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He smiled at her, a disarmingly affable grin. The problem was, his eyes didn’t match—the warmth there felt calculated, like a cat toying with a mouse before the final pounce, pleasant on the surface yet undeniably menacing.

“We don’t have to be enemies.”

Somehow, Taly doubted that.

“Indeed, I would prefer to do this peacefully if possible.” He reclaimed his seat, unbuttoning his suit jacket with a practiced hand.

“My attention is already stretched thin as it is, and I find that loyalty is often most effectively inspired by mutual self-interest. I’m here to make a deal.

To negotiate, so that we may leave as friends. ”

He gestured to the chair across from him. The one she’d woken up in. The collar still lay where it had fallen.

Dream or not, the memory of it still pressed against her throat.

Cold. Unrelenting. What had even been the point of it?

Just to mess with her? To twist the knife a little deeper?

A reminder that she wasn’t in control of a single thing here—not the walls closing in, not the darkness creeping closer, not even her own pain.

Taly’s eyes flicked to Luck, who smirked. Basking in the spine-stiffening discomfort as the truth settled in.

This wasn’t her dream. It was someone else’s construction. Her body was a world away, and she was cut off from it.

She was trapped.

Stuck in yet another cage.

So, Taly holstered her pistol.

She crossed the room, each slow step echoing off the marble. She kept her chin high.

She’d been here before. Stuck in that relentless loop, the same day repeating over and over. This was nothing compared to that.

Luck was nothing compared to the Queen. Too reckless, too impatient—a piss-poor jailer. She’d learned to fear better ones.

The chair scraped obnoxiously against the floor as Taly pulled it out. She dropped into it with careless grace. An ease she didn’t feel.

His face was beautiful in that way that all Fey were beautiful, but the eyes—the eyes were the worst part. Clear, startling, too knowing. But within them, something lurked. An ancient, hateful spark that sent a shiver down her spine.

She didn’t know if it was his true face. This was a dream. Truth was slippery.

But that spark? That was real.

She met it head-on, leveling her gaze at his over the finely laid table.

“Well, you went through all that trouble to find me,” she said. Her voice was steady. Flat. “This better be good.”

The forest stretched endlessly, a quiet sprawl of emerald canopies and shadow-dappled ground. A cliffside jutted out, noble and unmoving.

Without much fanfare, two figures tumbled from it.

They fell—not gracefully, not quietly, and certainly not willingly. Indeed, Skye was still trying to figure out how the ground had disappeared so suddenly. And why it had been replaced by open air and an uncomfortably rapid sense of impending doom.

Branches snapped as they crashed through the treetops, flailing like a pair of poorly thrown rocks. Leaves scattered, and then—

Skye hit the forest floor first, the impact accompanied by a crunch of underbrush and a strangled oof .

A second thud to his right indicated the arrival of his brother.

Winded, stunned, possibly concussed, Skye lay on his back for a moment, not knowing up from down, left from purple, as the axis of his world realigned.

It was like passing through ice—whatever had brought them here. His body shook from the cold.

The world came back in pieces: rough ground beneath him, brittle leaves in his mouth, something sharp wedged against his spine.

“Are we dead?” Kato croaked.

Skye grimaced. Everything ached. Nothing made sense. “If we were, you’d be quieter.”

Kato groaned, but the sound came in staggered bursts, like someone skipping through a recording. “Wh—wh—why do I... feel like I’m... b-b-bouncing?”

It wasn’t so much bouncing as… the ground breathing underneath them. Each inhale lifted the world in a soundless, deliberate stretch. Each exhale let it slacken again, a barely-there shift that gnawed at equilibrium.

Skye blinked, trying to clear his vision. He must’ve hit his head. Pretty damn hard, apparently. But no—his vision sharpened, and the world stayed wrong.

The ground rippled like warped glass beneath him, shifting when he focused too hard. And the trees—they swayed out of sync, their movements staggered, as if viewed through a fractured lens.

He was sitting up—

No, he wasn’t.

A blink. A skip. And now his hand was in front of him, like the movement had already happened without him.

“I... I... I think... I’m g-g-going to be s—sick…” Kato’s breath came in stutters, his muscles twitching like his body was trying to adjust to something unseen.

“A t-t-tear...” The words came a moment before Skye thought to say them. “We... w-we’re in... a tear.”

The time mages were gone, but the island still bore their mark. The Veil—that ephemeral, unseen lamina that separated visible reality from the void that existed outside it—had grown thin in places, worn down by their spellcasting until tears began to form.

The forest was littered with them. Step wrong, and you could end up somewhere else. Another world. Another time. Or worse, unable to account for the last five minutes to five years of your life.

This was where he’d expected to find Taly.

In the center of the clearing, the tear hung like a jagged rip in the fabric of the world. A blackened fracture, edges glowing with cold light. From it, golden threads unraveled, curling like mist.

Kato swore under his breath, voice shaking. “Shards, w-what the fu-u-ck.” He lifted his hand. Something stretched. White, sticky strands clung to his fingers, connecting him and the ground.

Time itself seemed to stutter, moments repeating, skipping, blurring together. Skye’s head pounded as his vision tried to settle, struggling to see through the flickering haze and the shifting shadows. When it did—

“Kato, s-stop m-moving.”

Scattered across the clearing were remnants—pieces of what had once been people, half-swallowed by winter-worn grass. An arm here, a leg there. Severed heads, mouths frozen in silent screams, lay discarded beneath a thick layer of silk.

A spider nest.

And not just any spider. Blackbanes . Their webs were acidic. Skye could see the white strands bubbling where mist came down to settle. He could feel the burning on his skin.

The nest stretched in every direction. Sheets of webbing draped over the ground. It wrapped around trees, where suspended from the branches hung still, lifeless shapes bundled in white.

None of this made any sense.

What the hell was happening?

High above, through the stuttering of time, sparks spat from the side of a cliff. Metal struts jutted from the rock face, the last remnants of some forgotten structure. He could hear the winding down of gears.

That’s where they’d come from. That’s where they’d start looking for answers.

But first, they needed to get out of here. Carefully. Quietly. Making sure not to disturb—

Rustling.

Skye turned.

Dagger in hand, Kato was already sawing at the webs binding his feet. Skye winced at every snap, every unnecessary vibration.

“Kato, stop.”

But it was too late.

A clicking echoed up the cliff face, faint at first but growing louder.

A ripple passed through the nearest thread. Then another. Each one spreading out like a silent alarm through the nest.

“Shit,” Skye muttered, frantically pulling at the webs clinging to him. They were like tar, sticky and impossible to shake off.

The world flickered—one moment golden and blurry, the next sharply real.

In those moments of clarity, Skye saw them. Dark shapes shifted against the cliff face, big as boulders, their multiple eyes gleaming with a cold, predatory light. Legs—long and spindly and unsettlingly jointed—clicked against the stone.

“This island has giant spiders too?!” Kato’s voice cracked as he frantically tore at the rest of the webbing. “Why does anyone choose to live here?!”

Skye ripped himself free and got to his feet. He pulled his sword. A flick of a switch and fire bloomed down the blade.

He turned toward the cliff—toward the chittering, skittering wrongness spilling from the rock.

He exhaled, steady. “Would you believe the summers are really beautiful?”