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“Clara!” A familiar voice screams from the depths, one that pricks tears into my eyes. He screams my name from a world away, as if he’s done it a thousand times. “I will find you!”

“You can’t have me!” I scream back. Give me a way out, please, someone, anyone, I beg the unseen cards shuffling through my deck of fate.

I turn.

I’m back in Eclipse City.

“How are you doing this?” another voice asks, sinister. Annoyed. It almost sounds like Eza? “You should have no control here!”

The world seems to vibrate, and the familiar, safe streets I’d just been running to dead-end into the last place I ever want to be again.

Spotlights click on, momentarily blinding me.

I’m in the trap sprung by city enforcers—the one that landed me in Halazar.

Tarot cards andinking supplies fall from my person, scattering. I’m caught red-handed.

Arina had cautioned me not to take the job. “Hold off, Clara. My readings about this one aren’t good…Just wait. I can get you something beyond your imagining, next time I come. Something special. Inking supplies that will change everything, ” she’d promised me with excitement.

But I’d told her that the inking supplies the man, Griv, had promised were only part of the deal.

The other part I shared with her in secret—not even the rest of the club knew.

Griv had claimed to know an enforcer who was working the Descent on the day Mother died.

It was a chance at firsthand information from higher up than whispers among other workers.

The moment I told Arina, she stopped fighting. We will find who killed you, Mother. We will avenge your death. That vow my sister and I made years ago is marked on our souls, more gnarled and raised than a brand on an Arcanist’s flesh at the mills.

I start running again in search of a freedom I put blind faith in finding. “Luck is on my side, luck is on my side, ” I pant with every breath as Eclipse City blurs around me.

“Clara!”

“Clara!”

They’re calling for me. Demanding me. I’ve killed their warden. I’ve fled their prison. Broken their laws. They’re going to kill me this time.

“I won’t go to the dungeons!” I scream in response.

“Where?” the first voice replies. It’s disembodied and reverberating from every lightless corner. “Come back to me.”

I stumble. Pain shoots up my arm from the wound in my hand. My throat opens once more despite the bruising, and I let out an involuntary scream. When I stand, I’m back in Halazar.

Knees bloodied and bruised. My whole body threatening to tremble apart so violently that Halazar will be brought down with it.

I keep running through cell and city blocks that oscillate with every step.

I run for my life—for the lives of everyone I’ve ever loved.

For a future that might for once have some scrap of justice.

Please, my heart implores. Please, luck is on my side. It must be. I need it to be. Give me somewhere safe. For a moment, the city wins out. I’m almost back to the Starcrossed Club. Home and safety.

There’s a grumble of frustration that rattles the foundations of the world. It evolves into a cry of rage. “How are you doing this?” Eza shouts from a distant place.

You can’t have me!

I turn the corner that should lead to the Starcrossed Club, but instead I’m faced with a lone door in Halazar. Out of options, I throw it open and a warm, clean gust of air buffets my face. I’m on the precipice of a mountain right at dawn.

“Mother,” I choke out, staring at the woman before me.

Rope far too worn and thin is wrapped around her waist, tying her to a rock.

She takes a breath as the wind whips up the cliffs of the Descent—the angry ravine that plunges through the heart of the Barren Mountains.

It’s the only place where the black falcons whose feathers can be crushed into the powder used to ink Swords cards roost.

She takes the rope in one hand as she turns to me. Her deep brown hair is wild, and her eyes, red like mine, glisten in the sunlight. She smiles as if she can see me…as if she knows I’m there.

“Mother!” I scream as she tips backward over the ledge. My luck gave me one last chance to see her face…only to make me witness the worst day of our lives.

It all happens in a second. The rope is pulled taut. There’s the flutter of dark wings. A distant scream and a falling star. A strike of lightning and figures that move faster than I can see. In a breath, the rope snaps.

I launch myself forward, a primal sound ripping from me. A noise that is part the loneliness I feel every night since she left us, part disbelief that it could have happened to our strong and industrious mother at all—and part a rage so brutal it could unravel the world.

“Clara!” Two arms wrap around me, preventing me from throwing myself over the edge—preventing me from even seeing her face one final time.

I thrash. “No!”

“Clara, enough!” the voice snaps roughly. I’m shaken, and the world around me trembles. Fractures and shatters. “It’s not real! I have you.”

I blink, and the man who’s gripping me comes into focus.

The remnants of the mental prison I’d been held in fade from view.

Instead, I see Kaelis as a dark outline against the late afternoon light.

I’m back in the academy. My clothing is no longer rough, but supple and fine.

I smell of perfume and the faint incense of powders that steeps in the air, not of waste and rot.

But…that place still lives within me. It will always live within me.

“Kaelis,” I choke out. Never have I resented anyone more for being there for me.

Never have I been more grateful.

I throw my arms around his shoulders and sob.