Page 3

CRACK .

Talya Caro gasped awake to the growling echo of breaking thunderheads rolling outside the old palace stable. She sat up on her bedroll. Cold sweat beaded at her temples, soaking into her hair.

Kairó vuun’manii?

The dream was already fading, the details getting blurrier the harder she grasped. But those words echoed.

Kairó vuun’manii?

Then they too were gone.

Outside, wind howled through the wooden slats, rattling the aging timber.

Icy rain hammered the roof. The heavens roared with thunder, each deafening crash folding into the next.

A storm rolled in not long after they emerged from the palace.

Three days later, the winds still shrieked, the rain never ceased, and they remained stuck.

Beside her, on the bedroll pushed against hers, Skye snored softly, sprawled on his stomach. He could sleep through anything.

As for her… “Guess I’m up,” Taly whispered to the musty, aging hayloft. Lightning flashed, casting jagged silhouettes of long-abandoned hay bales and forgotten equipment.

Moving soundlessly, she eased out of her bedroll, pulled on her boots, then her coat. Skye slept like a rock, but she figured, why tempt fate.

As she dressed, her eyes traced the strong lines of his back, the way his muscles shifted with every slow breath. There was a quiet strength to him even in rest, something she’d never let herself linger on before.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed Skye was obnoxiously well-proportioned—she wasn’t blind. Not bulky, but honed, all effortless control wrapped in careless sprawl.

But noticing and feeling something about it were two very different things.

And apparently, she felt a lot of things now.

She shouldn’t be staring—it’d only feed that insufferable ego of his if he knew. And even if that ego had solid ground to stand on, it was still her job to keep him humble. Not for her benefit, obviously. It was a public service.

So, she tore her eyes away.

A shadow uncoiled from the corner of the hayloft, following her down the ladder into the main room of the stable. Calcifer. She scratched behind the ears— good morning —before heading toward the fire where Kato slept.

They’d found him barely conscious, his body battered, blood drying in his hair.

Shadow mages healed quickly—unless low aether weakened them.

Then they became the most delicate of baby birds that needed to be tended with the utmost care.

Or so one would believe given the sheer amount of whining Kato had done over the past three days.

Yes, his aether was drained. And yes, it was strange how slow it was to recover. Taly suspected it had something to do with that collar they’d taken off him. It felt… wrong when she touched it. Cold, prickly. Even wearing gloves, Skye had dropped the thing like it burned him.

Still, that didn’t justify the litany of complaints about the pain, the bandages, the light in the room, even the amount of rain. She could make him tea for the chill. She couldn’t control the damn weather.

Thankfully, he was asleep right now. She checked his forehead. His fever was better. She’d rewound time on the bulk of his injuries, though a few proved more stubborn.

Inside the loop—Azura’s prison—time was predictable. A single day, looping endlessly, with no history or future.

Outside, it was a jumbled, tangled mess.

When she reached for her magic now, she didn’t just feel the echo of yesterday or the whisper of tomorrow. She felt… history. The rise and fall of long-forgotten civilizations. The birth and death of stars.

She felt the Weave stretching infinitely into the future, so much more vast , more all-encompassing than she could have ever imagined.

The wound on Kato’s leg was one of those more stubborn injuries—a snarl in the Weave she just couldn’t work out.

There were too many circumstances, too much information to unravel.

Threads would snap, or they’d slip between her fingers, or sometimes disappear for no reason at all.

And she didn’t want to yank too hard on anything in case she accidentally erased him from, well, time .

She lifted the blanket, checking the splint around his thigh.

She’d set the bone just like Leto had shown her, but it was different doing what she’d only ever done to herself to another person.

The break was healing slower than she would’ve liked, but she didn’t know if that was due to error on her part or because his aether was still recovering.

Either way, she placed a pain potion and a few sprigs of faeflower beside him. He’d need both if he woke up.

Taly swung on her cloak, pulling the hood low. Calcifer trotted ahead of her into the storm. It was still early, 4, maybe 5bells. Thick clouds, pregnant with rain, clung to the sky, swallowing the morning in a blanket of unnatural darkness.

Through the gray, the shadow of Infinity’s Edge loomed. She gave it a wide berth. Maybe it was paranoia, yet the fear lingered—that if she strayed too close, the Queen might sense it. Might reconsider her freedom and reach out an astral hand to drag her back.

