Page 48

“I am also,” I added, “trying not to look too hard at the giant demonic leash attached to your arm because if I stare at it long enough, I start wanting to make truly terrible life choices.”

His gaze cut down to me. “Such as?”

“Oh, poking it. Yelling at it. Naming it something insulting. Maybe drawing a mustache on it with tactical sparkle.”

“You will not draw a mustache on the Hellmark.”

“You don’t know my heart.”

“I know enough.”

That should not have made warmth curl in my chest.

Absolutely rude.

We walked another few dozen yards in silence. The Wards pulsed once above us, softer this time.

The tether shivered in my Sight. I stopped.

Knox stopped with me, immediately alert. “What?”

I narrowed my eyes at the black and red line. “It’s testing.”

His body went still. “Testing what?”

“Distance, maybe. Guy’s house is farther behind us, and the signal changed. It’s not pulling as hard.” I tilted my head, tracking the faint branching lines that appeared and vanished like cracks in glass. “But it’s still sampling the Wards. Like it knows the lock is there now and wants to understand what kind.”

Knox’s expression went grim. “Can it?”

“I don’t know.” I looked up at him. “But it learns fast.”

The honesty landed between us.

His jaw tightened. “Then we move faster.”

We did.

The track climbed gradually, the house lights disappearing behind a ridge. Cold wind scraped across the scrub and tugged strands of hair loose from my messy bun. Somewhere far away, something howled. I decided it was probably not a coyote because the Universe hated me and subtlety was dead. Then I figured it was a wolf having a good time at Arrhythmia’s inhabitants’ favorite watering hole.

Neysa stirred. “The air is wrong.”

“Helpful. Specific. Ten out of ten.”

“Do not be flippant when I am concerned.”

That made me look harder.

With Alicorn Sight open, the night breathed in layers. Guy’s Ward Magic glowed through the land like bronze veins. Bernie’s communication tether trailed behind us in a ribbon of silver and lavender, clean and bright. Knox’s Dragon Magic burned steady beside me, still scarred around the Hellmark but stronger than it had been when I first saw him. And the farther we walked from the house, the more I noticed something else.

Faint impressions in the road. Not footprints. Magic prints.

Residual marks in the dust, old and sunken deep, as if someone had once dragged heavy Spellwork over this path again and again until the land remembered the weight.

“Knox.”

He stopped. “What do you see?”

“The road’s not just a road.”