Ronán Stormbrook

The corner of her mouth tugged upward.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It does.”

She stood beside him without ceremony, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, eyes on the game instead of the ruins around it.

“Kids are stubborn that way. World can end, cities can break apart, reality can decide it's having a nervous breakdown...” Her gaze followed the ball again. “They'll still find a way to turn an empty street into a soccer field.”

A laugh erupted from the children as the ball bounced off a mailbox and rolled into a flower bed. Neither seemed remotely concerned about the score anymore.

Charlie shook her head fondly.

“Honestly? That's probably why this place is still standing.” Her voice carried that quiet certainty she reserved for truths she'd lived. “Not the magic. Not the politics. Not the people with power.”

She nodded toward the kids.

“The people who wake up and decide life's still worth living in.”

For a moment, she simply watched them play.

Then she glanced sideways at Ronán, catching the note of admiration in his expression.

“You know,” she said dryly, “that's the nicest thing I've heard you say about the city since you got here.”

A beat.

“I was starting to think you'd mistaken it for a personal insult.”

The tease was gentle, lacking its usual edge.

Charlie looked back toward the children as one of them scored between two backpacks serving as goalposts and immediately celebrated like he'd won a championship.

“That's the thing about innocence,” she murmured. “It doesn't ignore the broken parts. It just refuses to let them be the whole story.”

Turning to face the woman, he gave a soft half-laugh at her words. "I'll admit, I was not the most welcoming or open-minded about this Broken City of yours. Yet, I find myself wandering to roam these streets almost as often as I roam my own city these days. Perhaps it is growing on me." He shrugged his shoulders once. "The thought." He added and shuddered jokingly.

That had been the plan, at least. Finish the reports stacked half-open across his desk, answer the last two messages waiting for him, maybe convince himself that staring at maps long enough counted as rest. Instead, sometime after midnight, he’d abandoned the paperwork entirely and wandered out into the city with his coat thrown over his shoulders and no real destination in mind.

Now he stood near one of the quieter market streets tucked between the Court districts, a paper cup of coffee warming his hands while the city exhaled around him.

Most of the stalls had already closed for the night, but a few remained open—late-night bakers pulling trays from ovens, a flower vendor rearranging bundles beneath hanging lanterns, someone down the street arguing passionately about card games and cheating accusations. It was quieter than daytime, but not empty. The Broken City never really slept. It just softened around the edges.

Apollo leaned one shoulder against the stone column beside a closed bookstore, watching the slow movement of people passing through the street with the kind of calm attention that suggested he genuinely liked observing them.

The sleeves of his dark sweater were pushed up to his forearms, his scarf hanging loose around his neck like he’d put it on absentmindedly hours ago. There was nothing particularly imposing about him tonight—no formal layers, no courtly presentation, no visible title resting on his shoulders. Just a tired man existing peacefully in the middle of a city he’d grown unexpectedly fond of.

He glanced up when he noticed someone nearby, expression easing immediately into something warm and familiar, even if they’d never met before.

“Careful,” Apollo said lightly, nodding toward the bakery across the street. “I made the mistake of stopping there once and now I think the owner expects me to come back every night.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Pretty sure she’s trying to emotionally manipulate people through fresh bread.”

He lifted the coffee cup slightly in greeting.

“Not that I’m complaining. It’s working.”

The streetlamp beside him flickered softly in the night air, gold light catching against his features as he straightened a little from the column.

“You out wandering too,” he asked easily, “or are you one of those people who actually has somewhere to be at this hour?”

That call to begin roaming had brought him not to some well-trodden area of his Court or his city, but rather to the Broken City yet again. Apollo hadn't been wrong when he spoke up, either. The Summer Lord had been just about to stroll into the bakery when the warning was issued.

"Ah, you know me." Ronán said dismissively, "I'm always wandering when I can get away with it." He finished and nodded once towards the bakery. "I don't understand it myself - these mortals and their cooking pale in comparison to what we offer in any dwelling throughout Valaria, and yet somehow, their fresh breads and such still have something addictive about them."

