Page 82

The visions that came to Taly in dreams were like whispers—fragmented, fleeting, and maddeningly vague. They came without warning, without focus.

Scrying, on the other hand, wasn’t passive. It wasn’t sitting back and waiting for the Weave to drop her a breadcrumb trail. It was deliberate—sharp and precise.

It was also a little bit like trying to find a single thread in an ocean of string.

That’s why she used a talisman—in this case, Vaughn’s amulet. It was her compass pointing the way through the infinity of the Weave.

The ouroboros rested cool and heavy around her neck. Taly poured her focus into it. Her fingers moved instinctively over the keys of the piano in front of her. The familiar melody came unbidden, muscle memory taking over.

The cool touch of ivory, the rhythm of the tune—it was her tether. It kept her grounded in her body while her mind stretched outward, following the amulet’s path through the Weave, tracing its journey from owner to owner, place to place.

Flashes of memory struck like lightning: a noble’s hand clutching the amulet in desperation, a bloodstained battle where it was lost, a figure slipping through a hidden door.

The threads tangled, the images jumbling and blurring into chaos. Her concentration broke, and her fingers faltered, a discordant note breaking the melody.

She growled through her teeth. The history of the amulet was thick with greed and the weight of too many hands trying to claim it. It made it hard to pick out anything solid. Too many voices, too many grasping wills, all layered over each other like sediment.

She repositioned her fingers on the keys and continued.

A grand chamber flickered into view, its walls lined with heavy velvet curtains, and Azura—cloaked in deep, regal colors—was hurried through the riftway as it opened. Guards flanked her, their faces tense, their movements swift and purposeful.

Taly narrowed her focus and tried to follow. But a flicker—black and fleeting—skittered at the edges of her vision. It was almost nothing. Almost.

Her concentration shattered like glass.

Taly sighed and opened her eyes to the real world, rubbing the bridge of her nose and the headache forming there.

Kairó vuun’manii?

She blinked, then shook herself, rubbing the niggle from her ear.

Kairó vuun’manii?

A shiver ran through her. It was a side effect of scrying. She’d put up her antennae to the full vastness of the Weave, and they were still buzzing. Eventually, the volume would go back down.

Vetha’mannii, shan kairó.

“Gah!” Taly scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub the visions away like dirt clinging to her skin.

The music room was dark. And freezing . Picking up the poker from beside the mantle, she prodded the fire back to life.

With the Long Night now officially upon them, winter had tightened its grip once more, reclaiming what little territory it had ceded to the arrival of spring and its promise of warmth.

The fire sputtered back into existence. Taly threw on a few fresh logs.

Kairó vuun’manii?

“Oh my Shards. You’ve got to be kidding me.” With a sharp exhale, she shoved herself to her feet.

This was usually the point where she would go find Skye. Riding him into oblivion was a surprisingly good reset. But he wasn’t here, so she went for a run instead.

She made an easy lap of the city, Calcifer loping beside her in the form of a great, shaggy dog. On her way back up the hill, she saw two figures standing outside the townhouse gates.

Instead of slowing down, she pushed harder, her legs burning as she picked up speed.

With a running leap, she catapulted herself onto Skye’s back.

“Oof,” he grunted, mostly from surprise.

“I need to know everything,” she demanded, her arms locking around his neck.

He adjusted instinctively, hands coming up to support her thighs as he hoisted her higher. Skye turned to Kato with a resigned smile. “Taly would very much have liked to come with us today,” he explained.

“Ivain didn’t want me to leave the city,” Taly said with a roll of her eyes.

“Well, in his defense,” Kato said dryly, “we did go to an awful lot of trouble trying to get you back inside it.”

Taly stuck her tongue out at him, refusing to be distracted from what was really important here. “I want to know all about the riftway. Did it actually open? What was the resonance frequency?”

Skye turned, and she turned with him. He nodded towards Kato. “He has notes and glamographs.”

Taly sucked in a breath, barely choking back the shriek of excitement bubbling up. “Are you staying for dinner?”

Kato looked surprised by the invitation, his brows lifting. “I wasn’t planning—”

Taly arched a brow.

He hesitated, like he wanted to make an excuse. But then a smile won out—small, real, softening the edges of his face. “Uh, yeah. Sure,” he surrendered. “Why not?”

