“It tried to unionize.”
Bea laughed, rich and warm, and handed him a vial of something glowing faintly pink. “You look like a man who hasn’t slept in three nights and just found out the woman he’s bonded to would rather run than stay.”
His jaw ticked. “That obvious?”
“Only to everyone.” She softened, voice dipping. “She scared?”
“She’s... herself.” He shrugged. “Sharp edges and smoke screens.”
“You care.”
He didn’t answer.
“Why are you here, really?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s not the charm berries.”
Dominic leaned on the edge of her stall, voice low. “Thaloryn.”
Bea’s smile faded.
“He’s gaining strength,” Dominic said. “Something’s moving in the woods. Hazel said the bond wasn’t random. That it was… old magic. Buried.”
Bea nodded slowly. “That tracks.”
“You know something.”
“I know stories,” she said carefully. “Ones whispered by hedge witches too scared to write them down. About the Moonlit Pact. About what Thaloryn wants.”
He straightened. “Tell me.”
Bea hesitated, scanning the crowd before pulling him slightly behind the stall. Lillith hovered nearby, close enough not to hurt but distant enough that her attention stayed fixed on a stack of antique runes at another booth.
“The Moonlit Pact wasn’t just about peace between realms,” Bea whispered. “It was about power. Hidden power. Each royal bloodline signed off to keep a piece of something ancient, locked away. Thaloryn’s piece was the key.”
Dominic narrowed his eyes. “So if he gets it?—”
“He unlocks the rest. And if the others are weakened, or if the wards break…”
“Then he doesn’t need a war,” Dominic finished grimly. “He just wins.”
Bea nodded once, her expression haunted. “And your bond? Might’ve been the only thing that rerouted his curse. Magic that old doesn’t miss. It adapts.”
He swore under his breath, fists clenched at his sides.
But then a scream sliced through the late afternoon air like a blade.
It wasn’t the kind of scream that came from a startled shopper or a spilled potion bottle. It was the kind that made your bones rattle, primal and raw. Every head in the square snapped toward the sound.
A boy—barely a man—convulsed beside the fountain, body writhing in unnatural angles, his mouth open in a silent wail. Smoke curled from his chest, and along his arms, jagged black runes pulsed with violent light, flaring red and violet and back again like they couldn’t settle.
“Dominic!” Lillith’s voice cracked with alarm.
She was already moving, skirts bunched in her fists as she ran. Dominic didn’t think—he bolted, outpacing most of the crowd as people gasped and staggered away from the epicenter.
The kid’s eyes had rolled back. His skin blistered in patches. The runes etched into his flesh twisted with a life of their own, like they were burrowing deeper.
And the stench—gods, the stench. Not blood. Not sweat. But sulfur and nightshade and something sweetly rotting underneath. Magic. Warped. Rotten. Wrong.
Lillith hit her knees beside the boy, her hands already glowing with the beginnings of a diagnostic spell. She murmured something sharp in Old Faerun, voice laced with power.
