Knox opened his eyes on cold black stone.His palms were flat against it before he knew he'd put them there, and the cold came up through his hands and into his arms. The air didn't move. There was no sound at all, not water, not insects, not wind, none of the marsh he'd gone under in. His body felt like it was somewhere off at the end of a long hall, and every part of it ached in a way that sat under the skin instead of on it.He tried to move and the pain went through him like the bruise was on something deeper than muscle.His first clear thought wasn't Crane. It wasn't Marcus, or the Vorul, or where he was.It was Ignis.He reached for the bond without deciding to.Nothing came back.Knox went still.He reached again, harder, feeling along the place inside him where the warmth always sat. No growl. No flicker of irritation down the link. No stubborn little weight pushing back against him the way it always had, even when Ignis was asleep."Ignis?"The floor answered instead of the

Knox didn't sleep after Crane's warning but he couldn't and looked over at the chair."What happened to the Vorul?"Crane didn't answer right off. She looked away, toward the curtain, Knox clenched his fist."My bear reached it," she said. "Hit it hard enough to break its rhythm. I put enough on it after that to make it think about leaving." Her jaw set. "It left. Went into the unstable ground before the team could close on it.”She paused. “We lost it in the marsh."The cold went through Knox slow.The thing that took Calder's head, that put its hand through Orven and Kessa and Rellan, that drove its arm through Ignis — it was still out there, still breathing and very much alive."That's one reason I'm still sitting in this chair," Crane said. "I'm not here to hold your hand. I'm here because there are people closer than the marsh who might get ideas before the inquiry does."He frowned at that. People closer than the marsh."Academy bedside serv

Knox stood alone on the grounds while the Headmaster's voice was still hanging in the air.Knox Aston.He lifted his head and said one word."Morales."Something moved through the stands, a shift in the quiet. A few students hissed whispers back and forth, because correcting the Headmaster of the Royal Academy — in front of the noble houses, in front of families still burying their dead — was the kind of thing you didn't do if you wanted to keep walking around.Duke Magnus's face didn't move. But over in the noble rows, a certain younger figure stiffened in his seat, and went very still trying not to show it.The Headmaster looked down at him for a long moment. Something crossed the old man's face — confusion first, then the moment he finally understood."The academy keeps bloodline records," he said, calm with an edge underneath. "But this council will use the name you claim for yourself. Step forward, Knox Morales."Knox heard the thing sitting under the words. It wasn't respect. Le

Knox was still down on one knee with his fist locked in Ignis's scales when it hit him.It came up out of the bond like a line of fire opening inside his bones. His mana channels burned, then tore wider, and the burning went out through his chest and down his arms and into his hands. The dead weight that had been sitting on him since the clinic — the debt, the cracked core, the drag in every limb — came loose all at once and lifted off. His breath went even. His fingers stopped shaking.The arena floor was still trembling under him. The pressure from the platform wasn't crushing him anymore.Ignis stood between Knox and the Headmaster, claws sunk into the stone. Bigger. Darker at the edges of every scale, that oil-slick shimmer sliding over the gunmetal when the light caught it. Broader in the shoulder, heavier in the jaw. His tail pressed once against Knox's leg, holding him up.The bond was full. Loud. There the way it used to be, and then more than it used to be.He's back.The pa

"What is your answer, Knox Morales?"Knox didn't give it right away.He looked at Ignis first, at the black scales still gathered tight over the drake's shoulders and the claws set into the stone, ready to go up at the platform the second Knox let him. Then his eyes went to Serena, standing on the floor she'd walked down into against her own father. To Bram, who'd landed badly off the railing and grinned through it. To Mira beside him, saying nothing, which was its own kind of loud. To Crane, whose hand hadn't left his shoulder since she put it there. To the Mission Director, who'd crossed the whole hall to stand where he was standing now.Every one of them had put something of theirs on the fire to crack this open.Walk out and it all went cold."I'll go," Knox said.The Headmaster inclined his head, satisfied. "Then let the record note that Knox Morales accepts responsibility for—""I accepted the sentence." Knox's voice cut clean under the old man's. "Not the blame."The arena we