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For the third time that day, Taly woke to bright lights and shouting. Her head sagged against Kato’s arm as he carried her through the crowded courtyard towards the open doors of the Swap.

She’d been here, done this, though the circumstances had been different.

After she’d closed the rip, she’d fallen—fallen and fallen for what seemed like an age as Calcifer dove after her. He’d just managed to catch the back of her tunic with his teeth, slowing her descent and redirecting her into a pile of crates to cushion the fall.

People crowded the open doors of the Swap. All around, voices shouted as children shrieked and wailed, a cacophony that echoed through the vast building.

For a moment, she almost thought she’d returned to that old timeline. That everything that had just transpired—Aneirin, Lachesis, Calcifer, the rip in the sky—had been nothing more than a delusion dug up from the depths of her concussed, overworked mind.

But then the differences flooded in. People were streaming out of the doors instead of fighting to get in. There were no harpies circling the courtyard like vultures. She’d killed them.

All of them, thank you very much.

She’d rewritten time, and the Weave was steady. It was holding.

Taly blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus. Another concussion, probably. “Wait,” she rasped, struggling against Kato, who tightened his grip. “I have to go back. I have to find—”

Calcifer’s wet nose prodded her arm and she sagged, eyes stinging as she reached down to twist her fingers in his fur.

“I don’t know what my brother sees in you,” Kato muttered under his breath. “Stubborn, hardheaded, suicidal —”

“I’m sorry,” Taly said.

“No, you’re not.”

She didn’t argue. He was right. “Put me down.”

Kato huffed. “Fat chance. This time, I’m chaining you—ow! Stop it.”

Taly wriggled out of his arms, stumbling and wobbling through her first few steps. Every part of her battered body ached. That power was gone now. She’d spit it out into the void along with every bit of her own magic. It was the only way. They were too similar, impossible to pick apart.

Her balance steadied. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. Her clothing was ripped and covered in gore, and she had splinters in her tattered hair.

Then she noticed the hush.

And Taly finally looked at the people crowding around her as they whispered and pointed.

Her glamour was gone. They’d seen what she’d done. Everyone here knew exactly what she was now.

“Well… fuck,” she muttered. This had the potential to turn horrible.

There was nowhere to run. They were surrounded. Calcifer paced a tight circle around her, all muscle and warning, daring anyone to come closer.

“Move to the doors,” Kato said to her. He stood close enough for her to feel the heat from his body, caution and worry warring on his face. “We need to get you inside.”

“Why?” Taly met the wide-eyed stares of the crowd with her own uncertain one. Measuring them as they measured her. “There’s nothing they can do to me in there that they can’t do out here.”

“They’re not the ones I’m worried about.” He grabbed her arm to drag her. “Inside. Now .”

She resisted. “What about Aimee and Aiden?”

“I haven’t seen them.”

“But I sent them here.”

Kato pushed her forward. “Worry less about them, more about yourself. Now get—”

Shouts rose from the distant edge of the crowd. Kato’s gaze shot towards the sound. “Shit.”

The Weave shuddered. Taly felt it like an imperceptible rumble beneath her feet.

“Okay, listen to me, furball,” Kato snapped to Calcifer. “Go get help. Find the old man, my brother, the fucking pyro. I don’t care—just get them here.”

Calcifer chirped his acknowledgement, then vanished, fading effortlessly between the shifting threads of the Weave.

Kato turned to Taly next, grabbing her as he rushed for the door. “ Hide her ,” he hissed, shoving her toward someone in the crowd.

Hands pulled at her—hundreds of hands all working as one to drag her back through the doors of the Swap and deeper into the room.

Don’t worry , they said as they passed her. Around her, Fey and Shardless stood shoulder to shoulder. When Taly looked into their faces, she saw no hatred, no fear. Just solid, unyielding determination.

She’d protected them. Now, they were doing the same.

She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat and couldn’t.

Over the din of the crowd, the metallic clank of armor cut through from outside. Everyone around her went still, eyes dropping.

There was only one thing that could instill such fear in the span of a heartbeat. Just one.

At the front of the room, Kato shouted for people to move aside as he and others tried to close the doors.

Beyond them, gold bled into the horizon as the sun continued to rise over the city.

The blown apart, half-melted corpses of harpies littered the courtyard, a garish tableau of death.

But marching through the swarming and buzzing of flies, invisible save for the telltale ripple of the glamour…

The tip of a sword appeared out of nothing to press against Kato’s throat. He went very, very still.

