Sapphire Crystalline scrubbed dirt from under her nails and found a tooth on the washstand. It was not hers. It was small and yellow and still had root on it, and she knew what that meant before her hands could stop shaking. Three full moons in a row, the shadow-beast had hunted closer to home. Her mother slept upstairs. Her brother slept in the loft. In six days the moon would rise full again, and she had until then to find the cure that had failed her twice before, or the thing she became would take a piece of someone the village could name. She wrapped the tooth in cloth and walked to town before the bakers opened. Two men stood outside the smithy with lanterns and a hound on a short rope. They spoke of tracks behind the miller's barn. One said the prints came from the woods near the Crystalline place. The other said they should ride out that afternoon with dogs and check the yard. Sapphire kept her face still and passed them and did not slow until she reached the door of the Angry Crow Inn. The half-serpent sellsword sat at the back table with a bowl of broth and her jade plates stacked beside her. Sapphire had heard of Vessa Dre'kiir from a peddler who said the woman took any contract that paid. Sapphire set the wrapped tooth on the table and then set a purse beside it. "I need you to lay a false trail," she said. "Away from my house. Toward the old ruins. Tonight, before the villagers ride." Vessa opened the cloth and looked at the tooth and closed it again. "Whose?" she asked. "I don't know," Sapphire said. Vessa weighed the purse in one hand. "Enough for three nights of tracks," she said. "After that you pay again or I stop." Sapphire nodded. Vessa asked one more question. "What's in the ruins?" Sapphire thought of the strange folded object her father had hidden there before he died, the interlocking frames he swore held the shape of the curse itself. "Something I need anyway," she said. By dusk the hounds were baying west of the village, toward the dwarven ruins, and no rider turned down the lane to her mother's house. Sapphire stood at the kitchen window and watched the lanterns move away from her family and toward the place she would have to go herself. She had bought six days and pointed the hunt at the one door she still needed to open. If the folded thing in the ruins was what her father believed, she would have her third chance at the cure. If it was not, she had led armed men straight to it, and the next full moon would find her family with nowhere left to hide.

Sapphire woke to a knock at the kitchen door before the sun cleared the ridge. She wiped her hands dry and opened it a crack. A woman from two lanes over stood on the step with her arms folded. She said the hunting party had ridden west last night, but her cousin was on the party and had come back uneasy. The tracks split near the creek. One line ran toward the ruins. Another, fainter, curved back this way. The woman looked past Sapphire into the kitchen. She asked whether Sapphire had heard anything strange in the yard three nights ago, and whether her brother had been home. She said the men were meeting again at noon to decide where to ride next. Sapphire kept her hand on the door and made her face tired. She said her brother had been sick in the loft all week and her mother had barely slept for tending him. She said she had heard nothing but the wind. The woman did not move. She asked to see the brother. Sapphire said he was sleeping and needed to stay that way, and if the woman wanted to wait in the kitchen she could, but the answer would be the same in an hour. She watched the woman's eyes travel over the threshold, the boots by the door, the scrape of mud she had not finished cleaning off the sill. The woman said she would come back at noon with two of the men. Sapphire shut the door and pressed her back to it. She had until noon. She pulled on her coat and went out the rear gate toward the tree line, and she was halfway across the field when the air beside her went cold and a voice spoke at her shoulder. She turned and saw nothing at first, then a shape at the edge of sight, a hooded thing with green points where eyes should be, half in the grass and half not. It said its name was Vexeron. It said it had been watching her house. It said the second track, the faint one, had not been laid by her sellsword. It had been laid by the hound handler himself, who suspected her already and was building a case the party would accept. Sapphire asked why it was telling her this. Vexeron said, "I break spells. Yours interests me. Send the handler to me tonight and I will end his certainty. In return, you owe me one favor, named later." She agreed before she let herself think. At noon the woman came back with two men, and Sapphire met them in the yard and told them the hound handler had asked to meet her alone at the old ruins after dark, and she was afraid of him. The men's faces changed. They rode out to find him first. Sapphire stood in the empty lane and understood she had traded one watcher for another, and the debt she now owed had no shape she could see.

