The rain hit like ice needles. Kade pressed his back against the alley wall, chest heaving, boots soaked through. His bounty notice was plastered on every corner he'd passed. Five hundred silver marks. Enough to buy a whole block in the lower wards.
He wasn't getting out of Ashgate. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
The rune core pulsed under his ribs. Warm. Waiting.
He shoved off the wall and kept moving. The alley spat him out near the old tannery district, where the smell of lye and rot kept most people away. Good. He needed a place to think. Somewhere the guard patrols wouldn't bother checking until morning.
Except someone was already following him.
Kade heard the boots first. Soft soles. Not guard issue. Bounty hunters, then. Probably more than one.
He turned a corner and ducked into a loading dock, flattening himself behind a stack of empty crates. The footsteps slowed. Stopped.
"Lost him." A man's voice. Low and annoyed.
"He's close." A woman this time. "I can smell the ink on him."
Kade's jaw tightened. Ink. She meant the rune residue. Most copyists carried it under their nails, in the creases of their palms. It never washed out completely.
He glanced down at his hands. The black lines were still there, faint but visible in the dim light. The rune core had burned them deeper when it woke up. Now they looked like scars.
"Check the dock," the woman said.
Kade didn't wait. He vaulted over the crates and hit the ground running. The hunters shouted behind him. Footsteps pounded after him, closer than before.
He cut left into another alley, then right, then left again. The city was a maze down here, and he'd spent years learning every shortcut. But the hunters were fast. Too fast.
One of them grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back.
Kade spun, fist already swinging. The punch connected with the man's jaw and sent him stumbling. But the woman was right there, blade out, slicing toward his ribs.
The rune core flared.
Kade felt the heat surge up through his chest, down his arm, into his palm. The woman's blade hit something solid and stopped dead. She stared at her weapon. At his hand.
He'd caught the edge. Bare-handed.
The steel glowed faint red where his fingers touched it. The woman yanked the blade back, eyes wide, and Kade saw the fear flicker across her face.
"What the hell are you?" she whispered.
Kade didn't answer. He shoved her back and ran.
The core was still burning. Not pain, exactly. More like pressure. Like something inside him was trying to get out.
He made it three blocks before the second hunter caught up. This one didn't bother talking. He just swung a weighted chain at Kade's legs.
Kade jumped, but the chain clipped his ankle and sent him sprawling. He hit the cobblestones hard, palms scraping open, and the core flared again.
This time it didn't stop.
The heat spread through his whole body. His vision sharpened. The rain slowed. He could see every drop, every shadow, every movement in the alley around him.
The hunter swung the chain again.
Kade caught it.
The metal links burned against his palm, but he didn't let go. He yanked hard, pulling the hunter off balance, and slammed his other fist into the man's gut. The hunter doubled over, wheezing, and Kade kicked him in the chest.
The man went down and didn't get up.
Kade stood there, breathing hard, staring at his hands. The black lines were glowing now. Faint, but definitely glowing.
The rune core pulsed again. Once. Twice. Then it settled.
The glow faded.
Kade flexed his fingers. No burns. No cuts. Just the same scars he'd woken up with.
What the hell was this thing doing to him?
He heard more footsteps. More voices. The bounty hunters were regrouping.
Kade turned and ran again. This time he didn't stop until he reached the Crow's Neck, a sagging tavern on the edge of the docks. Juno Vale's territory.
He slipped in through the back door, past the kitchen where the cook was shouting at someone about burned fish, and up the stairs to the second floor. Juno's door was third on the left. He knocked twice, paused, then knocked once more.
The door opened a crack. Juno's sharp gray eyes peered out.
"You look like hell," she said.
"Let me in."
She did. Barely. Kade squeezed through the gap and Juno shut the door behind him, sliding two bolts into place.
Her room was small and cluttered. Rune slates stacked on every surface. Loose papers pinned to the walls. A workbench covered in half-finished engravings. Juno herself looked like she hadn't slept in days. Her dark hair was tied back in a messy knot, and there were ink stains on her sleeves.
"Your bounty went up," she said. "Seven hundred now."
Kade swore.
"Yeah." Juno leaned against the workbench, arms crossed. "You're officially more valuable dead than most people are alive. Congratulations."
"I didn't do it."
"I know." She pulled a folded paper from her pocket and tossed it to him. "That's why I pulled the ward records from the tower."
