Page 104 of Shardless

“Would you come tuck me in?” he asked mischievously. She didn’t need to look down to know that he was leering at her.

Taly chuckled. Although she had never worked up the courage to go to bed with a man, she had spent more than enough time in bars. She knew how to handle Kato’s type. He was all talk. “So, let me get this straight—you think you walk in on your brother and I doing somethinguntoward, and your first instinct is to try to get me into your bed instead?”

“Well, I don’tthinkI walked in on something. IknowI did.” She could hear the challenge in his voice.Ask me. You know you want to.

And Taly took the bait. “Oh really? And how is that?” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She had grown up around shadow mages. She already knew how.

“Well,” Kato drawled, and Taly’s cheeks were already flushing. “Aside from the racket you two were making, his scent is all over you. You must have had him really worked up, because believe me when I say that you’re drenched in it. I can barely smell any iron at all.”

Taly slid down the ladder, landing hard. She smiled when Kato jumped back slightly. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s not polite to go around scenting people?” Pushing past him, she started to walk back towards the desk, her boots clicking across the marble floor. Her scent was one of the few things that she had always been self-conscious about, a factor of her humanity that she couldn’t compensate for by studying or training harder than everyone else around her. As one shadow mage in Ryme had told her once, humansreekedof iron—especially the females when they bled. It was so unpleasant that some shadow mages just made it a point to avoid mortals altogether.

Seeing that he had upset her, Kato reached out to grab her arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean—”

“Ow!” Taly flinched away. A sharp, crackling pain radiated up and down her arm as soon as his fingers closed around her bicep.

“Shards! I’m sorry,” Kit exclaimed, shamefaced. “I really must be tired. My magic hasn’t sparked like that in over a century. Here” —he reached out and grabbed her wrist, tightening his grip when she tried to pull away— “let me make sure I didn’t burn you.”

“No, that’s not…” But he had already pushed her sleeve up, the oddly shaped bruises easily visible against the pale backdrop of her skin in the dim light of the library.

“What the hell?” Kato ran a finger along one of the angry red welts.

“It’s nothing.” Taly jerked away, quickly pulling down her sleeve down and rebuttoning the cuff. “I got grabbed by some of those things yesterday. They weren’t gentle.”

“And you got away?” Kato’s eyebrows rose, almost disappearing behind the mop of auburn hair sweeping across his forehead. His eyes flicked back to her arm, prompting Taly to hide it behind her back self-consciously. “How? You’re human.”

“I got lucky,” she replied quietly. It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly.

His narrowed eyes seemed to study her, noting the way she shifted under the weight of his scrutiny.

“Sarina might have tried to turn me into a proper lady, but Ivain always believed that even proper ladies need to know how to hold their own in hand-to-hand,” Taly offered, fumbling for an explanation. “I’ve been sparring with Skye for as long as I can remember. That wouldn’t be the first time it’s come in handy.”

Taly forced herself to move her arm to her side, to straighten her shoulders. Shadow mages were trained to read people—to tease out information from physiological responses. She couldn’t let him see her fear. She swallowed back a sigh of relief when she saw the tension in his eyesrelease, remorse taking the place of suspicion.

Kato stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I really am sorry about the...” His voice trailed off. “Maybe you were right. It’s been averylong day… night? Maybe I should go put myself to bed.” He scuffed at the floor with the toe of his boot. “Before I leave, can I just add one more item to my list of things I’ve learned about Taly Caro?”

When Taly just raised a brow in response, he ducked his head, that guileless mask effortlessly slipping back into place. “She’s a puzzle I look forward to solving.”

There was heat in his gaze, but it had little effect, and Taly rolled her eyes in response. “Oh,please. Were you actually expecting that line to work?”

Kato laughed, shrugging in good-natured defeat. “Well, it was worth a try.” With a wink and a wave, he turned to leave, disappearing around one of the towering shelves and leaving her alone at last.

When she could no longer hear the measured clicking of his footsteps echoing down the stairs, she pulled back the cuff of her sleeve. She hadn’t noticed it the day before. Or maybe the edges hadn’t been as distinct. But now, after a morning spent poring over texts written in an arcane language she had learned as a child, she recognized the bruises for what they were.

Faera. Lines upon lines of overlapping Faera script.

Which meant… spells. The bruises, the flashing runes—they were spells.

And the scar on her palm… it had turned a deeper shade of plum, almost amethyst. If she pressed at the surface, it felt hard, and her finger grazed a sharp, faceted edge just beneath her skin. Or what looked like her skin. When she raked her nail across the spot, it made the pad of her finger itch. Just like her face would start to itch beneath a cosmetic glamour.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, flinching when she felt another sharp stab of pain ripple up and down her arm. The air around her fingers began to glimmer, and something in her knew that she wouldn’t be the only one able to see the golden apparition spiraling around her arm. This wasn’t like the visions. This was something new.

“Well… fuck.”

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

Chapter 22

-An excerpt from the imperial scrivener’s collection of unclaimed letters from the Shade Rebellion, housed at the Arylaan Archive

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