Sapphire watched the men ride west and knew she had less than a day. The moon would be full in two nights. The hunting party would sweep the ruins by dusk, then camp there, then sweep again. Her father's hidden thing lay under a stone in the second chamber. If she waited, armed men would find it. If she went now, they would find her. She cut through the pine belt to skirt the road. Halfway up the slope she stopped. A cat sat on the path ahead, sleek and pale, with dark points on its ears and tail. It did not run. It stared past her, ears flat, at something in the brush she could not see. Then it stepped sideways into a patch of shade and was gone. A man came out of the same shade. Black cloak, vials strapped across his chest, a knife at each hip. He held his hands open at his sides so she could see them. "You're the Crystalline girl," he said. "I'm Kael Blackscale. I hunt shadowbeasts. I don't kill them anymore." Sapphire took a step back. "Then what do you do." "I cure them. When I can." He tapped one vial with a knuckle. "I followed the party in from the east. Their hound handler is sitting in the creek talking to nothing. Someone broke him open last night. That was you." "It wasn't me." "It was done for you. Same thing, in the ledger." He looked at the sky. "Two nights. You won't make the ruins and get out. The party is there now, and they will stay." She kept her face still. "I need something my father left." "Describe it." "Folded. Cloth or paper. Under the flat stone in the second chamber." He thought for a moment. "I can reach the second chamber. They don't know my face here. I can be a traveler asking shelter." "Why would you." "Because if you go, you die, and I lose a cure I haven't tried." He said it flat, like reading a list. "Wait at your house. Bar the door. I'll be back before moonrise tomorrow." "And if you open it and read it first." "I will open it and read it first. I need to know what it is before I hand it to you." He did not soften the line. "That's the trade." She looked at the path where the cat had been. She thought of Vexeron, and the favor with no shape. She thought of her mother in the loft, and her brother, and two nights. "Go," she said. He was already moving. She walked home the long way, hands empty. She had given her father's secret to a stranger to read before her. It was the only trade left, and she had made it.

Sapphire barred the door and waited. The house was quiet. Her mother slept in the loft. Her brother sat by the cold hearth, cleaning a knife he would not need. She counted hours by the sun on the floorboards. Kael would come before moonrise tomorrow. If Vexeron came first, none of it mattered. He came at dusk. She did not hear the door. She turned from the water basin and he was in the room, hood down, hands folded. The lamp did not brighten for him. Her brother stood up slow and stayed against the wall. "You owe me a favor," Vexeron said. "I have come to name it." Sapphire dried her hands on her apron. She kept her voice flat. "Name it." "There is a keep three valleys east. Broken towers. The locals call it Dreadfall. In its west garden grows a flower with dusky petals. Duskbloom. I want one, cut at the stem, alive." "When." "Now. Tonight." She felt her stomach drop. "Kael comes back tomorrow. Before moonrise. I have to be here." "That is your problem." "Three valleys east is two days on foot." Vexeron reached into his sleeve and set a glass sphere on the table. Inside it a small winged figure hung in still light, wings spread, eyes open. "One step in. One step out. It breaks on the return. Do not drop it." She stared at the sphere. "Why me." "Because Duskbloom cuts a cursed hand and no one else's. You are cursed. I am not." He tilted his head. "Refuse and I take back what I gave. The hound handler wakes clear-eyed at dawn." She picked up the sphere. It was warmer than the room. She stepped through. Cold hit her face. She stood in a courtyard of black stone, towers snapped like broken teeth against a purple sky. The garden was a stretch of frost and dead vines. One flower stood in the middle of it, petals dark, center pale as a coin. She knelt and cut it with her belt knife. The stem bled clear sap onto her thumb. Her thumb burned and did not blister. She crushed the sphere in her fist. Her own kitchen. Vexeron held out a gloved hand. She placed the flower in it. He closed his fingers around the stem and it did not burn him. "Debt paid," he said. He was gone before she drew breath. Sapphire sat down. Her thumb still stung. She had lost no hours. The sun had barely moved. Whatever she had just handed him, it was not her cure, and it was not her problem. She put the knife in the basin and washed the sap from her hand. Kael would come tomorrow with her father's secret. Vexeron's leash was off her neck. She wanted to know what he would do with the flower. She made herself not ask.

