Page 55

“Exactly.”

Another slam rocked the cabin.

I lifted the binding knife because apparently, I was that person now.

“What do we give it instead?” I asked.

Knox’s eyes flashed emerald. His grin was small, dangerous, and absolutely devastating.

“Bad information.”

My stomach swooped.

“Oh,” I said. “I like tactical Knox.”

“Stay close.”

This time, I didn’t argue. Because outside, Hell was listening. And inside the cabin, for the first time all night, we were about to lie low.

“Define bad information,” I said, because apparently my survival instincts were now attending meetings and requesting agendas.

Knox crossed to the scarred table and dumped Guy’s satchel onto it. Ward keys clattered beside iron salt, bloodstone, and a flat black disc etched with a spiral that hurt my eyes if I looked straight at it.

“The mark expects Dragon Magic,” he said. “It expects resistance. Attack. Defense. Patterned Ward response.”

Outside, something slammed into the eastern wall again. The bronze Wards flashed, holding firm, but the force of it rattled the shelves hard enough to send dust drifting down like the cabin was sighing in long-suffering annoyance.

Relatable.

“So, we don’t resist in a way it understands,” I said slowly.

Knox looked at me. “We give it noise.”

“Noise?” I repeated. “As in, my entire personality finally becomes a tactical advantage?”

“Do not get attached to the phrasing.” Knox picked up the black spiral disc with two fingers and set it in the center of the table. “Your Magic disrupts the tether because it does not move like Dragon Magic. It doesn’t guard a line. It doesn’t hold a wall. It refracts.”

“That sounds prettier than ‘chaotic glitter nonsense,’ so I accept.”

Another hit to the wall. The cabin Wards flared bronze, but this time the Hellmark answered before the sigils finished pulsing. Black-red lines tried to sharpen along Knox’s arm, reaching for the response like a thief reaching for a pocket.

I stepped closer to Knox and opened my Alicorn Magic on purpose. Not a blast. Not a shield. A shimmer. Thin, bright, and layered wrong on purpose, gold folding through sky-blue, sky-blue slicing through pearly white and sparkling pink, every thread slipping sideways the instant the tether tried to name it.

The Hellmark hissed inside my Sight.

“Good,” I muttered. “Be confused. Find a hobby. Take up knitting. Anything but soul-mapping.”

Knox’s Dragon Magic rose beneath mine, controlled and precise. Not the deep, true surge I had felt when Sully answered a clear and present danger. Not the raw power that wanted to burn every shadow outside into ash and consequences. This was smaller. Deliberate. A series of false pulses released through his palm, each one shaped like a defensive response and empty at the center.

Dragon smoke and mirrors.

The Hellmark snapped toward the first pulse. I bent my Magic around it, splitting the signal into three bright lies. One aimed toward the empty fireplace. One skipped across the old cot. One slid under the table and vanished into the iron salt scattered there.

Outside, the creatures hit the wrong wall.

The entire cabin shuddered, but Knox’s eyes flashed with grim satisfaction. “It followed the decoy.”

“Of course it did.” I shoved more Alicorn light into the room, grinning like a lunatic because fear and victory apparently used the same facial muscles. “Nobody expects the murder Unicorn static.”