Taly bounced with glee on Skye’s back as he keyed in the code to the pedestrian gate, the familiar metallic click signaling its release. The gate swung open, and they stepped inside.

“Was there any fluctuation in the shadow crystal alignment? Did the energy signatures match the Gates? Was there any spatial distortion?”

For some reason, that made both shadow mages laugh.

“What?” she demanded, her eyes darting between them. “What’s so funny?”

Skye shook his head, something halfway between a grin and a grimace tugging at his lips. “Yeah, there was some… spatial distortion.”

“And by that, he means ‘giant gaping hole in the ground,’” Kato added as he followed them into the townhouse. “Totally Skye’s fault, by the way. I was nowhere nearby when things went boom.”

That night, Taly made another attempt at scrying.

Again, the threads slipped through her fingers like mist.

Again, the images scattered before she could grab hold of them.

Again, that flicker—black and twisting at the edges of her sight.

Again, she found nothing.

She tried the next night too. And the next. And the next.

A week passed, and she kept searching. The days blurred together, and all she had to show for it were fragments: a darkened library where the amulet rested among dusty tomes; a bustling marketplace where it exchanged hands beneath a stall’s canopy; a crumbling ruin, the carvings barely visible under centuries of moss and decay.

Sometimes, she recognized a place. Ryme was old—it had seen its fair share of comings and goings.

When she could, she went there, walking the same streets, collecting remnants—a scrap of metal, an old map, keys long separated from their locks but still humming with temporal residue. Anything to pull the past into focus.

Not that it helped.

Every thread unraveled. Every answer twisted into more questions.

And always, that flicker of black lingered.

“I’m starting to think I’m just terrible at this,” Taly muttered one evening, trudging into her bedroom after yet another failure.

Already in bed and propped against the headboard, Skye glanced up from his sketchpad. “Ivain says you’re doing an amazing job.”

Taly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, for a first-year mage.”

“No,” Skye said plainly. “There were no qualifications.”

Warmth flickered in her chest—she ignored it, kicking off her slippers. “Ivain always thinks I’m more impressive than I really am. It’s the human goggles—everything looks extraordinary when you’re supposed to be weak.”

Skye watched her climb into bed, his gaze steady. He closed the sketchpad, setting it aside, before leaning in. “But you’re not human anymore,” he pointed out, his voice lower now, softer.

Before she could fumble for another excuse, his hand cupped her cheek. The weight of the day fell away as his lips met hers—slow at first but with growing intent.

Taly didn’t resist, her frustration slipping into heat. He nudged her back against the pillows, one hand already hitching up the hem of her nightdress. He pulled back just enough to drag it up and over her head.

“I don’t know why you still bother with these,” he said, his voice a slow drag of silk across bare skin. The fabric fluttered through the air as he tossed it aside. “I just end up taking them off you.”

Beginning at her neck, he kissed a slow, lazy line of fire down her body. He didn’t rush. That night, he mapped every inch of her skin with his mouth—built her need with every kiss, every pause, every look before finally giving her what she wanted.

By morning, she felt lighter. She wasn’t saying his cock was magic, but she wasn’t not saying it either.

Seated at the piano, her fingers teased out the familiar melody. She closed her eyes, and for the first time in days, clarity settled in. She knew exactly where to go, where to look.

As always, she began with the ouroboros. The vision formed, but before it could settle, something else flared at the edges of her awareness.

Another amulet. Another thread. A cold pulse, like a whisper of dread, accompanied by a flash of a serpentine eye.

Without hesitation, she reached for it. No second-guessing, no resistance—just movement. She jumped.

The world spun violently, colors and sounds collapsing into a single point, and then she was there.

Countless threads stretched outward, leading to places unknown. But the second amulet pulsed in her vision, a beacon in the chaos of the Weave around it.

Finally, she had something more than shadows to follow.

But even as the new amulet anchored her, she felt it again: that flicker of darkness, trailing just behind.

Yet another week passed.

As Taly very quickly discovered, finding keys wasn’t all that hard once you knew what to look for. But tracing them back … that was proving to be more difficult.

Every night, she tried. And every night, the answer slipped further away. Some threads knotted, others snapped, and a few vanished entirely before she could follow their paths. Every direction led nowhere.

It was maddening. Like a lock she couldn’t pick, a door that refused to open.