He felt it before he saw it — that subtle drag of foreign magic across the skin of the city. Summer glamour wasn’t subtle if you knew what you were looking for. It didn’t cut. It polished.

His eyes tracked the ripple as it moved. Streets straightened. Brick cleaned itself up like it had something to prove. The skyline softened into something curated instead of earned.

For a second, he just looked at it.

Then he let out a quiet breath through his nose.

“Pretty,” Beckham admitted, voice even. No awe. No resistance. Just fact.

He stepped forward a half pace, boots hitting pavement that looked smoother than it had any right to be. He scuffed it lightly with the sole, testing the illusion the way mechanics tested parts.

“Here’s the thing, though,” he went on calmly. “You didn’t fix anything.”

His gaze moved down the boulevard — at the now-pristine storefronts, the unified stone, the cleaned edges.

“You smoothed the bruise. You didn’t heal it.”

He glanced sideways at Ronán, not disrespectful. Not impressed either.

“First impressions matter, sure,” Beckham said. “But so does trust. And this city’s learned the hard way that anything too polished probably isn’t permanent.”

He gestured toward a wall that had once carried scorch marks — now bright, unmarred.

“Those burns? They meant something. People painted over them because they wanted to. Kids added wings because they chose to. That’s culture. That’s authorship.” A faint tilt of his head. “You make it look like it was always this way, you erase the part where we survived it.”

The glamour hummed faintly in the humid air.

“I get the instinct,” Beckham added, tone steady. “Summer builds beautiful things. You’re wired for it. But this place isn’t drifting. It’s anchored. Messy on purpose.”

He slipped his hands back into his pockets, grease marks stark against the illusion of refinement.

“Style’s fine,” he said lightly. “But around here? We earn it.”

"A solid argument. I can respect that and for what it's worth, I understand your meaning as well." He spoke and the smirk widened just slightly. "To an extent. You'll be hard-pressed to convince me a few well-placed glamours wouldn't do wonders for this place." He mused lightly.

"Messy on purpose." He repeated and chuckled as if there was something amusing in the words. Though the remark about smoothing over the bruising, rather than healing it, lingered in his mind. "Survival worn as a badge of honor is something I can respect. Between being dragged into this... honestly, I don't even know how to describe this city's connection to our Courts... and what I have heard occurred with time over a year ago..." He let out a small sigh.

“I would never mistake you for ignorant of mortal resilience,” George replied evenly. “Anyone who witnessed a purge and stood against it understands that survival is rarely elegant.”

They continued walking, broken pavement giving way to a stretch of uneven cobblestone that had somehow endured both centuries and catastrophe.

“You’re correct,” he said after a beat. “When your Courts sealed themselves away, much of my kind was still learning how to build walls that didn’t crumble under siege.” A faint, dry note threaded into his voice. “We were messy. Violent. Frequently incompetent.”

His gaze moved across the street—brick layered over brick, iron balconies rusting but still upright, gas lamps converted into electric light long before the Merge.

“But you left before we learned to build cathedrals that rivaled mountains,” George continued quietly. “Before we carved cities not merely for defense, but for art. Before we invented music that could make a war-weary soldier weep in a crowded bar.”

He nodded subtly toward the jazz drifting through the air.

“This shamble, as you call it, once held libraries older than some of your younger Houses. Markets that braided cultures together until no one could remember who arrived first. Mortals may not shape stone with magic—but we shape time with persistence.”

His eyes returned to Ronán, calm and unflinching.

“You see ruin because you measure beauty by permanence,” George said. “Mortals measure it by endurance. A Court remains unchanged for millennia and calls it stability. A city collapses and rebuilds five times in a century and calls it progress.”

A faint curve touched his mouth—not defensive, not mocking. Simply sure.