Sapphire slept two hours and woke before dawn. The full moon was one night away. Her house had thin walls and a wooden door. Her mother's cellar had rotted through last winter. There was nowhere left to lock herself. If she changed here again, she would kill someone she knew. She went to the ruins at first light. Kael Blackscale waited at the broken arch, a satchel across his chest, a small metal shape coiled on his shoulder. The shape lifted its head. It was a snake made of jointed plates, eyes yellow as lamp oil, a pincer at its tail. It flicked a wire tongue at her. "He went in," Kael said. "I sent him. The second chamber is sealed with a stone your father set. My hands can't move it. His can." He tapped the snake's plated skull. "Give him time." She could not wait. She spoke fast. "I need a place. For tonight. Walls that hold. I have no cellar. My mother's is gone. If I stay near the village I will kill again." Kael studied her. "There is a refuge. Old warded stone. Built for people like you. Two hours south, up the ridge." "Take me." "It has a keeper. She decides who goes behind the door." He led her up a goat track to a squat building set into the hillside. The front was a single slab, carved edge to edge with runes in cyan and pink. A woman waited on the step. She was a serpent from the waist down, her coils bright green, her armor jade plated with gold. A sword rode her back that looked untouched. Her eyes did not move from Sapphire's face. "Shr'va Orvanos," Kael said. "She holds the door." "State it," Shr'va said. Sapphire's throat was dry. "Blood curse. Shadow-beast. Moonrise to sunrise. I have killed. I need the room tonight." Shr'va looked at her a long moment. "How many." "One I know of." "You came before it was two." "Yes." Shr'va turned to the slab and pressed a palm against the center rune. The stone ground inward. Beyond it Sapphire saw a bare cell, walls thick as a man's arm, no window, a drain in the floor. "You go in at dusk," Shr'va said. "I seal it. I open it at full sun. Not before. Not if you scream. Not if you beg." "Agreed." "One more thing." Shr'va's eyes went flat. "Your mother. Your brother. Where do they change tonight." Sapphire opened her mouth and had no answer. She had bought one cell. She had two people at home, and moonrise was twelve hours away. Kael watched her face and said nothing. On his shoulder the metal snake curled tighter, waiting to be sent back for the stone.

Sapphire ran home from the ridge with two problems and one day left. She had a cell for herself and no walls for her mother and brother. But a worse trouble waited at the well. The neighbor woman stood with three others, talking low, pointing at Sapphire's door. She had spread her suspicion all week. If the story reached the hunting party, they would drag the family out by dusk. Sapphire heard the words as she passed. Blood on the yard. A brother no one had seen. She could not shout the woman down. She could not prove herself. Every hour brought the whispers closer to armed men. She went to the one shadowbeast who might help. Kael had spoken of an elder who lived far from humans, in a cave marked by black stone teeth. Sapphire climbed to it before noon. The mouth of the cave rose over her, jagged and dark. Inside, a small figure sat by a low fire, horned, white-haired, in black and gold. He did not turn. "You are cursed," Cirrus Silverblade said. "I smell it. State your need." "A neighbor is telling the village my family are beasts," Sapphire said. "By dusk they will believe her. I need it stopped." Cirrus fed a stick to the fire. "I do not hunt humans. I buy blood. I do not silence gossips for strangers." "Then buy mine," Sapphire said. "Whatever you pay. In return, help me once." He looked at her then. His eyes were lamp-yellow, tired. "You are young. Cursed young." A pause. "I had a daughter your age. Cursed the same." He stood. "I know that woman's kind. Fear speaks loudest when it has a face to point at. Give the village a bigger fear, pointed elsewhere." "How?" "A beast was seen three valleys off," Cirrus said flatly. "Tracks. A dead sheep. A witness who trembles well. The party rides where the danger is loudest. I have men who owe me. It costs you nothing but the blood you offered." Sapphire held out her arm. Cirrus drew a thin vial's worth, quick and clean. "Go home," he said. "Say nothing. Wait." She waited. By late afternoon a rider came through the village at a gallop, wild-eyed, shouting of a shadow-beast that killed his flock two valleys over. The neighbor woman's crowd broke apart. The hunting party mustered within the hour. Sapphire watched them ride out the far road, away from her door, toward Cirrus's false danger. The neighbor caught her eye across the lane. Sapphire held it and did not look away. The woman turned and went inside. The whispers had nowhere left to land. Her family was safe until sunrise. But Sapphire had traded her blood to a shadowbeast elder now, and he had asked her nothing yet in return. And she still had no walls for her mother and brother. The moon rose in nine hours.

