He can.
“Fine.” I turn back toward the frozen square. “But if you get in my way, I’ll leave you behind.”
“Fair.”
His agreement comes too easily. No posturing, no wounded pride, no arguments about his capabilities. Either he doesn’t care about his own survival, or he’s confident enough that my threat’s meaningless.
Neither option’s particularly comforting.
“Show me what you’ve found,” he says.
I lead him deeper into Caelreth without responding. Let him observe. Let him draw his own conclusions.
We pass through streets lined with frozen citizens.
Now they’re monuments to what the gods consider acceptable punishment for a city that existed in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I watch Tyr as we walk. His attention catalogs everything—the frozen citizens, the Arbiter’s magic in the ice, the layout of the streets. He’s building a map in his head, identifying escape routes and chokepoints. Preparing for violence that hasn’t arrived yet.
Smart. Paranoid. Or maybe those are the same thing when you’ve survived three hunts by a divine executioner.
The deeper we go, the thicker the ice becomes. My eyes ache from perceiving it. The Auric Veil always extracts a cost, and extended use makes my bones feel brittle, my muscles weak.
Worth it. For now.
“Here.” I stop at the center of the frozen district. The magic’s strongest at this point. This is where the Arbiter’s attention concentrated when it punished Caelreth.
A fountain dominates the square’s center. Water arcs from the mouths of stone fish, suspended in perfect crystalline streams. Beautiful, in a horrifying way. Art made from atrocity.
Tyr moves past me, examining the area with hunter’s eyes. He doesn’t touch anything. Doesn’t need to. The ice fractures wherever he steps, tiny splits spreading outward like spiderwebs. His presence alone is corrosive to the Arbiter’s magic.
I watch the golden threads recoil from him. They don’t break—they’re too strong for that—but they flinch. Like a hand jerking back from an unexpected flame.
That matters.
“The crown-binding.” He keeps his voice low. “It’s thicker here.”
“You can see it?”
“I feel it. Pressure. Like a fist trying to close around my skull.”
I watch him carefully. Most people can’t perceive the Arbiter’s magic at all. They simply comply without understanding why. They obey rules they don’t remember learning, follow paths they never chose, believe truths that were inserted rather than discovered.
The fact that he feels it—that he resists it instinctively—confirms what I suspected.
His power isn’t learned magic. It’s innate. Part of his nature.
“The Arbiter was here physically.” I point toward a spot near the frozen fountain at the square’s center. “That’s where the magic radiates from. It stood there, passed judgment on this place, and then left.”
Tyr walks toward the fountain. His proximity causes the ice to shatter, fractures racing up the frozen water like lightning. He studies the spot I indicated, then looks back at me.
“It didn’t stay to watch.”
“No. It doesn’t need to.” I move to stand beside him. Closer than necessary, maybe, but I want to see how the Arbiter’s magic reacts to our combined presence. “Once the Arbiter decides an outcome, that outcome holds. The ice won’t melt. The people won’t wake. Not unless the Arbiter chooses to release them.”
“Or unless the Arbiter dies.”
There it is again. That casual assumption that a god-forged executioner can be destroyed.
