“You think I’m lying,” D’Arco said, lowering his voice. “I would too, in your position.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter,” Marina replied. “What matters is what you want from me.”

  D’Arco’s gaze drifted past her, focusing on something only he could see. “I saw the truth inside the Echo when the ritual failed.” His voice took on a hollow quality. “There was something inside it, something that wasn’t meant to wake.”

  Marina’s blade remained steady, but her attention sharpened.

  “It wasn’t memory, or magic, but will.” D’Arco’s scarred hand trembled beneath its wrappings. “Something ancient. Something betrayed.”

  For the first time since she’d known him, Marina saw a flicker of something almost like fear in D’Arco’s eyes. The man who had walked through fire and shadow without flinching now looked haunted.

  “Vesper saved me,” he continued.

  Marina tensed at the mention of Vesper’s name, her fingers tightening around the hilt of her blade.

  D’Arco noticed her reaction and gave a bitter laugh. “Yes, the Resonant. The one you all underestimated.” His gaze locked with Marina’s. “If the ritual had succeeded, it wouldn’t have made me stronger. It would have hollowed me out completely.”

  D’Arco stepped closer, his movements uneven, as if his body no longer remembered how to move the way it once had. His left shoulder sat slightly higher than the right, and his steps landed with a subtle imbalance. The damage wasn’t just physical. Whatever the shadows had done to him had altered something deeper, something in the way he carried himself.

  “They’re using you, Marina,” he murmured. “Just as they used me.”

  “Everyone uses everyone in Nightreach,” Marina replied coldly. “That’s hardly a revelation.”

  D’Arco shook his head, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “Not like this. They fed me promises of power, of knowledge beyond anything the Concordat could offer.” His scarred hand emerged from beneath the wrappings, revealing blackened flesh that seemed to absorb the moonlight. “Then they took what I was. Piece by piece.”

  Marina kept her blade steady between them, but her eyes fixed on his ruined hand. She could sense the magical void where his power should have been, like a wound that would never heal.

  “The Covenant is walking into something they can’t contain,” D’Arco continued. “Something that was locked away for good reason. When they find all the Echo fragments⁠—”

  “What do you want from me?” Marina cut him off sharply.

  D’Arco’s pale eyes met hers. “A way out. For both of us.”

  “Out?”

  “West,” he said simply. “Where no one remembers our names or faces. Where we wait until the Covenant grows bold and makes their move.” His voice dropped lower, taking on an edge that reminded her of the man he’d once been. “And then we strike back.”

  Marina studied him carefully. This wasn’t about survival. The glint in his eyes spoke of something darker.

  “Revenge,” she said flatly.

  D’Arco didn’t deny it. “They took everything from me. I intend to return the favour.”

  The air between them was thick with tension, quiet but charged. Marina kept her blade steady, her grip sure, but her thoughts moved fast beneath the stillness. She measured every possibility in silence, tracking each shift in posture, each flicker of intent, balancing trust against the threat it might become.

  “I’m not asking if you’re afraid, Marina,” D’Arco said finally. “I’m asking if you’re tired of being used.”

  Marina slid her blade back into its sheath with a soft click. She didn’t step back, didn’t relax her stance. The letter remained clutched in her other hand, its wax seal warm against her palm.

  “Why did you take me to them at all?” she asked, her voice cutting through the silence. “If you didn’t trust the Covenant, why introduce me?”

  D’Arco’s gaze shifted away from her, fixing on some distant point beyond the crumbling archway. In the moonlight, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deepened.

  “I thought they would give me back what I lost,” he said. “My magic. Make me whole again.” His scarred hand flexed unconsciously, the blackened flesh catching what little light filtered through the clouds. “But that’s not what they do. They don’t restore. They don’t heal.” His voice hardened. “They take.”

  The words landed hard, leaving a silence that felt too sharp to ignore. Marina had never heard D’Arco speak like that—stripped of calculation, stripped of control. It unsettled her in a way his threats never had.

  “The Covenant will tear this city apart,” he said. “They’ve been planning it for centuries, perhaps millennia. The only way to survive is to leave it all behind.”

  Marina watched him carefully, weighing each word against what she knew of the man. D’Arco had always been a master manipulator, weaving truth and lies so seamlessly that even he sometimes seemed to forget which was which. But there was something different about him now. Something broken and remade.

  Marina stepped back, putting distance between herself and D’Arco. The distance spoke louder than anything she could have said.

  D’Arco’s jaw tightened, the muscles working beneath his gaunt skin. For a moment, he looked like the man she’d first met, but then the moment passed, and he was just a hollow shell again, clinging to the remnants of what he’d once been.

  “We won’t get another chance,” he urged. “The Covenant doesn’t forgive those who walk away.”

  Marina said nothing. She slipped the sealed letter into her coat pocket without breaking eye contact with D’Arco. Not sent, not destroyed. Simply held while she considered her next move.

  D’Arco watched her, his pale eyes narrowing as he read the decision in her stance. “You’re making a mistake.”

  Marina turned away without another word, walking back the way she’d come. Her footsteps echoed against the cobblestones, steady and unhurried. She didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge the weight of his gaze following her retreat.

