Lyra had a name on her board that I'd been trying not to look at since we walked in.

  I asked about it over breakfast.

  She set down her tea. That was never a good sign.

  "Three weeks ago," she said, "the Renewal Institute received a formal inquiry from the Caldenmoor Consortium. They'd found someone. A young woman, nineteen years old, from a town called Westgate on the Caldenmoor coast."

  I knew what was coming.

  "Ashborn?" I said.

  "Ashborn." She pulled a sealed letter from the stack and slid it toward me. "She goes by Ren. Her mark appeared at sixteen. Three years of not knowing what she was. Her town — well." A pause. "Her town's fishing fleet burned. She was on the docks when it happened. Seven boats."

  I knew that feeling. God, I knew that feeling.

  "Is she—"

  "Alive. Unhurt. The fleet is gone." She paused again. "She's been running since. The Consortium found her trying to buy passage off the continent."

  I unfolded the letter.

  The seal was a new one — the Caldenmoor Consortium's. Inside, two pages of formal inquiry nguage. And at the bottom, a postscript that clearly hadn't been written by whoever wrote the rest of it. The handwriting was younger, more urgent, fighting its own formality:

  "If you know what this is — if there's anyone who knows what this is — please write back. I've been burning things for three years and I don't know how to stop and I'm so tired of running."

  I sat with that for a long time.

  Tam was reading it over my shoulder. He didn't say anything.

  "There's more," Lyra said.

  There was always more.

  "The Caldenmoor Consortium didn't contact us out of goodwill," Lyra said. "They contacted us because they want her. The Consortium runs the rgest private military contracting operation on the continent. Three standing armies. Naval presence in six ports." She pulled up a different map. "They've been aware of the Ashborn historical record since before the War of Cinders. They know what an Ashborn can do."

  "They want to weaponize her," Tam said ftly.

  "They want to acquire her. There's a legal distinction." Lyra's voice was dry. "She doesn't know that's what they want. She thinks they're schors."

  I looked at the postscript again. I've been running for three years and I'm so tired.

  "How long do we have?" I asked.

  "They gave us a courtesy window of thirty days to respond before they proceed with their own protocols." She met my eyes. "Twenty-three days left."

  Twenty-three days to find a nineteen-year-old on the run somewhere on the Caldenmoor coast before a private military consortium did.

  And somewhere under all of that — the thing Lyra hadn't said yet, the thing sitting in the center of everything like a stone in still water.

  Two Ashborn.

  At the same time.

  The historical record had one documented instance of two Ashborn alive simultaneously, and it ended with half a continent in ash. Both of them in the same geographic area during a period of high magical instability —

  "Lyra," I said. "Is the binding's instability reted to her?"

  She'd been waiting for that question. I could tell by how fast she answered.

  "I don't know. Possibly. Two Ashborn active at once creates a resonance effect — the marks influence each other across distance, the way two tuning forks affect each other's tone." She looked at the diagram with its ninth ray. "Your mark is changing. I don't know if it's because of the residue, or because of her, or both." She paused. "I need to study both of you. Together."

  "Find her first," I said. "Worry about the study after."

  "Obviously. That's why I sent Dren to Caldenmoor two weeks ago."

  I stared at her. "You sent Dren? Before you even told me any of this?"

  "I told you, I needed to be certain before—"

  "Lyra."

  "He volunteered. Enthusiastically, actually. I think he was bored."

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. Dren, who I hadn't seen in four years, currently somewhere on the Caldenmoor coast looking for a nineteen-year-old who could accidentally burn a fishing fleet.

  "Of course he did," I said.

  Tam was already mentally packing. I could tell by the way he'd gone quiet.

  "We leave in the morning?" he said.

  "Dawn," I said.

  Same as always.