The map inside Cael Rook’s crow badge kept moving.
Black lines crawled across the metal like veins beneath skin, branching from the Council district and plunging downward through the floating city. Every time the lines reached a seal mark, the mark darkened. Somewhere far below, something answered with a slow, subterranean pulse.
Lio felt each pulse in her teeth.
She sat against the cracked wall of the interrogation room, one hand clamped over the wound beneath her ribs. Blood had soaked through the courier jacket and dried stiff against her skin. The room smelled of hot copper, scorched stone, and the bitter ozone left behind by the failed binding circle.
Cael stood three paces away, his crow badge suspended between them.
Its metal wings twitched.
His face had gone still in the way of a man trying not to show that the floor had vanished beneath him.
“You knew the name,” he said.
Lio looked at the living map instead of him. “I knew more than the Council wanted remembered.”
“Elian Wren.”
The name struck the room harder than any alarm.
For one sharp second, the interrogation chamber disappeared. Lio saw burning glass towers, a stairwell folding in on itself, bodies trapped behind a wall of blue fire. She smelled melted wiring. Heard someone screaming her old name through the smoke.
Then the memory snapped shut.
Her fingers tightened over her wound.
Cael noticed. Of course he noticed. He watched people the way other men watched doors.
“You’re not Lio Wren,” he said.
“I am now.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Behind her ribs, Oro stirred.
Not with his usual arrogant amusement. Not with the deep, grinding voice that made her lungs feel too small. This time, his presence moved like a frightened animal hiding beneath ice.
The tomb is awake, he whispered.
Lio swallowed. You said that already.
The first seal is near.
She closed her eyes for half a heartbeat. Not now.
The first seal, Oro repeated. Recover it before the others fall.
Cael’s gaze narrowed. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.”
“Your heartbeat just changed.”
“Then perhaps stop listening to it.”
A bell rang somewhere beyond the chamber. One note. Then two.
Cael turned toward the iron door.
The crow badge snapped shut in his palm.
“Council retrieval order,” he said.
Lio pushed herself upright. Her knees trembled, but she refused to let him see her fall. “So that’s it? You hand me over, they cut me open, and you pretend you never saw the map?”
His jaw flexed. “You’re under arrest for illegal seal interference, destruction of Council property, identity fraud, and possession of an unregistered draconic relic.”
“Forgot attempted murder.”
“I didn’t attempt to murder you.”
“You dragged me into a room designed to crush my bones.”
“It was designed to suppress magic.”
“It crushed my bones.”
The lock on the door clicked.
Cael stepped between her and the entrance. His hand settled near the short black blade at his hip, not drawing it, but close enough to make the threat clear.
“Give me the dragon scale,” he said.
Lio laughed once. It came out rough. “It melted into your badge.”
“Then tell me how to separate it.”
“Ask the Council. They wrote the instructions.”
A cold pressure gathered behind her sternum.
Oro pushed against her ribs.
Take me to the seal.
Lio breathed through the pain. You don’t get to give orders.
You carry my heart.
“And you carry a dragon,” Cael said.
She looked at him sharply.
He had heard.
Or guessed enough.
The door opened.
Two Council wardens entered first, armored in white lacquer and silver chain. Behind them came a thin woman with a glass mask covering the upper half of her face. The black crow embroidered on her collar marked her as a senior examiner.
“Inspector Rook,” the woman said. “Step aside.”
Cael didn’t move. “Director Vale.”
“Your report has been amended. The courier is to be transferred to the lower vaults immediately.”
Lio’s stomach tightened.
The lower vaults sat beneath the Council spire, below the old foundations, below the places where sunlight reached. Prisoners sent there rarely came back with their memories intact.
“Amended by whom?” Cael asked.
“By the Council.”
“That isn’t a name.”
“It is the only name you need.”
Director Vale lifted two fingers.
The wardens stepped forward.
Lio’s body reacted before thought. Her knees bent, her weight shifting toward the broken circle in the floor. The last remnants of grounding magic still crawled through the stone. If she pulled on it, she might break the room apart.
She might also break herself.
Oro’s voice brushed her mind.
Borrow me.
The words were quiet enough to frighten her.
Lio stared at the approaching wardens. “What does that mean?”
A portion. A breath. I will lend you what you need.
And the price?
Pain.
“That’s not a price. That’s a promise.”
The nearest warden raised a binding rod.
