They were creatures of departure.

I found the fey I was looking for shortly after, a drunk whose eyes never stopped seeking. Even the fey have their lows. When I asked questions, I asked them sideways.

“Did you see a swallow?” I asked him, his greedy hands accepting the flask from mine. A gift of my own.

“I saw a bird,” he said as he drank.

“Did it sing?”

“It did not.” I watched his fingers pull at the edge of his sleeve. He was nervous.

“Did the bird leave?” I asked.

“It was taken,” he said. “By the court.”

“Which one?” I pressed.

“Second breath,” he said. I wanted to spit. Instead, I nodded and left him the flask. Not a Gift now, but a trade.

Across the plaza, a fountain trickled with water that shimmered like moonlight. Fey gathered in little knots. The fountain was one of the places that counted as always witnessed. People didn’t make jokes near it. They didn’t make promises.

I should’ve walked away. But, I’d never been good at avoiding trouble. I’d built a career on stepping directly into it.

A woman in a mask of woven petals glanced at me. “You look lost.”

“I’m right where I mean to be,” I replied.

“Then you are brave.” I felt the compliment land like a coin.

“I didn’t thank her. I didn’t smile. “Swallow mask, pale green dress. Have you seen her?”

“You speak of Miravel’s little songbird?”

“She’s not a bird,” I said, because my mouth liked to be brave.

The woman’s petals rustled. “Ah,” she said. “Then you mean she is Miravel’s.”

The worst part was how sensible it sounded in her mouth, like I’d been the one to bring it up.

“I mean she’s a person," I snapped.

“A person may be someone’s,” she replied, as if she were reciting etiquette. “If welcome. If kept. If named.”

The crowd at the fountain drifted closer in little increments. Laceloom’s predators didn’t pounce. They witnessed.

A figure stepped from the crowd wearing an inkblot mask that moved as though it had its own agenda. A court scribe.

They held a thin book that opened itself, pages flipping until the air found the right accusation.

“Ownership affirmed in a public witness-space,” the scribe said cheerfully.

I wanted to say you have got to be kidding. But in this city, joking was a form of intent. Intent was admissible.

“I didn’t affirm anything,” I said.

The scribe’s head tilted. “You corrected the term songbird, but not the possession,” they replied. “Correction implies intent. Intent applies standing. Standing implies…a statement.”

Ink gathered on the page, forming letters. So she is Miravel’s.

My throat tightened. It wasn’t even phrased as a claim. It was phrased as a conclusion, like the city had already decided my role in the scene.

“I was just asking questions,” I said.

“Answering questions binds you to their shape,” the scribe replied brightly. They extended the book. “Sign,” they said.

I stared at the sentence. If I signed, I would be bound to it. If I refused, the city would mark me as false-tongued in a place where falseness was a crime. I needed access. I needed the next step. I had been taught you paid now and bled later.

I took the pen.

I signed.

The ink swallowed what I wrote, and in its place it wrote what it wanted.

Seeker.

The scribe bowed with the satisfaction of someone who’d turned a conversation into paperwork. “Proceed,” they said, and stepped aside.

Behind me, the masquerade resumed its slow swirl as if nothing had happened. I followed the thread I’d stitched for myself.

The Courtyard-of-Second-Breaths sat behind pale iron vines that shifted. No locks. No guards. You didn’t break into places like this. You were allowed in, and the allowance cost you.

An attendant met me at the threshold.

“Welcome,” she said.

I held her gaze and stepped around the word like it was broken glass. “I’m expected,” I said, which wasn’t acceptance.

Her mouth tightened, but she nodded and led me through warmth curated to look kind. The scent of bread and the hush of clean linen. Lanternlight set low like an invitation you couldn’t refuse.

Miravel waited in a room with a window that overlooked the courtyard below.

“You have been swift,” she said as I entered.

“I’ve been cornered,” I replied.

She smiled like that was endearing. “The city enjoys a man with edges.”

