THIRTY-TWO
IVALYS
Sunlight.
I stand at the window of the healer’s ward and watch it pour through the glass—actual sunlight, golden and warm, nothing like the gray half-light that’s blanketed Gravebind for as long as anyone can remember. The perpetual twilight is lifting. The city is waking up to a dawn it hasn’t seen in three centuries.
Behind me, the ward hums with quiet activity. Beds line the walls in neat rows, filled with the wounded and the exhausted—enforcers freed from their contracts, civilians caught in the Hall’s collapse, people who survived the chaos and are only now beginning to understand what that survival means. Healers move between them, their hands gentle, their voices soft. The smell of herbs and clean bandages has replaced the ever-present reek of ink.
It feels wrong. All of it. The sunlight, the quiet, the absence of dread that’s been my constant companion since I touched Gror’s contract.
I lift my hand. Study the sigil on my palm. It still glows—softly now, a gentle pulse instead of the demanding burn that marked me as collateral. The angular script that crawled up my forearm has faded to pale scars, barely visible unless you knowto look. My mother’s gift remains. The Ledger Master’s claim does not.
I’m free.
The thought should bring relief. Instead, it brings a hollow sort of wonder. I’ve spent so long being hunted, being claimed, being someone else’s obligation. I don’t know what to do with freedom.
I don’t remember the last time I felt safe enough to let my guard down, to trust that someone else would catch me if I fell.
“Ivy?”
Gror’s voice pulls me back. I turn from the window and cross to his bed—third from the door, positioned where I can see him from anywhere in the ward. Old habits. Protective instincts that will take longer to fade than the marks on my skin.
He looks better than he did yesterday. The contract-script that covered his body is gone, leaving behind raw pink skin where the words burned deepest. His eyes are clear. His color is returning. The healers say he’ll recover fully, given time.
They don’t mention the scars. The ones on his skin will fade. The ones underneath—I’m not sure about those.
“You’re awake.” I settle onto the edge of his bed. Take his hand. It’s warm in mine, solid and real. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got eaten by a contract and spat back out.” His mouth quirks. Almost a smile, but not quite. “Which I guess is accurate.”
“Gror—”
“I know.” He squeezes my hand. “It’s not my fault. The Ledger Master manipulated me. I was just a tool.” The words come out flat, rehearsed. “You’ve told me. The healers have told me. Everyone keeps telling me.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Yeah.” He stares at the ceiling. Sunlight paints gold across his features, catching the dampness at the corners of his eyes. “Doesn’t make it feel any less like my fault.”
I don’t have words for this. Don’t have comfort that will actually help. So I do what I’ve done since we were children—I lean down and press my forehead to his, the way our mother used to do when one of us was hurting.
“You’re alive,” I whisper. “You’re free. Everything else, we figure out later.”
He exhales. Shaky. “Later sounds good.”
I straighten. Smooth the hair back from his forehead. “Rest. I’ll come back this afternoon.”
“Where are you going?”
Good question. Where am I going? My apartment in the Inkwell District is still there, presumably—the Ledger Master had no reason to destroy it. I could go back. Pretend none of this happened. Return to the bookshop, to my quiet life, to the careful invisibility my mother trained me for.
The thought makes my skin crawl.
“To find Rathok.”
Gror’s eyebrows rise. A real smile this time, small but genuine. “The orc who almost killed you. Then saved you. Then—” He stops. Studies my face. “Oh.”
Heat climbs my cheeks. “It’s complicated.”