  The letter remained tucked against her side, its contents still sealed. She wouldn’t pass it on. Not yet. Not until she understood the full scope of what she’d stumbled into.

  Praxis was working against the Covenant. That much had been clear from the moment she’d discovered their hidden observatory beneath the city. Their research, their careful mapping of the tunnels and ley lines, pointed to a group preparing for conflict.

  If what D’Arco had said was true—if the Covenant truly sought to unleash something ancient and terrible—then Praxis’s actions finally made sense. They weren’t just rival factions fighting for control. They were opposing forces in a war that had been waged in secret for centuries. A war that had remained hidden even from the Luminous Concordat.

  Marina kept walking, her mind mulling over every possibility, each one more dangerous than the last. The dead raven lay forgotten behind her, its message never delivered.

  She turned down a narrow alley, where the buildings leaned so close they nearly touched overhead, blotting out what little moonlight filtered through the clouds. Her fingers traced the rough stone walls, feeling the remnants of old wards etched into the bricks—protection spells from another era, now nothing but scars in the masonry.

  The Covenant wanted the Echo fragments. Praxis sought to stop them. The Concordat remained blind to both. And she stood at the centre of it all, a piece moved across the board by players she couldn’t fully see.

  Marina paused at a junction where three paths converged, considering her options. The sealed letter felt heavier with each passing moment. Its contents would give the Covenant everything they needed to eliminate their opposition.

  She’d gathered the information because that’s what she did. Information was power, and Marina had always aligned herself with whoever offered the most of it. But for the first time in years, she found herself questioning not just her allegiance, but her purpose.

  If D’Arco spoke the truth, then her usual calculations of power and advantage no longer applied. There would be no advantage in a broken world, no power to seize if everything fell apart.

  Marina slipped the letter from her pocket, holding it up to catch what little light filtered down from above. The wax seal gleamed dully, unmarked.

  With a swift motion, she tore the letter in half, then quarters, then smaller still until nothing remained but fragments no larger than her thumbnail. She let them slip from her fingers, watched them scatter across the cobblestones, and felt her magic catch as it turned them first to ash, then to dust.

  Then Marina vanished into the dark, her silhouette swallowed by the fractured light spilling from a broken street-lamp above. For the first time, she no longer knew who she was working for, but she knew what was worth stopping.

  Chapter 37

  Vesper folded the last of her clothes, stuffing them into her bag. The Echo fragment pulsed from its wrapping of cloth, the strange crystallised shard humming happily beside the grimoire, which was wrapped in the same grey jumper it’d arrived in.

  Through the garden room’s windows, tendrils of mist wound between the trees, turning the morning light grey. It was as if spring had forgotten to arrive in Millbrook, though the flowers had taken things into their own hands and bloomed anyway.

  Her gaze drifted to Rafe across the hall, visible through his open door as he gathered his own belongings. The kiss they’d shared in the forest felt like ages ago, overshadowed by everything they’d learned since. His shoulders were tense, movements sharp and angry as he stuffed items into his pack.

  “We’ll need to take another Thread near the village,” Rafe said, his voice carrying across the space between them. “The one we arrived through isn’t stable anymore.”

  Vesper nodded, though he wasn’t looking her way. She couldn’t stop thinking about the pendant, one more piece of the puzzle they still had to retrieve. Another secret Aldrick had kept from them both.

  “The Nightweaver won’t give up the pendant easily,” she said, crossing to lean against his doorframe. “But we need it.”

  Rafe paused, his hand hovering over a book on his old desk. “Aldrick said it’s connected to the Arcana. Just like the Echo.” His fingers curled into a fist. “All this time, he knew. He knew what it meant.”

  Magic rippled through the air between them, Vesper’s responding to his distress. A pen on Rafe’s desk rolled off onto the floor, and the curtains stirred without a breeze.

  “He suspected. The Empirical Order seemed to know next to nothing about the Echo. There was no proof.”

  “They knew more than any of us did at the start,” Rafe argued.

  She reached out and touched his arm, her magic warming. “And we know more now than anyone ever has.” His magic calmed as he turned to her. “And we’ll get your pendant back. Whatever it takes. The Nightweaver can’t use the Fold to hide his stash anymore.”

  The floorboards creaked downstairs—Aldrick moving about in his study. They both tensed at the sound, but the footsteps didn’t approach the stairs.

  Vesper adjusted the strap of her bag, double-checking the Echo fragment was secure. A shadow fell across the doorway, and she looked up to find Aldrick’s broad frame filling the space. His weathered face gave nothing away as he extended an envelope towards her.

  Her hand froze halfway to taking it. The parchment bore the telltale shimmer of Ash’s magical signature, but the usual precise, controlled pattern of his enchantments had twisted into something jagged and wrong. Like looking at a familiar face distorted in a broken mirror.

  “Another message from your book merchant,” Aldrick said, voice flat.

  “Thanks.” Vesper’s fingers brushed the envelope. The magic bit at her skin, sharp and cold where Ash’s spells usually held a warm, scholarly resonance.

  The stairs creaked as Aldrick retreated back to his study, taking his surly attitude with him.

