Page 77

The gifts kept coming. Every morning, like clockwork, they appeared at the townhouse doorstep. After the initial courier, no further deliveries revealed their source. There was no name. No crest. Just another neatly wrapped box waiting.

But Taly knew.

They had removed Kalahad. Cut the strings on of Aneirin’s favorite puppets. But he had others. And this— this was his way of reminding her.

After the necklace, it was a nightingale.

A delicate thing of gold and glass, sapphire eyes watching her from the velvet-lined box.

Her fingers had twitched to take it apart, to pry open its chest and see how the heart of it worked.

But she hadn’t. Because that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? For her to engage, to wonder .

The note had no signature. It didn’t need one. Smugness bled from the ink. From those two words at the bottom.

Always watching.

There was a custom-forged blade, balanced perfectly for her grip. Then came the coffee beans, then boxes of her favorite mint tea, then a damned music box that played the lullaby Sarina used to hum when Taly couldn’t sleep.

And this morning, tucked inside the pages of a leather-bound first edition of Guardian of the Shards— her parents’ love story—she found those words again.

Always watching.

She snapped the book shut.

“Just checking—am I supposed to comfort you right now, or is this more of a ‘burn that creepy book’ situation?” Skye asked, voice still roughened by sleep and decidedly more pleasant activities. He lumbered in from the bedroom, tugging on a pair of sleep pants.

Taly glanced at him, handing over the note when he reached for it. While it was tempting… No . It was too beautiful to destroy. That was real gold filigree on the pages.

“Just put it with the rest of the junk.”

She didn’t know where it was all going. Didn’t want to. All that mattered was that it stayed out of her sight.

Her heels lifted, dropped, lifted again. She rolled her neck, then her shoulders, like she could shake off the feeling crawling beneath her ribs.

She needed to move. Or hit something. Or both.

“I’m sensing violence,” Skye said, carefully shifting out of arm’s reach. “Might I suggest a trip to the training hall, where dummies exist precisely for these occasions—and aren’t me.”

She barely registered the walk there, only the moment her fist hit the training dummy. The impact brought the world back into focus.

I see you too, bastard.

Another hit. Then another. Her knuckles stung, but she kept going.

Bill was always out of reach, slipping between the cracks, leaving breadcrumbs just to watch her chase them. But no one was untouchable.

The gifts had been scrubbed of temporal residue. She didn’t even know what his real face looked like. Tracking him the usual way was useless. But what about—

Taly spun and kicked, driving her foot into the dummy’s midsection. It jolted on its base.

Yeah. Yeah .

Her fist slammed into the dummy’s ribs.

That might actually work.

She always got her best ideas when she hit something.

The riftway keys were linked. Of that much, she was certain. Placed side-by-side, they resonated faintly, like tuning forks humming in harmony. They were components of a larger system, a network Bill had access to. If he had several in his possession, maybe she could find a trail.

Scrying was the art of tracing aetheric echoes—following what had already happened through what was left behind.

She’d never had much practice inside the loop.

After she’d tried to scry the answer to Feyrie Tag, Azura had blocked her access to the past. But in theory, if she meditated on the keys she did have, their threads in the Weave would illuminate, giving her a path to trace.

It was a plan. Maybe even a good one. Hard to say. Desperation had a way of making even the flimsiest ideas look brilliant. Still, she was feeling cautiously optimistic—right up until someone cleared their throat behind her.

With a final, savage blow, the dummy’s head snapped back and stayed there, sticking on its hinge. Taly wiped the sweat from her brow and turned to find Aimee. Her lips moved silently. She looked angry.

Oh . Reaching for the remote in her pocket, Taly turned down the volume on the training hall’s stereo system. Today’s soundtrack was a selection of highland-Fey pulse and Faery-Daemon dance tunes.

“—down!” Aimee yelled into the sudden silence. She blinked. “And here for a moment, I almost began to hope you’d found something else to occupy your mornings.”

Taly smirked, just a little. It was true. Her regular workouts had been neglected lately, replaced by a much more enjoyable form of activity between the sheets. Cardio mostly. Skye was a wickedly relentless taskmaster.

“Do you need something?” she asked, unwrapping the long straps of fabric from around her knuckles and flexing her fingers.

Aimee was wearing her clothes again. She hadn’t said anything so far, but this time her new cousin had pilfered a pair of striders she’d gone looking for the other day but failed to find.

