CASSIAN
The illusion of shattering glass was a crude but effective trick. It was classic Scriptorium—a flourish of misdirection to cover a silent retreat. By the time my senses cleared and I realized the studio door was still intact, she was gone. The only lingering trace of her was the faint, maddening scent of rain and old paper, a ghost-scent that clung to the air and tormented me.
I staggered back, leaning against the cold marble of the phoenix sculpture for support. The world slowly swam back into focus, the gallery's sharp, white lines steadying me. My body felt alien, a vessel that had been invaded and then abandoned. Her raw, desperate fear still echoed in my chest, a phantom vibration against my own controlled calm.
My own emotions were a maelstrom. The initial glacial rage at her intrusion had been eclipsed by a profound, earth-shattering shock. That raven tattoo… it was no mere parlor ink. It was an artifact of immense and forgotten power, something my mother had only ever alluded to in hushed whispers in her journals. Soul-Ink. A form of artifice so ancient and so dangerous it was thought to be a myth. A magic that didn't just replicate or imbue; it bound.
My hand, still pressed against my chest, began to burn. It started as a subtle warmth, like a sunbeam on my skin, but quickly intensified into a sharp, needle-like sting. I ripped open the buttons of my dress shirt, the small, pearlescent disks scattering across the marble floor.
And then I saw it.
Blooming over my heart, as if drawn by an invisible hand, were the fine, intricate black lines of a new tattoo. It was a perfect, impossible mirror of the one on her back—a raven, its wings half-unfurled, its single eye seeming to stare up at me with a defiant, knowing intelligence. The lines were sharp and clean, not the blurred, bloody marks of a fresh mundane tattoo. This was artifice, born of pure magic, etched directly onto my soul.
A wave of nausea and vertigo washed over me. I collapsed onto my knees, my head spinning. I had spent my entire life resenting the tattoos that already covered my skin, the weapons my father had insisted I wear. Now, a new one had appeared, uninvited and unwelcome, placed in the most intimate, vulnerable location possible. It was a violation.
The mark on my chest pulsed with a steady, rhythmic warmth, a phantom heartbeat that was not my own. It felt… alive. I could feel her through it, a distant echo of her panicked flight through the city streets.
"Sir? Is everything alright?" a voice called from the doorway. It was Marcus, the head of my father's security detail, a mountain of a man in a flawless black suit. His eyes, sharp and professionally blank, took in the scene—me, shirtless and kneeling on the floor, the open door to my mother's studio.
"Everything is fine," I lied, my voice a strained rasp. I pulled the tatters of my shirt closed, hiding the mark. My father could not know about this. Not yet. Not until I understood what had happened. He would see this not as a magical cataclysm, but as a contamination. A Scriptorium stain on the Vance legacy. His reaction would be swift, brutal, and aimed directly at her. An unsettling, fiercely protective instinct coiled in my gut. I didn't understand it, but it was there. I had to get to her before he did.
"There was a… magical feedback surge from one of the gallery's older wards," I said, pushing myself to my feet. "I've contained it. See to it that this wing is sealed until morning. No one is to enter. Understood?"
"Understood, Mr. Vance," Marcus said, his face impassive. But I saw the flicker of curiosity in his eyes. He knew something was wrong.
I strode past him, my mind racing. I needed answers, and there was only one place to find them: my mother's journals.
I sealed myself in my own studio, a cold, minimalist space in the highest spire of the tower. Her journals were hidden in a secret compartment behind a false panel in the wall. I pulled out the worn, leather-bound volumes, their pages filled with her delicate, flowing script.
I searched for hours, my fingers flying through the pages. I found her research on Soul-Ink, fragmented and filled with warnings. She wrote of it as a legendary artifice, a "perfect union" that could bridge the divide between Replication and Imbuement. But she also called it a "razor's edge," a bond that, if unstable, could lead to a catastrophic burnout, consuming the life force of both participants.
There was nothing about how to sever it. Nothing about why it had appeared on me.
Frustration and exhaustion gnawed at me. The adrenaline from the encounter was fading, replaced by a deep, bone-weary ache. I collapsed onto the chaise lounge in the corner of my studio, the journals spread out on the floor around me. I must have dozed off, my mind still racing.
I was dreaming. A memory that wasn't mine.
I was a little girl, small and shivering in a vast, cold workshop. A stern-faced woman with iron-gray hair—her grandmother—stood over me, a silver stylus in her hand. "Again," the old woman commanded, her voice like chipping stone. "The line is imperfect. Perfection is not a goal; it is the only acceptable standard. A ghost has no room for error."
The little girl—Lyra—lifted her own stylus, her small hand trembling. She tried to draw the perfect circle, the first lesson of a Scriptorium forger. A tear fell from her eye, splashing onto the vellum and blurring the ink. The old woman's hand shot out, not striking, but grasping the girl's chin, her grip unforgivingly tight. "Tears are a flaw in the design, Lyra. Erase them."
The memory was so vivid, so filled with a child's cold, lonely terror, that I awoke with a gasp. My own hand was at my chin, my fingers digging into my skin. The memory flash from the ink was more than just seeing; it was feeling. I had felt her smallness, her fear, the icy chill of her grandmother's discipline.
It was in that moment that I truly understood. Her life, like mine, was a cage. Just a different design.
A sudden, sharp pain lanced through my left palm, so intense it made me cry out. I looked down, my eyes widening in horror. A thin line of blood was welling up across my palm, a clean, sharp cut, as if from a shard of glass or a paper's edge. But I hadn't touched anything.
And through the bond, I felt an echo of her pain. A fleeting, sharp sting from miles away.
She was hurt.
And her injury had manifested on me. This wasn't just an emotional or magical connection anymore. It was physical. We were literally bound, flesh and blood.
The implications were staggering. And terrifying.
I had to find her. Now. Not for answers, not for revenge, but for the most practical, selfish reason in the world: survival. My own, and hers.
I stood up, the pain in my hand a dull throb. The city of Veridia, a sprawling galaxy of lights, spread out beneath me. She was out there somewhere, a ghost hiding in the shadows. But she had left a trace. The ink that bound us was a beacon. I closed my eyes and focused on the raven over my heart, on the faint, warm pulse that connected me to her. I let the feeling guide me, a silken thread in a labyrinth of steel and stone.
I could feel her—a nervous, thrumming energy, shot through with pain and confusion. She was in the old quarter, near the river.
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed my leather jacket and strode out of the studio. I wasn't just Cassian Vance, heir to the Chromatic Court anymore. I was one half of a cursed masterpiece.
And it was time to find my other half.