“You missed a few centuries, yes. We learned to build upward. To light the sky without flame. To cross oceans in hours rather than months. And,” a slight incline of his head, “to create culture that does not require immortality to leave its mark.”

He glanced once more at the mortals moving through the street—laughing, arguing, living.

“They will rebuild this place,” George added quietly. “Not because it deserves grandeur, but because it is theirs. And that, High Lord, is something even your Courts understand.”

A pause, softer now.

“You don’t have to admire it,” he said. “But I would suggest you not underestimate it.”

"Yes, I'm told your people learned to harness the wrath of the storm on such a miniature scale you had lighting at the flip of a switch. You might have called it progress, but had I been around the witness it I would have probably said that your people found their own answers to the problems in the world our kind solve with magic without so much as a second thought." Ronán spoke with a small smile. "Mortal magic." He chuckled at that.

A slow humming escaped the male. "You speak with a voice of a man that has bore more weight than that of others. There is an authority and cadence in your words that suggests a... nobler upbringing than others I have spoken to. While my understanding of mortal-born supernaturals is more limited than I would like to admit, I understand that vampires once led mortal lives before becoming immortal, no?"

He let the question settle between them, like the sea before a tide shift—still on the surface, but pullin’ deeper underneath. The Summer magic in the air did hum in recognition. It always did around Court-blood. Around old power.

But Cal didn’t bow. Didn’t stiffen. Didn’t perform.

He just shifted his weight, toes curling lightly against the sun-warmed stone, and met Ronán’s gaze with easy steadiness.

“Yeah,” he said at last, accent soft but certain. “You could say that.”

A faint breeze stirred, carrying salt and something green and bright that didn’t belong to this city but lingered in him anyway.

“Summer answers when I call,” Cal continued, unhurried. “Heat. Growth. Water when it needs coaxin’. But I wasn’t raised in a court, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

A small, crooked smile touched his mouth—not defensive, not deferential.

“Grew up near the coast. Learned tides before titles. Sand before strategy.” He shrugged lightly. “Court blood runs where it runs. Doesn’t always come with banners.”

His gaze flicked briefly toward the people moving through the street—mortals, supernaturals, all mixed without ceremony—then back to Ronán.

“And I don’t mind the mortal parts,” Cal added quietly. “They’re the ones that taught me what Summer’s for.”

He held the High Lord’s look without challenge, without submission—just calm presence.

“So yeah,” he finished, tone warm but steady. “S'ppose you could say I’m of your Court. Just took the scenic route gettin’ there.”

"Though, you will have to elaborate how it was mortals that taught you what Summer was for." Ronán expressed curiously and found the sturdiest object nearby to lean himself against.

“Centuries of habit,” she repeated, dry but not sharp. “Yeah. I’ve got a few of those myself.”

When he said battlefield, though — that landed differently. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue it away. Her gaze tracked the street again: scaffolding clinging to half-repaired brick, a mural half-finished, a woman sweeping glass from her stoop like it was just another Tuesday.

“Yeah,” Charlie said finally. “It is.”

She folded her arms loosely, not defensive — just steady.

“But it’s a battlefield where people still plant flowers in shell casings,” she added. “Where somebody sets up a food cart next to a burned-out block because rent’s cheaper and hope’s stubborn.”

Her eyes cut back to him, assessing in a different way now.

“You’ve seen war,” she said, tone even. “So you know the difference between a place that’s been destroyed… and a place that’s still fighting to live.”

A beat.

“This city’s the second one.”

She tipped her chin toward the scaffolding.

“It doesn’t look like a polished Court. It’s not meant to. It’s loud and uneven and held together with duct tape and supernatural compromise.” A faint, crooked smile. “But it belongs to the people who refuse to leave it.”

Her posture shifted — not challenging, not yielding. Just grounded.

“You don’t have to romanticize it,” Charlie added. “But don’t underestimate it either. Battlefields create the strongest loyalties. The sharpest teeth.”

She glanced at him again, something almost wry flickering there.