“I spoke to people at the fountain,” I said. “They say Fiyera was taken by your court.”

She didn’t deny it. Denial was the amateur’s weapon.

“Fiyera came home,” she said. “Where she was welcome.”

“Welcome can be a binding.”

“Welcome can be mercy.”

“Show me,” I said.

Miravel’s gloved hand lifted toward the window. “With pleasure.”

She traced the air with one finger, drawing the shape of a swallow mid-flight. The blankness rippled. Behind the glass, a girl stood. Pale green dress. Silver net veil. Swallow mask.

She pressed her palm flat against the inside of the glass, even through the glass I could read the only language that mattered: Don’t.

Miravel turned to me, almost tender, the way people get when they’re about to do something awful and call it love.

“Now,” she said, “Fulfill the witness statement you signed.”

The room felt like a courtroom then. Cozy law. Hearth-lit verdict.

My mouth went dry. “If I say it,” I murmured. “It settles?”

“Yes,” Miravel breathed. “It settles.”

That was the trick. Not a test.

In Laceloom, the words “is mine” weren’t romance. They weren't even possession. They were a jurisdiction. Once spoken, they made the air itself comply. Fiyera shook her head behind the mast. A tiny motion. A plea small enough to slip between rules if the world had mercy in it. It didn’t.

Miravel waited, patient as a spider.

I could have done my job. Finished the case like a proper Seeker: locate the missing girl, return missing girl, close the file, collect payment, go home.

It would have been clean.

It would have been cruel.

Life taught me everyone lies. The fey taught me lies are inefficient. They preferred traps that didn’t require falsehood.

“You hired me<” I said quietly to Miravel.

“I did,” she replied. “I have been generous in my restraint.”

“Restraint isn’t always mercy,” I said.

Miravel’s smile tightened. “You may speak.”

If I complied, I would be the last witness needed to make Fiyera’s cage legal forever. Her palm slid down the glass an inch.

“So she is Miravel’s,” I said. The words hit the air with a soft, audible click, like a lock closing. The glass shivered. Fiyera’s shoulders slumped as if something invisible had settled on them.

Miravel exhaled. “Yes,” she whispered.

The city loved cohesion. It loved a story that ended the way it was supposed to. For half a heartbeat, I let myself be the Seeker who finished the job. The man who solved the case.

Then I did the other thing life taught me, the thing it will never admit out loud.

Sometimes the only way to win is to lose on purpose.

“By right of hospitality,” I added.

Miravel’s smile faltered.

It was a small phrase, a harmless phrase. But in Laceloom, harmless was only unexamined.

“Miravel’s eyes sharpened. “Do not,” she warned.

“I can’t lie,” I said. “And I’m not lying.”

I raised my voice, careful, clear. “So she is Miravel’s by right of hospitality. A guest under her roof, by her own admission. Therefore under Miravel’s protection, provision, and leave.”

Hospitality wasn’t only a chain. It was also a duty. A jurisdiction came with obligations. If you wanted the power, you took the burden too.

Miravel stepped closer, anger now splashed across her face. “You will not twist my claim,” she hissed.

“I would never,” I said. “In Laceloom a guest belongs to their host only as far as the host keeps them safe. A guest is fed and sheltered and allowed to depart when their feet choose the road.”

Miravel’s jaw tightened hard enough I could hear it. “That is now what I meant,” she said.

“I believe we both know that that isn’t the point.”

Miravel’s face was unreadable. Then Fiyera stumbled forward, free of the glass. Fiyera’s eyes found mine behind the mask. She hesitated, the smallest pause in her movement. Then she bowed.

An acknowledgement of thanks. Thanks meant she owed me one. And she did. I accepted it graciously. It would be useful in the future.

Miravel’s gaze returned to me. “You did it,” she said softly. “You finished.”

“I did.”

“You did a beautiful thing,” she said quietly. “I think the cost will be great.”

It was as close as she would get to threatening me. I only smiled.

A solved case.

A finished sentence.