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She blinked again, harder this time, desperate to clear it. But the disruption only grew—spilling outward, shimmering gold, too vivid, tooreal.

Her magic was a dried-up well. And without it, her Sight slipped the leash. Every ripple she’d tried to dam up came flooding back in.

The Weave trembled like glass under pressure. A low hum vibrated the air, a dissonance that set her teeth on edge.

Light bent. Shadows flickered in and out of existence.

And through the chaos of it all, a figure appeared.

Bright—almost too bright—it glowed with an intensity that made her squint, unable to make out the details.

A focal point of Fate. A nexus where an intricate web of a million different threads all met and radiated outward.

The forest buzzed with anticipation. Golden threads of imminent potential branched from every leaf, every bird, every raindrop, but mostly from Taly herself to this figure wrapped in light.

Darkness pressed in. She fought to keep her eyes open.

Then, for a brief, fleeting moment, that brightness wavered—dissipated just enough for her to see.

A face, young and sharp, with a flicker of something unsettlingly familiar in its angles.

A smile, both mocking and oddly knowing.

“Right where she said you’d be,” the girl sneered, her eyes—a pale, almost colorless gray-blue—flickering with a mix of disdain and triumph from beneath a dark hood. “Pathetic.”

That was the last Taly knew before the darkness took over.

Chapter 5

Perched 40 feet in the air on a twisting, moss-covered branch, Skye scanned the forest canopy spreading into the distance. On a clear day, he might’ve been able to see all the way to Ryme, but the morning was gray and hazy, the horizon obscured by fog. A mean wind whipped at his hair and clothing.

He liked being up high, always had. It gave him perspective—literally.

From up here, he could see everything—every break in the treetops, every rustle that shouldn’t be there, every line that didn’t quite match up.

He could track the flow of the land, the way it guided or concealed, including those unnatural bends where an illusion might twist.

He’d learned that particular lesson the hard way. At Crescent Canyon, he’d made a mistake and paid the cost of it in lives. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

Vaughn was dead. But whoever sent him wasn’t going to stop just because their first try failed. Killing the minion never stopped the monster. If they were going to strike, it would be now—before they reached the city. While she was still out in the open.

Skye glanced over his shoulder at a break in the trees about a mile back. That was where they’d left Taly. They still had a full day of hiking through muddy forest and steep, uneven terrain, and she needed every bit of aether she could gather.

He closed his eyes, focusing inward. The bond with Taly was still new, a barely-there thread that whispered more than it spoke. He couldn’t read her thoughts, but there was apullin the distance. He felt it like a faint tugging in his chest.

She was still there. Still in the same place he’d left her. He could be back to her in minutes, and that should’ve been enough to quiet the dull sense of dread permanently lodged between his ribs.

It didn’t.

Because he’d lost her before. The first time, when she left. The second, when he thought she was dead. When she didn’t come back. When every sign pointed to the worst, and he spent weeks clawing against the belief that she was really gone.

That left a wound. One that refused to close, even with her safe beside him.

So now it was a reflex. The second she was out of sight, his nerves twisted, bracing for her to vanish. Always waiting for reality to slip out from under him, for the moment he’d wake up and find her gone again, just a ghost he’d dreamed up to keep from breaking.

He swallowed hard, but the tightness in his throat wouldn’t go away. His fingers twitched on the branch. Just a flicker. Just a thought—maybe he should go back. Just for a minute. Just to see.

He edged forward on the branch. His weight shifted, ready to jump.