Sapphire survived the night in the warded cell. She woke at dawn with dirt under her nails and no memory. Her family had lived through the moon too. But she was no closer to a cure. Her father's hidden item sat in a cloth bundle by her feet, delivered days ago. She still did not know what it was. Kael had read it before he handed it over. He would not tell her, not without more. So she turned to the one person who might help without a price. Lyra Silverblade met her at the east gate of the refuge. Sapphire had met her once before, guarding this place. Lyra guarded House Orvanos, but she was kind to cursed folk. A shadowbeast dozed by the wall near her, and she stepped over its tail without looking. Her armor was dented at the left shoulder. She had called Sapphire a friend, and meant it. "You look like you slept in a cage," Lyra said. "I did." Sapphire held out the bundle. "My father hid this. I need to know what it does." Lyra unfolded the cloth. Inside lay a dried flower, dusky and purple, its petals stiff but whole. A folded paper was pinned beneath it. Sapphire's breath caught. She knew that flower. She had cut one just like it at Dreadfall keep, and it had burned her hand. Lyra read the paper. Her face went still. "This is your father's writing?" "Yes." She passed it over. Sapphire read the cramped lines. The dusk flower alone did nothing. It marked a path. Cut it, dry it, carry it, and it would point toward the tree that healed all sickness. Her father had named the tree. He had drawn a small map beneath the words, half of it torn away. "He never finished," Sapphire said. "Half the map is gone." "He ran out of time," Lyra said. "Or someone took the rest." She tapped the flower. "But this is the key. The bloom answers to cursed blood. Yours burned when you cut one. It won't burn a clean hand. That's how it leads." Sapphire's chest tightened. Two attempts had failed because she chased cures blind. Now she held the reason her father died still searching. The flower was not the cure. It was a compass. And she had already given a fresh one away to Vexeron. "Where is the tree?" she asked. Lyra shook her head. "The map's torn. But the flower points. Carry it near, and it'll pull." She closed Sapphire's fingers around the dried bloom. "You've got a start now. Not an answer." Sapphire looked at the withered flower in her palm. She finally knew what her father left her. She could begin her third attempt at last. But the map was torn, and the only fresh flower that could guide her already sat in a necromancer's hands.

Sapphire held the dried flower and the torn map all the way back to the shadowbeast elder's house. She had traded him her blood once. He had saved her family with a false sighting three valleys away. She still owed him a favor. Now she needed him again. If anyone knew the missing half of her father's map, it was Cirrus Silverblade. He met her at the door of a stone hall built for heat and hammering. An old forge sat cold behind him. He wiped soot from his hands and looked at the map without asking. "Torn," he said. "You need the rest." "Do you have it?" "No." He held out one clawed hand. She placed the flower and the map in it. He studied the flower's stiff purple petals. "Your father cut this fresh once. Dried it. It points. Half a map is enough if the flower still works." "It's withered." "Then it points weakly. Or not at all." He turned the bloom in the firelight. "There is one way to know." He led her inside. Drawings of birds covered one far wall. She had seen those before. His daughter's room. He did not look at it. He set the flower on a scarred anvil and told her to bleed onto it. Sapphire pressed her thumb to a nail and squeezed. A drop fell on the dried petals. The flower did not glow. It did not turn. She waited. Nothing. "Cursed blood should wake it," Cirrus said. "It stays dead. The bloom is too old." Her chest went tight. "Then it's useless. The map and the flower both." "The map is useless without a working bloom," he said. "The bloom is useless dried this long." He set it down. "You need a fresh one." "I gave the only fresh one away." She thought of the necromancer, of the flower burning her hand at the cursed keep. "There was one more field of them. At Dreadfall keep." Cirrus looked at her for a long moment. "Then that is where you go." She stared at the dead flower on the anvil. Lyra had told her the bloom was the key. Cirrus had just proved the key was broken. The torn map no longer mattered. A finished map would point nowhere without a living compass to read it. "You owe me a favor," Cirrus said. "I will not spend it stopping this. Go cut a fresh one. Bleed on it. It will pull toward the tree. Half a map or none." Sapphire folded the useless flower back into the cloth. Her third attempt did not need the missing map piece anymore. It needed her to return to the keep where the last flowers grew, and to do it before this moon's blood dried on her hands again. She left the cold forge with a clear path and a worse one ahead.