  The seal cracked under her thumb, releasing a burst of magic that tasted like copper. She unfolded the letter, the parchment crackling with residual energy.

  Ash’s normally neat handwriting sprawled across the page in desperate, uneven strokes. Ink blots marred the corners where his pen had pressed too hard, nearly tearing through the paper. Her chest tightened as she took in the chaotic script—this one was worse than the last.

  The magic woven through the words pulsed with an erratic rhythm. Each line seemed to writhe under her gaze, the letters shifting as if trying to escape the page. This wasn’t just Ash being careless or rushed. Something wasn’t right.

  Rafe appeared at her shoulder, his own magic reaching out protectively as he sensed her unease. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s from Ash, but…” Vesper swallowed against the metallic taste in her mouth. “Something’s wrong.”

  The fragments display conscious resistance to detection methods. They shift locations along ancient pathways, following patterns that suggest purposeful movement rather than random dispersion.

  Ash’s clinical language felt hollow, each word selected as if he were trying to conceal a deeper truth. Too careful. The page trembled as his handwriting grew more erratic.

  Multiple attempts to track individual fragments have failed. They appear to possess a form of magical camouflage, adapting to local magical signatures to avoid discovery.

  The fragments should not be gathered too quickly. Reuniting them without understanding their full nature could destabilise the balance of magic. Further research is required before any attempt at collection.

  Something felt wrong. The magical resonance threading through the ink pulsed with an underlying current she’d never felt in his letters before. Not concern for magical stability, but something else. Something that made her skin crawl.

  She read the passage again, slower this time. The warning wasn’t just cautionary advice from a friend. The magic woven through the words carried an edge of…calculation. As if Ash was trying to delay her, to keep her from bringing the fragments together. Well, it was too late for one fragment.

  “This isn’t like him,” she murmured, running her finger along a particularly jagged line of text. “The magic feels wrong, and these words… It’s like he doesn’t want us to succeed.”

  The Echo fragment in her bag seemed to hum in response, its energy reaching out to brush against the letter’s magic. The contact sent a discordant note through her senses, making her wince.

  Rafe stepped closer, his warmth steady against her back as he read over her shoulder. His magic reached out, tangling with hers as it probed the letter’s strange energies. The contact sent another clashing note through her senses, making her flinch.

  “This doesn’t feel like Ash’s magic at all,” she said, turning the page to catch the light better. The ink seemed to writhe beneath her gaze, the letters twisting as if trying to escape their meaning. “It’s like something’s interfering with it. Changing it.”

  The Echo fragment pulsed in her bag, its energy reaching out to brush against the letter again. This time, she was ready for the jarring sensation, letting it wash over her without resistance. There was something familiar in that discord, something that reminded her of the shadows they’d fought at the lake.

  She looked up at Rafe, finding his expression tight with concern. She didn’t need to voice her fears, he could read them clearly enough in her face. His jaw clenched as he took in the scattered, desperate writing.

  “Good thing we’re heading back to Nightreach,” he said, exhaling heavily. “If something’s happening to Ash, we need to find out what. We left before understanding how the ley lines reconnection changed things.”

  Vesper hesitated. “Do you think he might be sick?”

  “I don’t know. But if there was a sickness spreading through the city, Ember would’ve let us know.” But they’d heard nothing.

  “Maybe he’s just overworked,” she murmured, though it sounded like a poor excuse.

  Rafe rubbed his palm up and down her arm. “We’ll go see him when we get back.”

  She folded the letter carefully, tucking it into her pocket where its strange magic couldn’t interact with the fragment. The disconnect didn’t stop her from feeling its unharmonised vibrations, like a splinter under her skin she couldn’t quite reach.

  Rafe shifted beside her, his gaze drawn to the misty forest beyond the cottage windows. The trees stood dark in the grey morning light, their branches barely stirring in the still air.

  As she retrieved her bag, her mind raced through their growing list of problems: the moving Echo fragments, Ash’s concerning letters, Faith’s recovery, and now retrieving Rafe’s pendant from one of the most enigmatic figures in the magical world. Each task felt vital, yet pursuing one meant delaying the others.

  “Everything’s different now,” Rafe said. “The old rules don’t apply anymore.”

  “Then we better stop playing by them.” She nodded to his bag. “Let’s get moving.”

  They ventured downstairs, finding Faith waiting for them in the sitting room.

  She stood by the window, her posture noticeably improved from the previous day. Though shadows still lingered under her eyes, her gaze had lost that unfocused quality that had worried Vesper since they’d found her by the lake.

  “I need to speak with Theo Hardy at the College,” Faith said, adjusting the sleeve of the borrowed jumper she wore. Her voice carried a certainty that hadn’t been there before. “As soon as we return to Nightreach.”

  Vesper caught the slight tensing in Faith’s shoulders as she mentioned Theo’s name. There was something more to this than just reporting her findings about the crystal formations. The fragment in Vesper’s bag seemed to pulse in response to Faith’s words, as if recognising its own significance in whatever Faith needed to discuss…or it remembered what it had done to her.

  “We’d like to speak with him too,” Vesper said, sharing a glance with Rafe. “About the crystals, and what happened at the lake.”