Cael moved first.
His blade flashed from its sheath and struck the rod aside. Blue sparks burst across the room. The warden staggered, staring at him.
Director Vale’s glass mask turned toward Cael. “Inspector.”
“Take one more step,” he said, “and I’ll consider this an unauthorized execution.”
The second warden drew a hooked chain.
Cael’s eyes never left Vale. “Why is the transfer order sealed?”
“Because the prisoner is unstable.”
“Why are there no medical officers?”
“Because she is dangerous.”
“Why did the Council erase Elian Wren’s name from the North Glass Tower report?”
Silence filled the room.
The wardens exchanged a glance.
Vale’s fingers lowered.
“Remove Inspector Rook from active duty,” she said.
The crow badge in Cael’s hand gave a sharp, metallic cry.
Then every light in the room went out.
A blade whispered through the darkness.
Lio dropped.
Steel passed over her head and buried itself in the wall. Cael seized her collar and yanked her sideways as a second weapon sliced through the air where her throat had been.
The iron door slammed shut.
Something moved above them.
Not one of the wardens. Too fast. Too silent.
A figure fell from the ceiling, wrapped in gray cloth, and landed between Cael and Director Vale. A narrow mask hid the assassin’s face. Black sigils crawled over both gloves.
The assassin plunged a dagger toward Vale’s chest.
Vale twisted away. The blade missed her heart by an inch and opened her shoulder instead.
She screamed.
“Protect the witness!” someone shouted beyond the door.
Lio froze.
Witness?
A second assassin crashed through the observation window. Glass rained across the floor. In the corridor beyond, a man in a gray archival robe ran for the stairwell, clutching a metal case to his chest.
He was old, one hand pressed against his bleeding side.
Lio recognized him.
Not from this life.
From the North Glass Tower files.
Archivist Senn. The only surviving clerk who had signed the original evacuation order. The man who had once told Elian Wren that the fire began three minutes before the first alarm.
The Council hadn’t lost him.
They had hidden him.
And now they were killing him.
“Rook!” Vale shouted. “The witness is compromised. Let him die.”
Cael looked toward the corridor.
The old archivist stumbled. One assassin raised a crossbow behind him.
Cael’s expression changed.
It was not fear. It was the instant a locked door inside a person opened, revealing something that had been waiting there for years.
He threw his crow badge.
The black metal struck the crossbow bolt midair. The bolt shattered. The badge spun back into his hand, trailing sparks.
Then Cael ran.
Lio followed because staying behind meant being taken, and because every instinct she had ever trusted screamed that Senn carried the missing piece of her death.
The corridor erupted into violence.
Cael drove his shoulder into the first assassin and sent both of them through a marble column. Lio seized a fallen binding rod and swung it at the second. The rod connected with the assassin’s ribs, but the impact jolted her wounded side. White pain flashed through her vision.
The assassin recovered instantly.
A black-gloved hand closed around Lio’s throat.
Her boots left the floor.
The pressure crushed her windpipe. She clawed at the wrist, but the sigils burned through her fingers. Somewhere behind her, Oro roared.
The sound was not audible.
It was a storm inside her bones.
Borrow me.
Lio’s vision narrowed to the assassin’s blank mask.
How much?
Enough.
She opened the door inside herself.
Heat poured through her.
Not fire. Something older. Denser. A molten current threaded with gold, flooding her veins and forcing her lungs open. The assassin’s grip tightened once more, then cracked.
A line of black-gold light appeared beneath Lio’s skin.
The assassin jerked back.
“What are you?”
Lio planted both feet against the wall and pulled.
Power surged from her palm.
The corridor exploded with a sound like a mountain splitting.
The assassin flew backward, smashed through the window, and vanished into the open sky. Far below, clouds churned around the floating city’s lower engines.
Lio dropped to her knees.
The borrowed heat remained inside her, furious and hungry. Golden scales flickered across the back of her hand before sinking beneath the skin.
Oro exhaled through her lungs.
A plume of smoke curled from her mouth.
Cael stared at her.
“You said you couldn’t use magic.”
“I said I was a courier.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is when you’re broke.”
A groan came from the shattered corridor.
Cael turned. Director Vale lay against the wall, one hand clamped over her bleeding shoulder. The old archivist had collapsed beside the stairs. His metal case rested beneath him.
Cael crossed the distance in three strides and crouched beside Senn.
