Chapter 31 · The Contract Mark Breaks Loose

The marble of the Asterfall Tournament Arena still hummed under Nora Vey’s fingertips, thrumming with the same raw thunder that had shaken the floating structure ten seconds prior. Dust coated her throat, fine and chalky, mixed with the acrid tang of ozone and burnt feather from the nobles’ plumed hats that had toppled during the quake.

She was crouched at the northwest edge of the combat platform, her scuffed work boots planted on a cracked tile carved with a tiny, looping rune that no one else had noticed—no one but her, because she’d grown up tracing that exact script in the margins of her father’s workshop notebooks. Elias Vey’s handwriting.

The same script that covered the half-buried Thunder Crown relic thrashing under the arena’s foundations.

The contract ring on her left finger warmed, a steady, low thrum matching the pulse at her wrist, and she didn’t have to look up to know Kane was standing three feet away, deliberately putting just enough space between them to pretend he didn’t care that they’d just plummeted five hundred feet off a noble’s terrace and landed in the most heavily guarded tournament in the city.

"Stop touching the rock," Kane said, his voice