Three days had passed since my last reset, and I was told the last loop had been different from any other.
Because I was sick.
Grandmother said I tried to cast a spell to find my father, and it backfired, sending me into a coma for the entire month. Thirty days gone. Thirty days laid up in bed until the reset ripped me back to the surface.
At least… that’s what I was told.
Like everything else, I was supposed to take it as truth.
I’d never had a reason to doubt my grandmother or my family, but something felt wrong.
Something besides the obvious.
I was home, but I felt displaced. Like I didn’t belong here.
There was a wrongness in my body that stretched my lungs and gripped at the edges of my soul. And then… there was this.
I glanced down at the black sigil inked on the underside of my wrist. It was a soul rune with a band inked around it. At the ends, the loop spread into wings—dragon’s wings.
A mark of the spell, Grandmother had said. She said I’d played with serious dark magic. A spell I’d found in her grimoire.
All week, she’d been telling me I should thank the Blessed Mother I was alive, and that my mage blood had countered the effects of magic I shouldn’t even know about.
She made the mark sound like some kind of punishment from the ancient gods, but…
It didn’t feel like it. I swore that sometimes, when I stared at it long enough, it pulsed beneath my skin, and the same strange stirring I’d felt from the forest tugged at my insides. As if something was calling to me.
And there was more.
My magic felt different.Stronger.
Sure, everything would feel different after five years of resets, but there was a strength in my magic that surprised me. It felt like I must have been practicing. A lot.
Casting a spell to find my father sounded exactly like something I’d do, but I couldn’t imagine practicing magic and putting my family at risk.
Yet I felt it—raw mage magic from the Fray humming beneath my skin, so strong I was sure I could command the trees and they’d listen.
After a month in bed, I expected weakness. Not this power.
Gravel shifted behind me.
I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. The air changed whenever Thayden entered a space. Like the world made room for him.
“There you are.” Thayden’s deep voice settled on my shoulders, his tone careful, as if he’d been worried. “I’ve been looking for you.”
The sound of his voice shouldn’t have made my skin crawl. But it did.
His arrival was a reminder that I had bigger problems than my memories and feelings of displacement to worry about.
We were getting married in two weeks.
Him andme.
Blessed Mother, of all the terrible things to happen to me, that was one of them.
I turned to face him and forced a smile, the best attempt at pleasantries I could muster.
Thayden Fairstrom strode up to me wearing the same arrogant grin I remembered seeing on his face years ago when he had a man whipped for stealing bread to feed his children.