“And if you’re going to walk my streets calling it a battlefield,” she said lightly, “at least acknowledge the soldiers who chose to rebuild instead of retreat.”

"During the War," The High Lord began, "I was relatively new to my position as High Lord. Still navigating how to best lead my Court." He continued.

"When the summit was called to discuss banding together with the mortal armies in a last-ditch effort to put an end to the tyrant that would have called himself our King, I answered out of necessity - and a certain bat-winged irritants' insistence," Ronán smirked at that. "But I did not have faith in the mortals' ability to be of aid to us. I was... proven wrong. The resilience you speak of I have witnessed firsthand and it was through that resilience that some of our hardest fought battles were won."

He turned and looked at Charlie now. "Although I am unimpressed by how mortalkind has developed in some areas, over the centuries of our isolation, I do not look upon you without acknowledgment." The words carried a weight to them and he let them settle around them.

"The mortals here are so very different from the kind that our Courts decided were worth the sacrifice to defend during the War. Those mortals strove to build monuments that carved out their place in the world for all to see - castles with their high walls; sprawling kingdoms. The mortals of this modern day seem content on merely existing, but lack the desire for grandeur."

“it’s not supposed to impress you,” he said, voice even. dismissive, but not careless. “it survived. that’s the attraction.” his gaze drifted over the crumbling brick, the string lights strung between buildings that had no business holding them. “mortals build on top of their mistakes. they don’t burn everything down and rename it when it bruises their pride.”

a faint shimmer of heat rolled off him — subtle, restrained. “you’re looking for culture?” he added with a small, unimpressed tilt of his head. “it’s in the cracks. in the noise. in the fact that they keep rebuilding when things fall apart.” his jaw flexed once. “if you need marble and banners to recognize it, you’re in the wrong district.” finally, he pushed off the curb and straightened. “with as little respect as i can muster, my lord,” he finished, though it carried very little of either, “if you can’t see what’s worth something here, that sounds less like the city’s failure… and more like yours.”

The magic was a familiarity that Ronán recognized from centuries of traditions and rituals among several of the lesser-born families that resided across his Court. A relic that had passed from generation to generation long before he assumed the mantle of High Lord - but, likewise, a tradition that he did not take measures to vouch against either. The broken, fractured nature of the magic was even more peculiar still, and he knew of only one individual in recent centuries to elicit such a sensation.

"The unbranded one. Goldwake clan, right? Aye. What did they call you again - Aelin? You know," The High Lord shifted his stance slightly, "Were I a male of lesser discipline, the tone in your words would be resulting in a very different conversation right now..." He finished in a tone that was half-warning. "Though, given who you are, I'll ignore it. For now."

The High Lord gazed along the city buildings for a moment. "Some might find admirability in the mortals' tenacity. I myself can admit that such a resilient nature has been a boon to us in the past, during the War especially. Yet, it is just as easy to view such nature as stubborn foolishness to try and defy what the world has already tried to bring down."

“Wow,” she drawled, eyes flicking from the cracked pavement to the patched-together storefronts and then back to him. “You’ve been here five minutes and you’re already reviewing the city like it’s a bad vacation rental.”

She shifted her weight, boots scuffing against the stone, posture easy but grounded. There was nothing defensive in her stance — just the solid confidence of someone who belonged to the mess he was side-eyeing.

“First off,” Charlie continued, “this place didn’t wake up one morning and decide to look like a disaster postcard. It’s stitched together out of two cities, a bayou, and more supernatural fallout than I can fit on one incident report. You’re looking at the aftermath, not the identity.”

Her gaze tracked a pair of kids darting past with bread wrapped in paper, laughing too loud for how little sleep anyone had gotten lately. A vendor argued prices with a fae tourist. Life, scrappy and imperfect, kept moving.

“Second,” she added, voice leveling out, “culture isn’t the paint on the walls. It’s the people who keep showing up when the walls fall down. Music that still finds a corner to play in. Food that gets cooked on generators. Traditions that survive because nobody lets them die just because the skyline’s ugly.”

