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The Authority believes they’ve neutralized me permanently. To them, I am already gone. Forgotten. Left in the past.

They don’t know I walk free. That my familiar has returned. That the power they buried is moving again, and it answers only to me.

They don’t understand the extent of the mistake they made. Not yet.

But the one who betrayed me, if he’s still alive,hisdays are numbered.

I call the raven back to me. It becomes a dark tattoo against my skin. The inky shape moving across my body like a living shadow—appearing on my forearm one moment, then my shoulder the next, never settling in one place for long. Always watching, always moving.

I push to my feet, and walk slowly back to the shelter, moving silently across ground that would challenge others without sunlight to guide their way.

Every step draws more of what they thought they’d broken back to me. Every breath sharpens what they failed to kill.

Ellie is still sleeping when I return to our camp, curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Completely unaware of what has changed.

With my newly unlocked powers, I study her, and what I see stops me mid-step.

There’s something there. Not magic as I recognize it, but a resonance that aligns with mine in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Not for someone without ability. Especially not someone from another world entirely.

My familiar stirs, its attention drawn to her. Its thoughts curl into mine, amplifying questions I haven’t yet been able to answer.

What is she? Why does she resonate with our magic? What role will she play in what comes next?

I reinforce the shadows around our shelter, darkness flowing from my hands freely now, layering into a boundary that will warn me of any approach. With my familiar restored, holding the wards costs nothing. I could sleep, if I chose.

Tomorrow we will reach Ravencross. If any trace of my network survived the purge, I’ll find it. But what matters most has already returned to me.

Ellie makes a soft sound behind me, and I turn to watch as she draws her legs up against her chest.

Tomorrow, she’ll notice the difference in me. She’ll have questions.

For now, in this moment of reintegration, I allow myself something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Anticipation.

Chapter Eleven

ELLIE

“A wound named becomes a map. A wound denied becomes a lock.”

The Healer’s Codex, ancient Tidvein manuscript

I jolt upright,heart racing, breathing coming hard and shallow like I’ve been holding it for too long. For a second I can’t remember where I am, just that something is wrong. The dark feels too still. My skin too tight. My entire body is braced for …something.

My eyes adjust slowly, sweeping the interior of the shelter. Everything is where it should be, and yet … the space feels smaller than it is. The oddest sensation crawls along my spine, and the fine hairs rise on the back of my neck.

Then I catch the shape near the entrance. A figure, motionless, cross-legged, head tilted toward the fading stars.

Sacha. But every cell in my body insists it isn’t.

His outline is familiar, but not. The angles are too exact, cut sharper than they were. Light bends when it hits him. Not glowing, just …wrong. His face holds it where it shouldn’t, casting shadows that don’t match the light.

Beneath his jaw, just above the collar of his tunic, somethingshifts—black, liquid, fleeting. It seems to move across his skin, then disappear beneath the fabric.

My throat tightens. I don’t know what I’m looking at. Only that whatever has changed in him, it’s not hidden. Not anymore.

And when he turns to look at me …