SEVENTEEN
RATHOK
The Forsworn Deep are nothing like the tunnels above.
Here, the bones have been crushed by time and weight into something resembling black marble—smooth, cold, impossibly dense. The walls don’t reflect Ivalys’s blue light; they absorb it, swallowing the glow until it barely illuminates a few feet in any direction. The ceiling is lost somewhere overhead, darkness so complete it feels solid.
No wraiths venture this deep. Even the dead avoid this place.
And the silence. So complete, it has texture, pressing against my eardrums, broken only by my ragged breathing and the soft pad of Ivalys’s footsteps ahead of me. Occasionally, I catch glimpses of carvings in the bone-stone—symbols I don’t recognize, from before Gravebind, before the war that created these tombs. Whoever died here first left their marks. Their gods. Their warnings.
I’m dying.
I’ve been dying since the golem tore open my chest. The potion Madame Viscera provided keeps me functional—walking, fighting if I have to—but it can’t heal the damage. Something important is grinding wrong inside my ribs with every breath. Blood still seeps through the makeshift bandages Ivalys wrappedaround me during our descent. I can feel my strength fading, hour by hour, heartbeat by heartbeat.
I should have died in that chapel. Would have, if she hadn’t burned the Ledger Master’s contracts off my flesh.
“Here.” Ivalys stops at a widening in the passage—a natural chamber carved into the bone-stone, large enough for both of us to rest. She sets down the vial of blue light and turns to face me.
She tends my wounds again—stubborn about it, as always. The golem’s damage is worse than the tunnel cuts, but her hands are just as steady.
I watch her work, her face illuminated by the blue glow, shadows pooling in the hollows of her cheeks. She looks exhausted. As worn down as I feel. “The golem’s claws carried debt-magic. They’re designed to wound in ways that don’t mend.”
“There has to be something?—“
“Ivalys.” I catch her wrist. Stop her frantic searching. “I’ve survived worse. I’ll survive this.”
“You’ll survive because I need you to survive.” She pulls her wrist free, but doesn’t move away. “Because I can’t do this alone. Because—“ Her voice cracks. Just slightly. Just enough. “Because you’re the only person in this city who’s chosen to help me. Really help me. Not because of contracts or debts or obligation. Because you decided I was worth saving.”
She places her palm flat against my chest.
The sigil on her hand flares. White light blooms between us, warm where the bone-stone is cold, gentle where my wounds are savage. Pain recedes—not gone, but pushed back, manageable, a distant ache instead of the grinding agony that’s been my companion since the chapel.
We both stare at her hand. At the light fading from the sigil. At what just happened.
“I didn’t mean to do that.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I don’t know how I?—“
“Your gift.” I cover her hand with mine, hold it against my chest. Feel my heart pounding beneath our joined palms. “It responded to protect me.”
“That’s not how truth-speaking works. It voids fraudulent contracts. It doesn’t heal wounds.”
“Maybe it does when the wound was caused by debt-magic.” I turn her hand over, study the sigil burned into her palm. It pulses faintly, warm and alive. “Or maybe your gift is evolving. Becoming something new. You’ve been awakened for days and you’re already burning away direct magical attacks, healing wounds caused by the Ledger Master’s constructs...”
“Maybe because I have more to lose.” She doesn’t look away from my gaze. “Maybe because every time I think about failing—about Gror, about you, about everything—my gift responds to the fear. Demands that I do something.”
The admission hangs between us. Heavy with meaning neither of us is ready to examine.
I should push her away. Every moment we grow closer is another weakness the Ledger Master can exploit—another lever he can use against her, against me, against everything we’re trying to accomplish. Attachment is vulnerability. Caring is a weapon your enemies can use.
But I’m tired.
Tired of being careful. Tired of being numb. Tired of pretending I don’t feel the way my pulse quickens when she’s near, the way my body responds to her scent, the way tension releases in my chest every time she looks at me without fear.
“You never answered me. Not really.” Her voice is quiet in the tomb’s silence. “In the chapel, you told me I mattered. But you still haven’t saidwhy.”
The truth I haven’t spoken aloud, even to myself.
“Because you didn’t beg.” The words tear out of me, low and raw. “Everyone begs. When I come for them, when they realize what’s happening—they plead, bargain, offer anything to escape. But you—“ I shake my head. “You looked at me like I was a problem to be solved. Like you were already planning how to survive me.”
