Chapter 6 · A Scale That Should Not Breathe

The black scale moved in Lio’s palm.

Not shimmered. Not caught the broken lamplight from the anchor tower. Moved.

It flexed with a wet, deliberate pulse, its ridged surface tightening beneath the blood crusted across her hand. Each beat traveled through her wrist and into the raw place behind her ribs where Oro slept badly. The sound was small enough to be mistaken for rain striking metal. Lio heard it anyway.

Thump.

The tower floor trembled. Far below, Galloglass groaned against its emergency chains. Streets that had begun to slide into the cloud sea now hung crooked but still. Steam sighed from ruptured tram pipes. Somewhere in the district, people were cheering because the ground had stopped falling.

Lio could not make herself join them.

"Put it down," Cael said.

He stood three paces away with his sword lowered, not sheathed. Blood darkened one sleeve from the cut he had taken at the fracture line. Without his inspector’s coat, he looked less like the council’s executioner and more dangerous for it: a man who had taken off every visible sign of authority and kept all the training underneath.

Lio curled her fingers around the scale. "That was my plan.