“Away from the doors,” said a smooth, masculine voice. Kato raised his hands and took a step back, the crowd moving with him.

The glamour dissolved, revealing a man in polished black armor. Beneath a crimson hood, red eyes peered from within the glamoured shadows obscuring his face. “I have no interest in starting a war with Ghislain, princeling.”

Kato smirked despite the blade at his throat. “You certainly have an odd way of showing it.”

“Give us the time mage.”

Kato drawled, “That’s going to be a little hard considering they’re all dead.”

People pressed in closer around her. The air felt muggy and warm and smelled of unwashed bodies. Taly kept her eyes down as the Sanctifier scanned the crowd.

“I know she’s here,” he said. “We saw her when she fell. She would’ve landed nearby.”

Kato smirked. “So, let me get this straight—you see a time mage save your sorry ass, and your first instinct is to run over here and try to kill her? You sure have a funny way of saying thank-you.”

“Gratitude is irrelevant. Time mages are a blight, and my job is to rid the world of them.”

Kato swallowed against the blade, a drip of blood escaping from beneath it. “This is a shelter. A place of safety. The rules of Aegis apply.”

Five more Sanctifiers stood behind the first, weapons drawn, formation tight. The one in front wasn’t the biggest, but the others gave him space.

“We have a duty,” he said, quiet and smug—the way weak men always were when they had a weapon and an audience.

“Your duty ends at the line of this door,” Kato said firmly. “ Go . Or I swear to you I will use every resource at my disposal, the full might of Ghislain, to make you suffer.”

The Sanctifier laughed. “Your family is worlds away, and so is their might , princeling. You have no power here. Move aside.”

“No.”

Glass shattered and rained down over the screaming crowd. Taly threw up her arms to shield her face, looking up just in time to see a dark object drop through a broken skylight.

It landed with a hollow, echoing thud.

“Oh no,” Taly whispered—just before all hell broke loose.

Smoke exploded into the room with a choking hiss.

Screams followed, high and panicked as bodies crashed into one another.

Metal clanged, and Taly’s gaze shot towards the sound, blinking through the smoke, to the front of the room where Kato had pulled his sword .

From her left, a second smoke bomb hit the ground, hissing as thick, gray tendrils curled upward. The crowd surged, fear breaking like a wave—

Then another crash. Another rain of glass. Another bomb dropped into the crowd.

More screams. The room lurched as smoke burst outward. And Taly was caught in the middle of it—the middle of that wave as it tossed her. Gray choked her vision. She could barely breathe, barely stand.

Kato grunted, parried a blow. He danced back, and the crowd flinched back with him—

A hand slid into Taly’s. Up and down the line she saw people doing the same. Clasping hands and forming an unbreakable chain to keep from falling.

Kato stumbled, dropping to one knee, somehow still managing to hold his sword aloft as the Sanctifier swung down. Steel clanged, and he grunted from the force of it before throwing himself into the next swing.

Shouts to Taly’s left, screaming to her right.

There was a flash of light. Then a blast of heat cut through the thick smoke, searing across her skin.

“Stop,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. Stray blasts of magic ricocheted overhead. “Please, stop …”

She was the one they wanted. This wasn’t right .

Kato tackled the fifth and final Sanctifier attempting to enter through the doors. He panted as he rose.

But Taly saw the ripple behind him, and she screamed—screamed louder than anyone else, “ Stop! ” She pushed forward, clawing through the bodies. “Kato!”

His eyes found hers over the crowd. Held for a moment.

Then he jerked, as if startled. Blood spilled from his mouth.

His eyes dropped to his chest… and the blade protruding from it.

Hands grabbed at her, tried to hold her back. But Taly shoved forward. She fought through the crowd, one body at a time—until finally, she broke through.

She reached the front of the Swap and stumbled out of the crush.

Silence fell. Such silence that Taly was sure every person in the room could hear the drumming of her heart as she stared up into the face of her worst, most dreaded nightmare.

Red eyes glowed from within swirling shadows. He stood silhouetted in the open doorway, the sun a thick beam of light that flooded in from behind him.

Kato gasped and wheezed at the end of his sword. His skin was already going pale as blood pooled on the floor around him. A severed artery, or maybe the blade had nicked his heart. Either way, he was bleeding too fast. Blood stained the threshold of the Swap like a line in the sand.

A line of Aegis.