It was obvious they were too small. Aimee kept scrunching her toes and shifting her weight.

“I think it’s only reasonable to ask that you keep the music to a volume where a normal speaking voice will carry,” Aimee said, hands on her hips.

“I don’t want to have to strain to hear your instruction.

Also, while I can appreciate that you and Skylen are, um…

honeymooning? I’d prefer if we could meet at a set time every morning. ”

It took Taly a moment… “Oh, that’s right, I did agree to that.” Damn .

“I’m ready to get started when you are.”

Taly wanted to say she was drunk when she agreed to help Aimee with her magic, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

She flicked through the threads of possible argument, eyes tracking the afterimages that danced across her vision.

Nothing she could say would dispel her cousin’s expectant look of dogged determination.

Resistance only prolonged her eventual defeat, making the whole ordeal drag on longer.

“Okay, fine,” Taly conceded. “You were working on your water whip. Show me what you can do.”

Aimee blinked. “… oh, wait, you’re actually…” Taly stared at her, waiting. “Sorry, I just… expected more pushback.”

Then Aimee brought her palms together, water stretching between them as they moved apart.

Taly studied the whirling eddies. The ribbon was impossibly thin yet vividly clear, reflecting the ambient light in a dazzling array of colors. Tiny droplets spun off its edges like sparkling diamonds, only to be reabsorbed into the fluid stream.

“The spell is good,” she said. Aimee immediately swelled with pride. “Come with me.”

Leaving the row of training dummies, Taly made her way to the large, ornate cabinet set against the wall. Opening both doors wide, she studied the rows of narrow boxes piled neatly on the shelves inside.

“What are you doing?” Aimee asked.

“Teaching you how to throw a water whip.” Finding what she was looking for, Taly slid a box from the shelf, tossing back the lid and pulling out a thin wand with pale wood accents and a core of blue water crystal. “The spell is good,” she said again, “which means the problem is your technique.”

Aether shimmered in the crystal core as she deftly gripped the wand between her forefinger and thumb, pointing the tip at her palm. A bead of water appeared. As she began sketching small circles with the tip of the wand, it grew.

“You can wield a wand?” Aimee asked.

Taly’s eyes lifted to hers. “And?”

Aimee shook her head. “It’s just a… strange thing to see on Tempris. I’ve always been told they wouldn’t work.”

“They work, just not very well. You’ll maybe get a few good pulls on a single charge.”

With an expert flick of the wand, Taly drew a wide circle around her body and over her head. The sphere of water swirled and stretched, trailing behind the tip of the wand in a ribbon.

“You’re very good at that,” Aimee murmured.

Taly shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice.” Wands were the closest she’d ever come to wielding actual magic, hence why the training hall had accumulated so many of them over the years. “Alright, so… feet apart.”

Taly adjusted her stance, still waving the wand in wide circles that encompassed the full length of her arm. The ribbon of water stretched thinner, longer.

“There are two parts to cracking a water whip: throw and follow through. For the throw, keep your arm straight and your elbow locked. Then all you do is lift your arm, and let it drop.”

On the next rotation, Taly’s arm reared back, the ribbon of water fluttering with anticipation above her head.

When it dropped, the water whip gave a sharp crack that had Aimee jumping back.

“That’s the throw,” Taly said, resetting her stance.

“Next is the follow through. And you’re going to want to use your whole body for this.

It’s where your power is going to come from.

Starting with your weight on your back foot, step forward.

Then, as your weight shifts, look at your target instead of letting your arm drop straight down.

Make sense?” Aimee shook her head. “Okay, watch me.”

A few flicks of the wand had another ribbon of water forming that Taly lifted back over her head. Her eyes were trained on the center dummy. It was unglamoured, a rough-hewn figure crafted from reinforced sylvanwood wrapped in leather and bound with steel bands at the joints.

“First, you throw.” She let her arm drop. “Then follow through.” And as that torrent of roiling potential energy was unleashed, she moved with it.

It was an easy motion. She didn’t have to think. Her body knew exactly what to do.

Another sharp crack echoed through the room. And when it was done, Aimee was left gaping at the dummy rattling on its pole. Across its torso, showing through a rip in the enchanted leather, a gouge at least three inches deep bit into resilient sylvanwood beneath.