“And you are?”
“Tyr Noren.”
TWO
ZEPHYRA
The name means nothing to me, but the way he says it—flat, expectationless—tells me he’s used to that. Used to being unknown, unnamed, untracked. A ghost that power can’t locate or bind. The kind of man who moves through the world without leaving marks unless he chooses to.
“Combat asset,” Voss offers from somewhere behind me, but I barely hear him. My attention’s locked on the man in front of me, on the subtle distortion in the air where my sight tries to read him and fails.
I’ve never encountered anyone my Auric Veil couldn’t read. Not once in fifteen years of using it. The fact that he exists as a blank space in my perception should terrify me.
It doesn’t. It intrigues me.
That reaction concerns me more than he does.
“You’re the reason the Arbiter came here.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. Observation, not accusation. But he stiffens anyway. Slightly. A fractional tension in his shoulders that he suppresses almost instantly.
“And now you’re assigned to me.” I don’t hide the edge in my voice. “Which means it’ll hunt us both.”
His expression doesn’t change. His eyes don’t flicker, don’t flinch. Whatever emotions exist inside him, they’re compressed so tightly that nothing escapes. “That’s the idea.”
I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
“You see what power hides.” He tilts his head slightly, studying me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “I interrupt what power tries to force. We’ve got a better chance of surviving long enough to kill it.”
Kill it.
I’ve spent three days preparing for this investigation. Gathering intelligence, studying reports, interviewing survivors who escaped before the ice fell. Not once has anyone suggested that the Arbiter of Crowns could be killed. It’s divine-forged. A weapon of the gods themselves. You don’t kill things like that.
You run from them. You hide. You pray they turn their attention elsewhere.
You don’t stand in a frozen market square and calmly discuss murdering them.
“You’re either very confident or very stupid.”
A ghost flickers across his features. Not quite amusement, but close. The barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Confident that I’m stupid, maybe.”
Humor’s a weakness I can’t afford, especially around someone I can’t read.
“The Arbiter’s hunted you before.” Another observation. Another truth I shouldn’t be able to see, but the pattern’s there—old fractures in his aura, places where the Arbiter’s magic tried to grab hold and failed. Like scar tissue on a soul. “More than once.”
“Three times.” He doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t explain how he survived. Doesn’t boast about escaping what should be inescapable. His gaze drifts past me toward the frozen woman with her bread, and for a moment, his mouth presses into a hardline. A break in the composure. Gone before I can examine it. “It’s getting closer each time.”
That should make me want to run. Instead, I find myself calculating.
“And you thought the best response was to partner with someone who can’t hide her magical signature at all?”
“You can see it coming.” His attention returns to me. Focused. Sharp. Like having a blade pressed against my throat—dangerous, but strangely intimate. “I can survive it arriving. That’s a combination.”
A combination.Like we’re ingredients in a recipe, tools to be arranged for maximum effectiveness.
He’s not wrong.
Auric Veil witches are rare. We can’t be magically deceived. We see the lies embedded in spells. Divine authority doesn’t blind us—it reveals itself, naked and ugly under our gaze.
But sight isn’t strength. I see the manipulation woven through Caelreth. I can’t break it. I can identify the Arbiter’s approach, track its patterns, predict where it’ll strike. I can’t stop it from striking.
