TWENTY
IVALYS
The floor seals itself behind him. Polished bone fusing back into place, contracts flowing to fill the gap, as if the pit never existed. As if he was never here at all.
A hollow opens in my chest. The place he filled—the warmth, the certainty, the feeling of not being alone for the first time in fifteen years—goes cold.
“No.” My voice cracks. “No, no, no?—“
“The contract graveyard.” The Ledger Master’s voice cuts through my panic. “That’s where he fell. Miles of voided debts, broken bargains, failed collections.” He steps closer. “He’ll survive the fall—orcs are resilient. But by the time he climbs out, this will all be over.”
I spin to face him. My brother stands between us—motionless now, waiting for commands, his contract-covered face blank and terrible.
“What do you want?” My voice shakes. I can’t stop it from shaking. “You have me here. You have my brother. What more do you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted.” The Ledger Master circles me slowly, and I track him with my gaze, refusing to let him out ofmy sight. “Since I learned what your mother was. Since I realized what her children might become.”
He pauses. Studies me with those wrong eyes, the contract-text flowing faster in his gaze.
“You’re stronger than she was, you know. Maren needed years to develop her gift. You’ve been awakened for—what? A few days?” He shakes his head. “Already burning away my magic. Already healing wounds that should be unhealable. Already claiming that orc as if he was yours to take.”
My heart lurches at the mention of Rathok. The Ledger Master sees it. Smiles.
“Oh yes. I felt it when you broke his chains. Felt my contracts burn away under your touch.” He stops directly in front of me. Close enough that I can smell him. Something rotting. “Imagine what you could do with proper training. Proper guidance. Imagine what we could build. I want you, Ivalys Vane. Your gift. Your power. Bound willingly to my service.”
“Never.”
“Such certainty. Such fire.” He reaches toward my face. I jerk away, but he’s faster—his fingers brush my cheek, leaving trails that burn cold. “Your mother said the same thing. She chose death over service. Will you be as foolish?”
“My mother nearly destroyed you.” The words rise from a place I didn’t know existed—a well of inherited knowledge, memories passed down through blood. What Rathok told me. What Madame Viscera revealed. “She cracked your founding contract. Made you afraid for the first time in centuries.”
Something flickers in those parchment-pale eyes. Something that might be fear.
“And then she died.” His voice hardens. “Alone. Abandoned. Her gift snuffed out before it could threaten me again.” He gestures at Gror. “Do you want to die the same way? Do you wantyour brother to watch as I consume your soul, knowing he could have saved you if only he’d been strong enough to resist?”
I look at Gror. At the contracts crawling across his skin, the emptiness where his smile used to live, the boy-shaped prison that’s become his existence.
“He offered himself for you.” The Ledger Master’s voice softens. Almost kind. “Gave up everything—his freedom, his will, his very self—because he loved you. Are you really going to let that sacrifice mean nothing?”
The mark glows. Hot. Insistent.
My gift stirs. I feel it rising—the same power that burned the Ledger Master’s contracts off Rathok’s flesh, that healed wounds caused by debt-magic, that declared the man I love free from centuries of servitude.
The man I love.
The truth of it lands. In the chaos of the past days—the fear, the flight, the desperate intimacy—I fell in love with an orc enforcer who broke every rule he lived by to save me.
And now he’s gone. Fallen into the depths of this nightmare place. And I’m alone with the monster who murdered my mother.
My gift surges. Not in response to fear—in response to fury.
And I see something.
The Ledger Master’s contracts. The web of obligations that surrounds him, supports him, makes him what he is. My gift strips away the surface, shows me the truth beneath the facade—and what I see stops my breath.
He’s afraid.
Terrified. Of me.