Kade unfolded the paper. It was a rune diagram. Complex. High-level. Nothing like the simple wards he used to copy.
"That's what failed," Juno said. "The primary anchor on the east wall. Someone sabotaged it."
"How do you know?"
"Because the failure pattern's wrong. Wards don't collapse like that unless someone cuts the binding thread first." She pointed to a spot on the diagram. "See that? That's a manual override. You need tower clearance to even touch it."
Kade stared at the diagram. His mother had taught him to read runes when he was ten. He'd never been good enough to design his own, but he could follow the logic.
Juno was right. Someone with access had wrecked the ward on purpose.
"Who?" he asked.
"That's the fun part." Juno pulled another paper from the pile on her bench. This one was a personnel log. "Only three people had clearance to access that anchor last week. One of them's dead. One's in the infirmary with half her face burned off."
"And the third?"
"Soren Drake."
Kade's stomach dropped.
Soren Drake. The noble brat who'd been in the tower the night Kade got arrested. The one who'd pointed at him and said, That's the copyist. He did it.
"He set me up," Kade said.
"Yeah. Probably." Juno folded her arms again. "Question is, why? You're nobody. No offense."
"None taken."
"So why does a Drake want you dead?"
Kade didn't answer. He was staring at the diagram again. At the manual override.
His mother had worked in the tower once. Years ago, before she'd disappeared. She'd been a high-level rune engineer. One of the best.
She'd also left him a map.
Kade reached into his coat and pulled out the old leather pouch. The one he'd found in the lining of her work knife. Inside was a folded piece of parchment, yellowed with age.
He spread it out on Juno's workbench.
It was a map of Ashgate. But not the whole city. Just one district. The forge district.
And in the center, marked with a red X, was a building Kade recognized.
Drake's private forge.
"What's that?" Juno asked.
"My mother's last job," Kade said. "She marked this place right before she disappeared."
Juno leaned closer, squinting at the map. "That's Drake's forge. No one gets in there without a family seal."
"Then I'll get a seal."
"How?"
Kade looked at her. "You know people."
Juno laughed. It wasn't a happy sound. "You want me to forge a Drake family seal. For you. While you've got a seven-hundred-mark bounty on your head."
"Yes."
"You're insane."
"Probably."
Juno stared at him for a long moment. Then she sighed and turned back to her workbench. "If I do this, you owe me. Big."
"I know."
"And if you die, I'm keeping whatever you're carrying."
"Deal."
Juno pulled a blank slate from the pile and started etching. Her hands moved fast, confident. Kade watched the rune lines take shape. It was a good forgery. Clean. Precise.
She finished and held it up to the light. "This'll get you through the outer gate. Maybe the inner one if the guard's drunk. After that, you're on your own."
Kade took the slate. It was still warm from the engraving. "When's the forge open?"
"Tonight," Juno said. "Drake's hosting some kind of private auction. Half the city's elite will be there."
"Perfect."
"Perfect? Kade, you'll be walking into a room full of people who want you dead."
"Then I'll have to be fast."
Juno shook her head. "You're going to get yourself killed."
"Maybe." Kade tucked the slate into his coat. "But if Drake framed me, he knows what happened to my mother. And I'm not leaving Ashgate without that answer."
Juno didn't argue. She just handed him a second slate. This one was blank.
"What's this for?" Kade asked.
"If you find something in there, copy it. Bring it back to me. I'll make sure it gets to the right people."
"The right people?"
"People who want the Drakes off the tower council as much as you do."
Kade nodded and slipped the blank slate into his other pocket.
He turned to leave, but Juno grabbed his arm.
"Kade."
He looked back.
"Don't trust the guard," she said. "Even the ones who seem decent. The tower owns them all."
Kade thought of Mira Voss. The way she'd hesitated before trying to arrest him. The way she'd looked at him when he kicked her sword back.
"I won't," he said.
Juno let go. "Good luck."
Kade left through the back stairs and stepped into the rain again. The city was quieter now. Most people had gone inside to wait out the storm.
He pulled his hood up and started walking.
The forge district was on the other side of Ashgate. It would take him an hour to get there on foot, maybe more if he had to dodge patrols. But he had time. The auction didn't start until midnight.
The rune core pulsed again. Steady. Calm.
Kade pressed a hand to his chest. He could feel it under his skin. Warm. Alive.
Whatever this thing was, it wasn't done with him yet.
He just hoped he'd survive long enough to find out why.