The discharge papers had restrictions.No heavy lifting. No intense training. Rest for a minimum of three weeks, which the attending physician underlined twice with the particular emphasis of someone who had assessed his patient and concluded that underlining was necessary.Dante read the instructions, folded the paper, and put it in his jacket pocket where it would remain until he threw the jacket in the wash.Gianna drove them home without speaking, which was worse than speaking. Her hands were steady on the wheel and her eyes were on the road and the silence she was keeping had the specific density of someone who had been afraid for a long time and was processing the end of it by containing it rather than releasing it, because releasing it would mean acknowledging how afraid she had been.He let her have the silence.At home she went directly to the kitchen, and the sounds that followed were the sounds of someone cooking enough food for a situation considerably larger than three pe

The financial district at night had its own particular quality, the glass towers holding the last of the evening light at their upper floors while the streets below went dark and busy with the specific traffic of people finishing late shifts and heading toward trains.The dimensional crack had opened near the east end, between a bank and a parking structure, and by the time Dante arrived the Association's containment perimeter was already up, twenty guards in a ring around something in the center of the blocked-off street that was making the ring very uncomfortable.He showed his card at the perimeter and walked through.The creature was smaller than the word variant had suggested. Vaguely reptilian, low to the ground, with scales that shifted between black and purple in the way that had no natural equivalent because no natural thing produced that specific movement of color. It moved in the jerking, uneven way of something learning to use a body it didn't fully understand yet, its leg

Three weeks passed before Lucia was allowed near an actual mission. She came home after the first one with a bruise across her left cheekbone and her eyes bright and talking before she had her shoes off, describing a shallow dungeon on the eastern edge of the capital's training circuit, goblins in the low single digits of threat level, a team of four first-years who'd held their formation better than expected and a mission handler who'd told her afterward that her footwork was clean. Dante sat on the couch and listened and felt something move through his chest that he didn't immediately name and then recognized as pride. The uncomplicated kind, the kind that didn't need qualifying. She was doing what she wanted. She was building something. She was becoming someone who could stand in front of things that would have hurt her a month ago and have opinions about the footwork. "The goblin shaman had a staff," she said, sitting on the kitchen counter with her shoes still on because G

Dante called Augusto at nine that evening."The Rigars," he said. "Are they coming after me."Augusto was quiet for a moment on the other end. The particular quiet of someone deciding between what was professionally appropriate to share and what a person genuinely needed to know."They're being monitored," he said. "The Association has protocols for situations involving high-influence families and declared personal grievances." Another pause. "Grief makes people dangerous in ways that planning can't fully predict. If they move through official channels, we see it coming. If they hire independent contractors, we see it when it arrives.""Which means you can watch and not much else.""Which means we watch and position ourselves to respond quickly." He sounded like a man who didn't love the answer he was giving. "The ruling was sound. The legal position is yours. That doesn't always translate into personal safety, and I'd rather tell you that directly than have you find out through a dif

"Keep getting stronger. The best thing you can do right now isn't this mission. It's the one after it, and the one after that, and the ten that follow." He met her eyes. "I need you here, building toward something. Not there, not yet."Lucia looked at him for a long moment."Okay," she said. Not reluctantly. She'd heard what he'd actually said and had understood it. She walked across the kitchen and hugged him once, quick, and stepped back. "Bring something back for me.""Like what.""Anything. Surprise me."He picked up his bag and left before the kitchen could become harder to walk out of than it already was.The Tower was quiet at this hour, the crowd of the day reduced to a handful of night-shift Climbers and Association staff moving through the lower levels with the purposeful pace of people on schedule.Augusto was waiting in the entrance hall.Two other Association officials flanked him, people Dante recognized by face but not name, carrying the compact efficiency of staff depl