“I’m sure she lied to protect you. Changed your names, moved you to a quiet district, built a cover story so complete that even you believed it.” I reach across the table. My hand stops short of hers—the gesture I can’t seem to complete, the touch I don’t trust myself to make.
“This seven-day window isn’t mercy. It’s observation. He’s watching to see how powerful you are before he claims you.” I force myself to say the rest. The truth she needs to understand. “If your gift is strong enough, he won’t just take your soul. He’ll bind you to his service. Force you to use your power for him. With a truth-speaker at his command, he’d be able to void any contract that threatens him, rewrite any debt, claim any soul. He’d be unstoppable.”
“And Gror?” Her voice cracks on her brother’s name. “What’s happening to him while we sit here talking?”
“You already know.” The words come out flat. We both heard what the marks said—transformation in progress.“Every hour we wait, more of your brother disappears. We can’t afford to waste another one.”
She stares at the table, but I don’t think she’s seeing it. She’s somewhere else—in the past, maybe, remembering a mother who told fortunes and lied about everything that mattered.
“Poison.” I owe her this much. The detail Zera gave me, the truth of how it happened. “That’s how the Ledger Master had her killed. Disguised as medicine. Her own healer, bought and threatened.”
“He murdered my mother without a single care. He couldn’t even do it himself.” The words come out cold. Controlled. Dangerous in a way I recognize. “He stole my childhood. He wants to cage me the way he couldn’t cage her.”
“Yes.”
She looks up. Meets my gaze. Her eyes are burning now, truth-light building behind them.
“Then we kill him first.”
The declaration hangs between us. Simple. Absolute. Impossible.
And exactly what I was hoping she’d say.