“Give me the case,” he said.
Senn’s eyes opened. They were clouded with pain but still sharp. “You’re wearing their badge.”
“Not for much longer.”
The old man looked at Lio.
His face emptied of color.
“Elian?”
The name cut through her more cleanly than the assassin’s blade.
Lio knelt beside him. “What happened in the tower?”
Senn’s fingers clutched the case. “You were right. The fire was fed from below.”
“By whom?”
“The seals.” His breath rattled. “They used the dragon seals to power the city’s ascent. The tower was a test. When you found out, they—”
A thin dart struck his neck.
Senn convulsed.
Lio caught him before his head hit the floor.
Cael spun toward the opposite rooftop, but the assassin was already gone.
Senn’s hand loosened around the case.
“Seven,” he whispered. “Seven stolen hearts. The first is being sent down tonight.”
“To where?” Lio asked.
His gaze fixed on her face.
“Gallowglass.”
Then he died.
For a moment, only the city’s engines spoke. Their distant thunder rolled through the Council spire, shaking dust from the ceiling.
Cael took the case from Senn’s hands and stood.
Director Vale was gone.
So were the wardens.
The corridor had become a ruin of broken glass, blood, and black feathers.
Cael looked at the badge in his palm. The crow’s eye had turned red.
“By morning,” he said, “the Council will declare that you murdered a senior director and killed an archivist during escape.”
“Did I?”
“No.”
“Will anyone care?”
“No.”
Lio pushed herself upright. Her borrowed power was receding, leaving cold behind. Her hand shook violently. “Then arrest me now. At least I’ll know which room they’re taking me to.”
Cael studied her for a long moment.
“Gallowglass is three levels below us,” he said. “Its western anchor has been failing for six hours.”
“The lower district?”
He nodded. “If the first seal is there, the Council is sending it into a district already collapsing.”
Oro stirred, weak but alert.
The seal is waking.
Lio looked down through the shattered window. Far beneath the Council spire, Gallowglass floated in the darkness, a ragged maze of bridges and stacked neighborhoods suspended beneath the city’s brighter upper tiers. Blue warning lamps blinked along its edges.
One by one, whole streets were losing power.
Mara would be waiting at the courier station near the district’s upper lift.
If the city fell, she would fall with it.
Lio faced Cael. “You’re going to turn me over.”
“I was.”
“Past tense?”
He removed the black crow badge from his coat and held it between them. The metal was warm from the scale’s living map.
“I’ll give you one day,” he said.
Lio almost laughed. “One day of what?”
“Freedom.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a trap.”
“It is. At dawn tomorrow, I bring you back to the Council. If you run, I hunt you. If you lie, I hunt you. If you use that dragon’s power against civilians, I put you down myself.”
“And in exchange?”
“You take me to the first seal.”
Oro’s voice rumbled beneath her heart.
Accept.
Lio ignored him. “Why?”
Cael looked toward the dead archivist. “Because the Council sent assassins to silence a witness. Because my badge showed me a map they will kill to hide. And because you knew the truth before you were born.”
The last words landed softly.
Somehow, they hurt more than the others.
Cael extended his hand.
“One day,” he said. “Then we decide whether the city deserves to survive.”
Lio stared at his gloved fingers. The sensible choice was to run alone. The sensible choice was never to trust a Council inspector with a blade and a badge that ate dragon scales.
But Gallowglass was already sinking.
She clasped his hand.
His grip was firm, warm, and immediately suspicious.
A black line appeared around both their wrists, thin as ink beneath the skin.
Cael’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Oro laughed inside her.
The bargain is sealed.
Far below, a horn began to sound.
Not an alarm from the Council.
A falling horn.
The kind sounded when an entire district lost its anchor.
Cael released her hand and ran toward the stairwell. Lio followed, forcing her legs to move despite the weakness dragging at them.
At the top of the stairs, the crow badge suddenly unfolded.
Its living map flared across the metal.
A bright point appeared in Gallowglass, then began moving downward through the district at impossible speed.
Cael stopped.
“What is that?”
Lio felt Oro recoil.
The first seal, the dragon whispered.
Below them, Gallowglass shuddered.
Bridges snapped. Windows burst outward. Entire blocks tilted toward the clouds.
The bright point continued its descent, carried by a Council transport plunging straight into the failing lower district.
The first seal had already been sent down.
And Gallowglass was about to fall from the sky.