She finally looked at him again, one brow lifting.

“And if you’re hunting for attraction?” A small, wry smile. “Try watching how mortals rebuild the same block for the third time in a year and still invite their neighbors over for dinner. That kind of stubborn hope? That’s the real spectacle.”

Charlie tipped her chin toward the street ahead.

“You don’t have to like the view, High Lord. But don’t mistake ruins for emptiness. This city’s got teeth and soul — and it’s still standing. That counts for something.”

His expression softened into a more considerate one, however, as he looked around and gave her words some more thought. "It's a battlefield." He decided the comparison was fitting for the remains of what survived the woman's rap sheet. "I'm familiar with my fair share of those..."

He shrugged one shoulder, easy.

“Yeah, this part isn’t winning any postcards,” Beckham said. “Broken City doesn’t really do first impressions. It does… function.” His mouth tugged into something wry. “Most days.”

He nodded toward a cluster of people laughing around a stall where someone was clearly selling something illegal, probably enchanted, definitely delicious. Down the street, a mural was half-finished over old scorch marks; kids had added wings to the painted figure like they were daring the wall to hope.

“Culture’s here,” Beckham went on, calmer now. “It just doesn’t look like palaces and marble. It looks like people patching holes and still showing up the next day. Food trucks arguing about whose wards are better. Musicians playing in the rain because the acoustics are good and rent is bad.” A beat. “Attraction’s not the buildings. It’s that the city keeps choosing not to die.”

He glanced at Ronán, not confrontational — just honest.

“And yeah, mortals rebuild messy. They don’t have Courts or centuries to curate the vibe. But this?” Beckham gestured lightly at the uneven skyline, the layered wards, the stubborn life threading through the cracks. “This is what surviving looks like. If you want the pretty parts, you’re a few districts off. If you want the real parts…” His gaze settled back on the street. “You’re standing in them.”

The air seemed to ripple gently in the path of the High Lord's hand. In its wake, the very landscape before their eyes seemed to reshape itself without so much as a whisper. Cracked streets realigned themselves; the mismatched foundational architecture of the two competing cities blended into a coherent gradient; and the brick and mortar of the buildings themselves seemed to brighten with renewed youth and freshness. Ronán dropped his hand to his side and let the air hang with the buzz of Summer glamour. "Survival is important, but must it come with such a sacrifice in style?" He questioned lightly.

He straightened and turned toward the High Lord, bare feet quiet on the stone, canvas satchel slung loose at his side. The sun caught in his curls, and the faint scent of eucalyptus moved with him as he closed the distance just enough to be part of the conversation—without crowding it.

“Yeah, I get how it looks,” Cal said, Aussie accent warm and unhurried, like he wasn’t here to argue so much as… reframe. “If you’re expectin’ spires and silk banners and folks singin’ in the streets, this place’ll feel like a construction site that lost the blueprint.”

He tipped his chin toward a corner where a food vendor had set up a little grill, smoke curling into the air, laughter spilling from a couple of people crowded around a shared table.

“But culture doesn’t always announce itself with architecture,” he went on. “Sometimes it’s the bloke who still shows up to cook when the roof’s half gone. Or the woman who paints over scorch marks because she refuses to let the street stay ugly.”

Cal’s gaze drifted across the crowd—humans, supernaturals, all stitched together by the same imperfect ground.

“Attraction’s in the livin’,” he added quietly. “In the way people keep makin’ room for each other even when the city keeps takin’ things away.”

A small, lopsided smile tugged at his mouth as he looked back to Ronán.

“Dilapidated ruins are what you see when you’re lookin’ at what broke,” Cal said. “But if you stick around long enough to notice what’s still standin’—and who’s still standin’ in it—you’ll start seein’ why folks don’t give up on places like this.”

