The chapel lock opened under my pick with a wet little click.

I froze with one knee on cold amber and my left hand inside the reliquary grate. The sound was wrong. Mortal locks sighed when they gave. Fae locks sounded pleased with themselves, like they had only let you win because the loss amused them.

Behind me, silk moved over stone.

"Take your hand out slowly," a woman said.

I did not turn. Turning wasted the half breath a thief needed to live. My thumb found the second pick in my sleeve. Brass, thin, warm from my skin. The reliquary door had opened wide enough for me to see the name-scrolls sleeping in their honey-dark tubes.

One of them held Ren.

"If you shout," I said, "the lock closes on my fingers."

"It will not."

"You sound very sure."

"It belongs to me."

That made me turn.

The Queen of Amber stood between two pillars grown through with thorn-vines. Funeral gold lay across her shoulders. Her hair was silver-white, braided down one side and threaded with amber beads that caught the low floorlight. She wore no crown. She did not need one. Every guard in the chapel had gone still because she had entered the room.

Her eyes dropped to my sleeve.

"Second pick," she said.

I smiled because fear made my mouth stupid. "Third, if you count the one in my hair."

"I do."

The guards reached for their blades.

She lifted one hand.

They stopped. One quiet movement, and steel stayed sheathed. That was worse than shouting. Power that did not need volume always was.

"Your name," she said.

"No."

One guard hissed. The Queen looked at him, and the hiss died in his throat.

"No is permitted in this room," she said. "It is only rarely wise."

The reliquary breathed warm against my wrist. I could smell hot resin, funeral herbs, the iron tang of my own scraped knuckle. Ren's scroll was three inches from my fingers. My brother's body still breathed in the mortal quarter, but his name had been taken clean out of him. He could pour tea. He could mend a hinge. He could look at me with kind brown eyes and ask whose sister I was.

I reached.

Amber closed around my wrist.

Pain flashed white. I bit it down before it became a sound.

The Queen crossed the chapel. No hurry. No triumph. She set two fingers on the lock, and the amber eased back from my skin.

"You came for a stolen name," she said.

"I came for what is mine."

"Then you came poorly armed."

"You have no idea what I am carrying."

Her gaze moved over my pins, my sleeve, my belt, my dirty boot braced against her holy floor. "Grief. Brass. Three knives. One brother."

I hated her for being close enough.

"Cell or bargain?" she asked.

The chapel went too quiet. Even the vines held still.

"A bargain is just a cell with better manners," I said.

"Then choose the honest cell."

I looked past her at the reliquary. Ren's scroll sat untouched, sealed in amber. If they dragged me out, I would never see it again. If they killed me, Ren would keep asking for a sister no one could name.

"What bargain?"

The Queen's hand stayed on the lock, warm gold under her palm.

"Thirty doors," she said. "Thirty nights. You open what my court has sealed, and I return what was taken from your brother."

"Why would a Queen need a mortal locksmith?"

For the first time, her face gave me one honest thing. It was not softness. It was weariness, old and buried.

"Because my court has learned to lock the truth where fae hands cannot reach."

The amber released my wrist. She stepped back, leaving the open reliquary between us.

"Choose, Liora Vale."

My name in her mouth landed like a key turning.