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Another handoff—Aneirin had jumped again, and Taly craned her head, scanning.

There. A Lowborn teenager was tearing through the crowd. The void in the Weave clung to him like a shadow, warping everything around him.

She took off after him, diving beneath the spray of a massive bronze fountain—

A shop bell jangled as she burst through a shop door and onto Central Avenue.

Soaking wet and dripping, Taly slammed through the next crack in reality, then the next.

Sprinting through streets and living rooms and rooftop gardens.

Shouts followed her, along with what she was sure was an impressive amount of property damage.

But she kept her eyes on Aneirin.

Crack after crack, handoff after handoff, like some fucked-up relay race.

He switched bodies with ease. What kind of criteria he was using to choose, why he discarded them, if they got tired or if the endless jumping somehow used them up, she didn’t know.But he was fast. Always right on the edge of disappearing out of sight.

Her breath began to cloud, something that shimmered like frost collecting on her skin. He was about to do it again, about to jump, and she pushed herself faster, leaping through the shutter of a chained-up food stall.

Wood should’ve shattered. It never did.

“Holy shit!”

“Holy shit!” Taly echoed, stumbling out of the shower and away from a very wet, very naked man. The curtain went with her, and she ripped it away, covering her eyes and apologizing, still apologizing as she stumbled out of the washroom door—

Her foot landed on nothing but air.

And then she was falling.

Up too high, speeding down the side of a building—no, askyscraper.

The wind howled. The village below was a distant blur approaching too rapidly.

Below her, she could see Aneirin falling through the open sky, plummeting with controlled ease.

Instinct kicked in. Her gaze fixed on the rushing wall.

She tensed and kicked off, her legs slamming against the building with all her strength. The jolt was harsh, but she used it to pivot, heaving herself into the portal that appeared sideways to her trajectory.

Gravity tilted once more.

Still hurtling downward, she reached for the threads of the Weave. They appeared like gold strands crisscrossing the air around her—arrows of potential, each one representing a path she could take.

Time was the common thread weaving through every law of physics.

There were threads that pulled her up and down, left and right. Gravity was just one vector in a whole field of forces directing her descent. She only had to shift the balance.

Velocity’s spiking. Acceleration is velocity over time. Slow the seconds, cheat the fall.

With a mental flick, each second began to stretch, and the pull of gravity softened. The frantic rush of air against her skin slowed, morphing from a roar into a manageable breeze.

The skyscraper’s surface slid by as she worked on the next problem: how to catch up with Bill.

Her boots slammed against the side of the building. The force jolted up her legs—a slight miscalculation. The impact sent her flying sideways on a new trajectory.

Shit.Momentum—where the fuck was time in momentum?