He listened to the man's argument about the Broken City and quietly hummed under his breath. "Perhaps..." He mulled over the words. "I am not so prideful as to be unable to admit that I have been known to be a little... judgmental, about mortals." The High Lord sighed out. He paused for just a moment before glancing at the male and finally turning to face him - curiosity getting the better of him. "You are of my Court, are you not, lad?"

He walked at Ronán’s side with unhurried composure, polished shoes navigating broken stone as easily as marble floors ever had. His gaze lingered on the passing mortals—vendors packing up for the night, a pair of teenagers arguing over something trivial, a woman laughing too loudly as if daring the world to contradict her.

“Culture,” George replied mildly, “rarely announces itself from the scaffolding. It lives in the spaces people refuse to abandon.”

He gestured with a subtle tilt of his chin toward a corner where someone had propped up a battered speaker and was playing old jazz into the street, the music threading through the ruin like defiance. A few doors down, a hand-painted sign advertised soup from a window that used to be a tailor’s shop.

“You’re looking at a city mid-sentence,” he continued. “Not finished. Not restored. Still deciding what it will keep and what it will let go of.” A pause, thoughtful. “Old Orleans had its grandeur, yes. But it also had rot behind the velvet. This place wears its damage openly. There’s a certain honesty in that.”

Ronán’s disdain didn’t surprise him. Fae Courts were built to be beautiful on purpose. Mortal cities tended to become beautiful by accident—or by stubborn survival.

“As for why make another city at all,” George added quietly, eyes tracking a courier darting between crowds, “sometimes people rebuild not because the old place failed… but because the world shifted beneath it. New foundations don’t mean old culture is gone. They mean it’s being carried by those who remember it.”

He glanced toward Ronán then, tone even, not challenging, but unflinching.

“If you’re looking for splendor, you’ll find it in the Courts. If you’re looking for attraction,” a faint, dry smile, “try watching how mortals keep going when their world collapses. It isn’t pretty. But it is… impressive.”

"It's hard to imagine there was any grandeur that once existed in... wherever this city shambled in from." The High Lord remarked and looked over at the man he spoke with. "Of course, your civilizations had only began grasping how to build walled castles and kingdoms when our Courts were magically separated from our lands. So, I admit there might be a few centuries of development I missed." Ronán admitted with a shrug.

“Late,” she echoed fondly. “Yes. Guilty.” A sip — citrus and sun and something sharper beneath it. “There was a delegation that mistook enthusiasm for authority and nearly set fire to a dock trying to prove a point.” Her mouth curved. “I redirected them toward something productive. Loud. Far away from anything flammable.”

Her free hand slid over his knuckles, thumb tracing a slow, grounding circle there — a habit older than most of the Court. When he spoke of the tide testing itself, her gaze followed his to the harbor, expression thoughtful rather than alarmed.

“It’s not ready to break,” she agreed quietly. “But it’s learning where its weight lies.” She tipped her head just enough to brush her temple against his shoulder. “Which means it wants to be understood before it’s challenged.”

At his words — because of you — she didn’t deflect. Didn’t soften it into humor. She simply breathed, steady and present, letting the truth of it land between them like a shared anchor.

“And Summer endured because you listened,” Aelinor replied gently. “Because you let someone stand beside you instead of behind you.” Her fingers laced more firmly with his. “We kept it whole together. That’s the only way it ever works.”

She took another drink, then set the cup down beside his, reclaiming her other hand to rest it over his heart — warm, certain, unafraid.

“For now,” she murmured, eyes on the water, “I’ll take your offer. The edge suits me better than the ramparts today.”

A small, knowing smile.

“But don’t mistake my enjoyment for rest, my love.” She squeezed his hand once. “When the tide does decide to turn… we’ll meet it the way we always do.”

Her thumb left heat in its path as it traced circles upon his knuckles and the hand she placed against his chest drew that same warmth from his core and to the surface beneath her palm. "If something is testing the tides and weighing its options, then you know what the, unfortunately means for us, no?" Ronán questioned with a small groaning sigh in his voice.

