Space folded, the familiar quiet tear of the Grey, and the smell of Stella's workshop—solder and ozone—gave way to something drier: high-grade, filtered mana and old paper and the faint, dusty sweetness of preserved artefacts. I was standing somewhere I hadn't been in far too long. The two-hundredth floor of the Tower of Magic. The Tower Master's private study, warded so thickly that its defensive arrays were listed as a national treasure and supposedly impossible to get through.
"You certainly make an entrance, Second Hero." A dry, amused voice cut through the library hush.
Behind a desk buried in flickering holograms, stacked slates and glowing arcane foci, a pair of sharp green eyes looked up. Charlotte Alaric, red hair spilling over her shoulders in its usual fire, rested her chin on her palm and regarded me with something halfway between fond exasperation and plain, analytical awe.
