TWO
IVALYS
Iforce myself to my feet. My legs shake but hold. My hand throbs but works. I lift my chin and meet the orc’s gaze with everything I have.
“Where is my brother?”
Something flickers in those heat-dark depths. Surprise, maybe. Or interest. Hard to tell with a face built for brutality.
“Gone.” He doesn’t soften it. Doesn’t try to make it easier. “Fled. That’s what debtors do when they know the collectors are coming.”
“And you’re the collector.”
He inclines his head. A fractional acknowledgment.
“Rathok Grimshaw. Enforcer for the Ledger Master.” His gaze drops to my hand, to the sigil still pulsing faintly on my palm. “And you’re tied to Gror Vane’s debt now. Blood calls to blood. The Ledger has marked you.”
My jaw clenches. “I didn’t sign anything.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He says it simply, factually. “You touched the contract. Skin to paper. Intent doesn’t factor. The magic has your scent now.”
“That’s—” I bite off the wordunfair. What’s the point? The Ledger isn’t fair. Gravebind isn’t fair. Nothing in my entire life has been fair. “What happens now?”
Rathok studies me. Takes his time about it, tracking across my face, my posture, my clenched fists and shaking hands. Reading me the way I’ve been reading him—sorting threat from weakness, opportunity from obstacle.
I don’t look away.
Let him look. Let him see whatever he’s looking for. I’m not hiding from an orc in black leather, no matter how big his axes are.
“Protocol says I take you before the Ledger Master.” His voice drops half a register. “The debt transfers to next of kin when the original debtor can’t be found. That’s you.”
Ice floods my veins. “I don’t owe anything. I didn’t?—”
“You touched the contract.” Flat. Final. “It doesn’t matter what you meant or what you knew. The magic bound you the moment your skin met that paper. Your brother’s debt is yours now. His failures. His consequences.”
Hissoul-claim.
I’ve heard stories about what happens to people dragged before the Ledger Master. The weighing. The judgment. The slow consumption of everything you are until nothing remains but a name scratched in the Ledger and a debt marked PAID.
My hand throbs. The sigil flares brighter for a heartbeat, responding to—what? My fear? My anger? Both?
“And if I refuse to go?”
Rathok’s expression doesn’t change. But something in the air does—a subtle shift, a pressure I feel against my skin. Threat. Warning. The promise of violence held in check by nothing but his choice to hold it.
“The Ledger doesn’t accept refusals.”
Every survival instinct I have—every lesson my mother drilled into me before she died—tells me to submit. Go quietly. Hope for mercy I won’t receive.
I laugh.
It’s not a nice sound. Sharp and brittle and edged with everything I’ve been holding back since I walked through that door. The orc’s brow furrows—actual expression, finally, confusion or irritation breaking through the stone mask.
“Something funny?”
“My brother is missing.” I hear my voice go cold, watch his reaction from somewhere outside myself. “My brother signed his life away to something he didn’t understand, and now he’s running scared in tunnels full of dead things, and you—” I step forward, close the distance between us by half, refuse to flinch when his hand drifts toward one of those axes. “You’re standing in his apartment telling me I don’t get to refuse.”
Silence.