"That means, within time, I expect to hear 'summons' from Meadows and the other Lords' Courts to discuss the matter at hand." He frowned - no, more pouted. "You know how much I despise summit meetings."

“Yeah,” he murmured, eyes following the last ripple until it disappeared. “That tracks.”

He took another slow drink, then rested the bottle on the dock beside him, forearms braced loosely against his knees. Ronán’s words about the Wall settled heavy but familiar — another version of a story Sawyer had heard in different uniforms, different mouths. Protection that turned into confinement. Safety that tasted like a cage.

“Patience and salt,” he echoed quietly. “You’re not wrong.” A glance back at the pile of metal, then the water beyond it. “Most folks don’t stick around long enough to find out what somethin’ was built to survive.”

At the explanation of the Veil, Sawyer nodded once, slow. Pressure sense hummed faintly at the edges of his awareness — not threat, just presence. Boundaries layered over boundaries. Old magic wearing new scars.

“Sounds like fences come in a lotta shapes,” he said evenly. “Some folks call ’em mercy. Others call ’em fear. Usually depends on which side you’re standin’ on.”

He shifted then, boots nudging the water again, ripples spreading outward in lazy rings. “I don’t miss fences,” he added after a beat. “Never sat right with me. But I get why people build ’em.”

Ronán’s last words earned him a sideways look — blue eyes steady, thoughtful.

“Quiet nights are earned,” Sawyer agreed. “And kept.” A pause, then the faintest hint of a smile. “Which means I don’t mind sharin’ one with someone who understands the tide doesn’t belong to any of us.”

He tipped his chin toward the darkening bay, voice low and even. “You driftin’ through for long,” he asked, “or just passin’ like the rest of the weather?”

When the male offered to share his quiet night with him, the High Lord's lips parted for a gentle laughter at the irony of the mortal's words. "I am the tide, lad." Ronán remarked with a small twinge of pride, but otherwise nothing but amusement. "I can appreciate the sentiment, however." He nodded in thanks and settled into a seat nearby.

"Drifting is a rather fitting word. I am simply sampling what this broken city of yours has brought to my people's collective tables." Ronán explained lightly.

he took another drag, smoke curling slow as he exhaled it away from them both. “and no — this place hasn’t tried to chew me up.” a faint, humorless curve touched his mouth. “it learned early on not to bother.” the silence stretched again, deliberate. marcus didn’t fill it. when ronan offered his name, he inclined his head just enough to acknowledge it — not deference, not challenge. parity. “marcus,” he returned. no titles. none needed.

his eyes flicked once down the empty street, then back. “you’re not wrong about tells. this city broadcasts them if you know how to listen.” a beat. “you’re not from here. and you’re not wandering.” the cigarette ember flared as he stubbed it out against the brick beside him. “so either you’re passing through something you don’t intend to stay in,” marcus said, voice steady, “or you’re looking to see what survives when the corners give way.” his gaze held ronan’s, assessing, grounded. “either way,” he added, “you picked a quiet spot to stop. that usually means you know when not to make noise.” a pause. “question is — are you listening to the city,” marcus said, “or are you waiting to see if it listens back?”

He leaned back against the brick, boots easy on the ground, presence expansive without pressing. “You’re right about survival; it’s the floor, not the ceiling. Strength’s what you choose after the sea tries to take you and fails.” A breath, slow and salt-heavy. “Aye, I wander. But, I also chart. I listen for where the water pulls wrong, where the city’s spine creaks - then I decide what keeps and what breaks clean.”

His gaze slid down the empty street and back again, steady as a lighthouse beam. “This place listens, whether it means to or not. I’m here because it’s speaking in undertow and fracture, and because quiet tells the truth faster than noise.” The faintest nod followed, parity returned. “Your people came to our lands abruptly and not of your own accord, but that does not stop this... city, of yours from posing potential threats and dangers to not just my own Court but others.”