Page 191

The gifts kept coming. Every morning, like clockwork, they appeared at the townhouse doorstep. After the initial courier, no further deliveries revealed their source. There was no name. No crest. Just another neatly wrapped box waiting.

But Taly knew.

They had removed Kalahad. Cut the strings on of Aneirin’s favorite puppets. But he had others. And this—thiswas his way of reminding her.

After the necklace, it was a nightingale. A delicate thing of gold and glass, sapphire eyes watching her from the velvet-lined box. Her fingers had twitched to take it apart, to pry open its chest and see how the heart of it worked. But she hadn’t. Because that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? For her to engage, towonder.

The note had no signature. It didn’t need one. Smugness bled from the ink. From those two words at the bottom.

Always watching.

There was a custom-forged blade, balanced perfectly for her grip. Then came the coffee beans, then boxes of her favorite mint tea, then a damned music box that played the lullaby Sarina used to hum when Taly couldn’t sleep.

And this morning, tucked inside the pages of a leather-bound first edition ofGuardian of the Shards—her parents’ love story—she found those words again.

Always watching.

She snapped the book shut.

“Just checking—am I supposed to comfort you right now, or is this more of a‘burn that creepy book’situation?” Skye asked, voice still roughened by sleep and decidedly more pleasantactivities. He lumbered in from the bedroom, tugging on a pair of sleep pants.

Taly glanced at him, handing over the note when he reached for it. While it was tempting…No. It was too beautiful to destroy. That was real gold filigree on the pages.

“Just put it with the rest of the junk.”

She didn’t know where it was all going. Didn’t want to. All that mattered was that it stayed out of her sight.

Her heels lifted, dropped, lifted again. She rolled her neck, then her shoulders, like she could shake off the feeling crawling beneath her ribs.

She needed to move. Or hit something. Or both.

“I’m sensing violence,” Skye said, carefully shifting out of arm’s reach. “Might I suggest a trip to the training hall, where dummies exist precisely for these occasions—and aren’t me.”

She barely registered the walk there, only the moment her fist hit the training dummy. The impact brought the world back into focus.

I see you too, bastard.

Another hit. Then another. Her knuckles stung, but she kept going.

Bill was always out of reach, slipping between the cracks, leaving breadcrumbs just to watch her chase them. Butno onewas untouchable.

The gifts had been scrubbed of temporal residue. She didn’t even know what his real face looked like. Tracking him the usual way was useless. But what about—

Taly spun and kicked, driving her foot into the dummy’s midsection. It jolted on its base.

Yeah.Yeah.

Her fist slammed into the dummy’s ribs.

That might actually work.

She always got her best ideas when she hit something.

The riftway keys were linked. Of that much, she was certain. Placed side-by-side, they resonated faintly, like tuning forks humming in harmony. They were components of a larger system, a network Bill had access to. If he had several in his possession, maybe she could find a trail.

Scrying was the art of tracing aetheric echoes—following what had already happened through what was left behind. She’d never had much practice inside the loop. After she’d tried to scry the answer to Feyrie Tag, Azura had blocked her access to the past. But in theory, if she meditated on the keys she did have, their threads in the Weave would illuminate, giving her a path to trace.

It was a plan. Maybe even a good one. Hard to say. Desperation had a way of making even the flimsiest ideas look brilliant. Still, she was feeling cautiously optimistic—right up until someone cleared their throat behind her.