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Pain lit up her nerves. Her breath seized as her knees hit the carpet.

For one blind, pounding moment, nothing made sense. Not up, not down, not her own damn heartbeat.

When she looked up—Luck was gone.

Mist curled in the hallway, cold and wet and clinging.

“Shit.” Taly stumbled to her feet, waving her arms through the dissipating fog. “Damn it.”

She was alone.

She could still feel the shape of the girl’s wrist in her palm—like static, like heat. Her whole body buzzed like a tuning fork out of key. “What the fuck was that?”

Behind her, a slow, deliberate clap echoed. Taly spun around to find the hobgoblin still in his doorway.

“I wouldn’t take it personally, girlie. That one’s got more tricks than you’ve got time.”

Taly’s eyes narrowed. “Really, Grizzlethorn? Taking coin from the enemy while Ivain gives you the freedom to run your business? That’s not going to sit well with him.”

“I work for whoever pays me best, girlie. Ya know that. And that’s why I was plannin’ o’ givin’ your da first pick, seein’ as he’s interested in them riftways now. Don’t mean I ain’t takin’ my cut, though—business is business.”

Practical, transactional, and, in its own twisted way, almost loyal. It was the closest thing to allegiance any of the denizens of the backrooms ascribed to—giving someone the first chance to pay up before selling them out to the next bidder.

“What exactly was the tiny terror looking for?” Taly asked.

Grizzlethorn’s mouth twisted into something between a smirk and a scowl. He pushed the door open wider, gesturing her through. “Don’t go touchin’ nothin’. You’ve got the look of one that likes to go meddlin’ with what you’re not supposed to.”

Chapter 27

“A lot of good spellcraft got caught up in that damned ban.” Ivain’s voice drifted through the crack in the workshop door. “Not every kind of manipulation is bloodcrafting, but those fools didn’t care to understand the difference. If you’re not adding or taking something away, it isn’t true bloodcraft—it’s just precision. But they’d rather slap a label on anything remotely risky and be done with it.”

It was strange, the things Taly missed when she was away. The smell, for one—she hadn’t realized that home had a smell until she left it. Also, the way Sarina always greeted her with a tight hug. The sound of Skye’s boots, how they scuffed against the floor when he was restless. And, she realized now, even Ivain’s tirades had carved out a space in her heart that felt oddly empty without them.

“They saw one mistake and painted everyone with the same brush,” he went on. Pausing outside the door, Taly could easily picture him raking a hand through his hair, the gesture quick and agitated. “They didn’t care that we learned from it. They’d rather treat us all like criminals than give us the chance to make things right. And it’s not just bloodcrafting they ruined. Shadow magic—an entire discipline—suffered because they couldn’t tell their fears apart from reality. Mages like you, Skye, could have been so much more—could have learned to control the flow of aether, to use the very essence of what we are. But instead, they crippled the entire art.

“Come on in, Taly,” Ivain called out, because of course he already knew she was there. It was impossible to eavesdrop on someone who could hear your heartbeat like a drum. “And close the door behind you. No sense letting in the draft.”

Taly did as he asked, pulling the door closed with a loud metallic squeal that echoed through the rafters. The scent of steel, oil, and aether rose up to greet her. Inside, the workshop was brightly lit. The benches were cluttered, and what used to be neatly organized racks now held tools both mundane and magical in haphazard disarray. The careful system of order she’d put in place over the years had been completely undone in her absence.

Three things hit her in quick succession.

First: a visceral urge to start tidying. What was it with shadow mages and their absolute inability to maintain any level of organization, as if it were some kind of personal affront?

Second: the suit of Mechanica armor hanging from a metal chassis—a weathered titan caught between slumber and decay. She could almost hear the satisfying click of gears catching, almost imagine the puff of steam if she could just get it running.

And third: Skye. Shirtless. Sweat gleaming on his skin. The lean lines of his back flexing under the workshop lights as he leaned over the table.

Heat licked up her spine. She doused it before it could catch. Ivain was right there, and shadow mages were annoyingly good at catching the scent of anything even slightly lurid.

Skye shot her a glance. Their eyes met, and the corners of his mouth edged up—

Without missing a beat, Ivain’s palm smacked the back of his head. “Eyes on the task, not on the girl.”

Skye’s jaw tightened as he refocused on said task—whatever that was. His right arm was braced on the table in front of him, the Ghislain dragon curled around it, the ink almost alive with the flex of his bicep.

Then she realized—the muscles weren’t just flexing. They were rippling. As in,actually moving. Shifting, subtly butunmistakably, like something alive was trapped just under his skin.

Taly stepped closer, curiosity drawing her in. Skye’s eyes flicked up, then down, then back again. Through the bond, she could feel his attention slipping, sense the struggle to rein it back in.