TWENTY-FIVE
IVALYS
The contract-heart hurtles toward me.
I see it in the space between heartbeats—a mass of compressed darkness, trailing shadows and binding script, pulsing with the voices of every soul the Ledger Master has consumed. Countless debts. Endless chains. Coming for me.
My gift shows me what will happen if it touches me. Shows me the claims burrowing into my flesh, the obligations wrapping around my soul, the transformation that would turn me into something like Gror—a weapon wearing my face, speaking with the Ledger Master’s voice.
I can’t move fast enough. Can’t speak truth fast enough. Can’t?—
Rathok.
He throws himself between me and the contract-heart. Massive body intercepting the missile of compressed debt, arms spread wide, eyes locked on mine in the instant before impact.
I see his lips form my name. No sound—there’s no time for sound. Just the shape of the word.Ivalys.
The contract-heart buries itself in his chest.
The sound is—I don’t have words for the sound. Wet and wrong and final. Flesh tearing. Bones cracking. A door slamming shut on every future we might have had.
I watch the impact ripple through his massive frame. Watch the contract-heart sink through his armor like it’s made of water instead of steel. Watch his face—that brutal, beautiful face I’ve traced with my fingers in the dark—contort with a pain that goes deeper than flesh.
The contracts begin immediately. Black script erupts from the entry wound, spreading across his chest in angular patterns that pulse with malevolent light. The same language I saw crawling across my brother’s skin. The same chains. The same theft of self.
Rathok staggers. His hand goes to his chest—to the place where the contract-heart is burrowing through armor and muscle and orc hide, seeking the hollow where his own heart beats.
He looks at me. The ember-glow of his eyes flickers. Dims.
He falls.
“RATHOK!”
The scream tears from my throat as I lunge toward him. But something catches me—hands on my arms, fingers closing around my wrists, pulling me back.
Gror.
The founding contract’s destruction had been loosening his chains—I’d seen the script smoking, peeling. But the contract-heart changed that. When it struck Rathok, I felt the pulse of it ripple through every binding in the room. Gror’s contracts blazed fresh, rewritten by the heart’s power, the Ledger Master’s final act of spite overriding whatever freedom my brother had been clawing toward.
My brother stands between me and the man I love, contract-script still writhing across his skin. His face is a mask of scrollingterms—the same face that used to light up when I came home from the bookshop, now blank and terrible under the Ledger Master’s control.
“Gror, please—” I try to pull free. Can’t. His grip is too strong—stronger than my brother’s grip should be, enhanced by the magic binding him. “Let me go. I have to help him. I have to?—”
His hands close around my throat.
My brother’s hands. The hands that held mine when our mother died. The hands that built birdhouses in our tiny apartment courtyard because he wanted to give me something beautiful. The hands that signed the blood contract that started all of this.
Now they’re squeezing. Cutting off my air. His contract-covered face shows nothing—no recognition, no hesitation, no sign of the brother I raised.
I claw at his wrists. Dig my nails into the contract-script covering his arms. It doesn’t help—the magic makes him stronger than any human should be, and my brother was stronger than me even without magical enhancement. He’s always been bigger, broader, built with our father’s frame instead of our mother’s slenderness.
The pressure increases. Stars burst across my vision. My pulse pounds against his palms, each heartbeat growing more desperate.
Behind him, I can see Rathok on the floor. Contracts are exploding across his body—terms and conditions scrolling over his skin, burrowing into his flesh, claiming him the way they claimed Gror. His back arches. His mouth opens in a silent scream. His hands claw at his chest, trying to tear out the thing that’s killing him.
I’m losing them both.
Black spots dance at the edges of my vision. Gror’s grip tightens. My lungs burn for air that won’t come.