Sapphire left the cold forge with a clear task and no way to reach it. Dreadfall keep lay three valleys away. Last time the necromancer's glass sphere had carried her there in a blink. That debt was paid. The sphere was gone. Now she had only her feet, and the full moon rose tonight. On foot she would still be walking when the change took her. She went to the refuge gate. Lyra met her there, one hand resting on her sword hilt, her armor dented at the shoulder. A shadowbeast crouched quietly near the wall, watching them both. Lyra did not flinch from it. "I need to reach Dreadfall keep before moonrise," Sapphire said. "Three valleys. I can't walk it in time." Lyra looked at the sky. "No. You can't." "Then help me." Lyra was quiet a moment. "There's a way. You won't like the cost." She turned and led Sapphire inside. Shr'va waited in the yard, coiled on her serpent's length, jade armor dull in the gray light. A boy's sword rode her back. She had sealed Sapphire in the warded cell once. She spoke like someone who wasted nothing. "You want speed," Shr'va said. It was not a question. "Yes." Shr'va's tail uncoiled toward a low shed. Inside stood a dwarven steam carriage, riveted metal and runic trim, its firebox cold. Beside it, chained to an iron post, lay a wingless dragon plated like armor. It lifted its head and fixed one orange eye on Sapphire. "The carriage runs the valley road," Shr'va said. "Slow. The drake cuts straight over the ridges. Fast. But it answers to me, and I need it back." "Then lend it to me." "No." Shr'va's voice stayed flat. "I ride the drake. You come with me. If you turn on the ridge, I put you off and leave you. I don't die for your errand." Sapphire's chest tightened. Moonrise would catch them somewhere in the open. But the carriage was too slow. The drake was her only chance. "Agreed," she said. Lyra tightened the drake's harness. "Bleed on the flower the moment you cut it," she said. "Don't wait. You'll have minutes, not hours." She stepped back. "Go." Shr'va mounted. Sapphire climbed up behind her and gripped the plated ridges. The drake surged forward, off the road, up the first slope. Wind tore at Sapphire's face. Valleys fell away beneath them. They crested the third ridge as the sun touched the hills. Dreadfall keep stood below, its broken walls dark. Purple blooms grew thick in the courtyard. Sapphire slid down and ran to them. She cut one stem. The curse burned her palm, the same searing bite as before. She pressed her bleeding thumb to the petals at once. The flower glowed. It turned in her hand and held, pointing north. A living compass. And behind the hills, the moon began to rise.

The flower pointed north, but the moon cleared the hills. Sapphire felt the change take her at once. Her fingers curled wrong. Her skin pulled tight and cold. She had never watched it start before. She always woke after, dirt under her nails. Now she stayed awake inside it, and terror climbed her throat. The compass would fail if her cursed hand crushed it in the change. She had minutes. Then she would remember nothing, and the trail to the healing tree would be lost. Behind her, the drake screamed and thrashed at its harness. Shr'va was gone, or fled. Sapphire's knees gave. She hit the courtyard stones. The glowing stem slipped from her fist. A small figure caught it midair. Avra Ixanius dropped from the broken wall and landed low, white armor scraping stone. Kael had sent her ahead. He did not trust Sapphire alone at moonrise, and he had been right. A skitterling darted at Sapphire's feet, quick as a spider, and pinched her ankle to hold her attention. "Look at me," Avra said. Short. Flat. One wing hung dead at her back. She held the compass high, out of Sapphire's reach. "North. Fifty steps. Then a creek. Then the tree." Sapphire could not answer. Her jaw locked. The beast pressed up through her ribs. Avra did not flinch. She had knelt beside a dying woman once and kept her word past death. She kept it now. She pressed the flower's stem to Sapphire's transforming hand and folded the clawed fingers around it, gentle, sure. "Hold the flower," Avra said. "Not me. The flower." The change swept the rest of the way through. Sapphire's sight went dark at the edges. Her thoughts scattered. But one thing stayed, small and bright as the stem in her fist. Hold the flower. North. What rose from the stones was not Sapphire. It was tall and black and made no sound. Avra stood square before it, no taller than its knee. The skitterling climbed to her shoulder. She did not draw her sword. "North," she said again. The beast looked at the glowing flower in its own claw. It turned. It faced north. Then it moved, low and fast, over the ridge and down toward the creek. Avra ran after it on foot, grounded, keeping the thing in sight the only way she could. By the creek the beast stopped. Amber light bled through the dark. A tree stood there, wide as a house, its leaves every shade of green, thick sap dripping gold from the bark. The healing tree. The flower flared once in the beast's claw and went dark. Its work was done. Avra reached the water's edge, breathing hard. She looked at the tree, then at the beast crouched beneath it. "Found it," she said. When dawn came, Sapphire woke under the golden branches, the dead stem still clenched in her clean, human hand.