Water splashed beneath her boots, soaking her to the knees as she followed the familiar path to check their traps. Skye had set them around the perimeter of their little camp.

The trip wires were still intact. Noisemakers undisturbed.

She moved on to the next task of the morning, slipping through a gap in the old wrought-iron fence into the forest. The terrain was more overgrown than she remembered, but the same bunches of healing herbs she’d used to patch herself up during those long months of Feyrie tag persisted exactly where she knew to find them.

Wyrmwood sage for pain. Witchbane ivy for its antiseptic properties.

Sandman’s whisper for sleep. Tending to Kato had required plenty of all three.

Crouched beside a stream, her hands worked quickly, cleaning muddy roots. Her fingers trembled from the cold. She scowled while she worked. It was a novelty at first. After a year trapped in a land of eternal summer, she’d rejoiced just to walk outside, look at the gray sky, and shiver.

Then the novelty wore off, and Taly remembered that she didn’t actually like the cold.

The gray skies she’d once found so charming became oppressive.

The rain was a constant, miserable companion, soaking her to the skin and reminding her just how much she missed the warmth she’d taken for granted.

There was a reason Skye had so easily been able to bribe her back home with the allure of hot water.

Thunder cracked, splitting the sky. Each boom sent golden afterimages flickering at the edges of her vision. Sparks of possibility pulled in different directions. The forest blurred as the Weave twisted, threads tangling and tearing apart.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Taly breathed deep. It was too much sometimes. Most of the time. The real world, with its unpredictable weather and ever-changing circumstances, buzzed and scraped against her nerves, rough-edged and always moving.

Everything collided at once. Past events shimmered like reflections in puddles while futures spun out like gossamer webs. Every raindrop was a spark, igniting threads that splintered into a thousand fragile paths.

So, she focused on the nearest threads—the ones that represented the next few seconds—and tried to tune out the rest.

Then she saw it.

A flicker of gold in the corner of her vision. An afterimage that pulsed with a subtle urgency, weaving a path through the woods.

Taly gathered her herbs, stuffed them in her pack, and started back towards the palace.

She moved swiftly, boots splashing through muddy water, the afterimage trailing behind her like a glittering shadow.

Through the trees, she could see the iron fence of the palace coming up. She knew when to jump.

The shade stalking her did not.

A crash. A guttural groan that echoed.

At the bottom of the pit, impaled on spikes, the shade writhed weakly.

They rarely came this close to the palace. Maybe they sensed Azura, too. Regardless, she had yet to see any sign of the “ swarms ” of undead Kato swore circled him all night. Only the occasional straggler that fell into their pits.

Muddy rainwater pooled beneath it, rippling as Taly stared down from the lip of the pit trap.

“Go on,” she told Calcifer. “Put the poor thing out of its misery.”

His large, bat-like ears twitched in confirmation, throwing off droplets of water. Jumping into the pit, he scaled the muddy sides like a giant salamander.

Bone crunched. Then silence.

When Calcifer emerged, black fur matted with rain, he dropped the shadow crystal held firmly between his jaws into her waiting hand.

Pieces of rotting flesh still clung to it, but the size was good.

Waste not, want not. She’d figure out something to do with it.

Taly wiped it clean and dropped it into her bag.

There was no dawn, only a fading of the gray as she made her way back to the stable.

She put the herbs and her cloak near the fire to dry—Kato still slept beside it, thanks partly to the extra pinch of sandman’s whisper she’d been adding to his pain potion.

It was the only way to get any peace and quiet.

A snap of her fingers, and the mud wicked away from her clothes. She did the same for Calcifer, who promptly stretched belly-up near the flames.

In the loft, Taly slipped back into her bedroll. There was a rustle behind her, then the rumble of a male voice.

“…e’rything okay?”

“Fine,” Taly answered, closing her eyes. “Go back to sleep.”

But an arm slid over her waist. “You smell like outside,” Skye murmured, nuzzling her hair as he pulled their bodies flush.

“Because I was outside.” Her bedroll was cold, but his was warm. And so was he… She tucked herself in closer, tangling their legs.

“Couldn’t sleep again?” She nodded into her pillow. “Another nightmare?”

“Yeah.”