Sapphire sat under the golden branches. Amber sap dripped from the bark and pooled at the roots. The dead flower stem lay in her clean hand. She had crossed three valleys and a whole night as a beast to reach this tree. Now she did not know what to do. The map showed the way here. It never said how the tree lifted a curse. Guess wrong, and she might waste this place forever. She pressed her palm to the trunk. Nothing. She dug a thumbnail into the wet sap and tasted it. It burned sweet on her tongue. Still nothing changed. Her hands shook. She had one fresh flower's worth of luck left, and she was spending it blind. A voice came from the creek. "You are doing it wrong." Cirrus Silverblade stepped from the tree line. She knew him. He was the shadowbeast elder who had paid for her blood, then saved her family by sending the hunters three valleys off. He owed no one softness and gave none. A skitterling was not with him. He came alone, hooves quiet on the bank, amber eyes fixed on the tree as if it hurt him to look at it. "You followed me," Sapphire said. "You still owe me a favor." He crouched by the roots. "I came to see the tree that heals all sickness. My daughter's blood is cursed like yours. If it works, it works for her too." She watched his hand hover over the sap and stop short. "You cannot touch it," she said. "No. The tree heals sickness. The curse is not sickness. It is blood." He looked at her. "Your father knew that. He hid a flower, not a cure. This tree was never the answer. It was the road to the answer." Sapphire's chest went cold. "Then I came here for nothing." "You came here alive and human at dawn. That is not nothing." He reached into his coat and drew out a folded page. Old paper. Ink faded brown. "A wizard keeps an archive. Aldric Whitestone. Something was stolen from his locked rooms. A method that once stopped a great collapse. He thinks a thief has it. I think your father copied it years ago, before he died." He pressed the page into her hand. It showed a diagram, half a machine, gears and a chair, and one line of your father's writing beneath it. Cursed blood, unmade at the source. "The source," Sapphire said. "You mean before the curse ever began." "I mean back," Cirrus said. "The wizard will want this returned. He may want you dead for holding it. But he knows the machine. And the machine reaches the past." Sapphire folded the page against her chest. The tree had shown her only that the tree was wrong. Her father's true trail led somewhere else now, to a locked archive and a man who would not want her there.

Sapphire spread her father's page on the table at The Hag's Wig. The inn was loud with ale and low talk. She smoothed the old paper flat and studied the diagram. Gears, a chair, a coil of lines she could not name. One part sat half-drawn, its edges torn. She could copy the whole machine and still miss this single piece. Build it wrong, and she would waste her one true trail. She had spent a fresh flower, a night as a beast, a crossing of three valleys to get this far. She would not spend it on a guess. A voice cut through the noise. "You are reading a corpse." She looked up. A necromancer without a body stood beside her chair. Green light burned where his eyes should be. She knew him. Vexeron had held a debt over her once and sent her into a cursed keep. She had paid it. His hold on her was gone. But he was here again, and that was never nothing. "The page is torn," Sapphire said. "I cannot read the last part." "Then find someone who built one." Vexeron tilted his skull toward the door. An old man was pushing through the crowd, cranky, gray beard down his chest, robes marked with faded runes. "Him. He moves things through walls for a living." The old man dropped onto the bench across from her. He did not ask to sit. He looked at the page and his face soured. "Mordecai Grimsoar," Vexeron said. "He knows conjuring machines. He is chasing a door he broke. Ask him before he leaves." Sapphire turned the page to face the old man. "Can you read this?" Mordecai leaned in. His finger stopped on the torn part. "That is a return coil. Missing its ground. Build it like this and it reaches back and pulls you with it." He tapped the chair. "You sit here, it does not send a spell to the past. It sends you. No return." Sapphire's stomach dropped. "My father drew it to unmake the curse at its source." "He drew half of it." Mordecai did not soften it. "The ground wire completes the loop. Without it, the coil eats the rider. Your father knew. That is why he tore it off. So no one built it whole." "Then it is useless," she said. "No." He pulled a stub of charcoal from his belt and drew a plain line off the coil, down to a base. "That is the ground. Simple. He hid the safe part, not the hard part." He stood. "The wizard Whitestone owns the rest. Go take it back." Sapphire stared at the finished coil. She could read the machine now. Every gear, every wire. She knew what to build and how to survive the chair. She folded the page. The last piece she needed sat in Aldric Whitestone's locked tower. And he would kill her for it.