Chapter 166 In Search
In Brightwater, the rain never fell gently. It came in sheets, hammering rooftops until slate cracked and burrowed through the wounds with icy fingers. Daisy crouched behind a chimney stack, its crumbling bricks slick with black moss, letting the storm soak her through. The downpour hid the tremor in her hands and the way her heart spasmed during every flash of lightning. Thick as dock ropes, the veins running up her forearms pulled tight under the skin, daisies in negative, their petals inky and florid as they crept above her collarbone. Most called these marks a curse, a remnant of the old blood-magic that had claimed so many before her. Yet Daisy could feel something simmering beneath the ache—a kind of power that made her pulse stutter, dangerous if left unchecked, impossible to hide. In Brightwater, curses and gifts were two sides of the same coin, and her veins had always been both.
Below, the city's main square was unrecognizable. The old Brightwater market, where Daisy and Delia had once filched apples and ducked under the riot of silks and pennants, was now a killing floor. Ironclaw soldiers manned every corner, their chainmail lacquered black, helmets trimmed with bleached bones. The carts that used to overflow with summer fruit and cheap cheese had been flipped and lashed together into barricades, their colors drowned beneath the mud and old blood. There was no laughter, no music. Only the metallic shuffle of boots and the wet slap of banners as they snapped in the rain.
Those banners, once the cloth of city pride, woven with the sunrise and the river, were gone. In their place was the Ironclaw standard: a field of black, broken by a single white daisy. The petals splayed, and the heart was a thumbprint of red. It was more than a mark of conquest. The daisy was Daisy's birthright, the symbol her family held for generations—a sign of stubborn hope and Brightwater's resilience. For the Ironclaw, it was a warning. They had twisted her name into something that promised retribution for dissent, stamping it on every corner as a reminder that even hope could be broken and forced to serve. For Daisy, every glimpse of the sigil felt like a nail in her chest. It was a threat, a curse, and a shadow she could never outrun.
She risked a peek over the chimney. The largest tent in the square was a warlord’s nest, bristling with spikes and lined with pitch-soaked hides. From this height, Daisy could see the outline of a man in ceremonial armor—tall, rigid, his helmet’s crest the width of her open hand. Not Ravensworth, not one of the petty lords, but someone higher. Someone who needed the whole city broken to prove a point.
She felt the veins in her neck throb in time with the thunder.
On the next rooftop, a flicker—Oliver, his form a silhouette against the storm as he signaled with three short flashes from a piece of polished glass. He moved like part of the rain: in and out, never still. The only color to him was the white of his knuckles gripping the gutter’s edge. She caught the meaning—three, then one, then hold. Three patrols, one gap, wait for the pass. The alleys in the old days followed the same logic, though there was a new kind of predator now. Daisy remembered the way Oliver used to slip apples into her hands when she was hungry, the late-night races across slate tiles, his laughter echoing behind her even when the city turned cruel. Trust between them had grown out of necessity, and hardened over years of stolen moments and shared secrets—a bond that refused to break, no matter how ragged their lives became.
Below and to her left, Cornelius wedged himself in the lee of a spire, his hair flattened to his scalp, the old scar on his cheek gleaming like fresh-cut stone. He didn’t bother signaling; instead, his eyes tracked every motion in the square, cataloging each Ironclaw, each Veilseeker, and every local pressed into service as a pack mule. He looked up, caught Daisy’s gaze, and jerked his chin at the southern gate.
She understood. If things went bad, that was the out.
Daisy slid back from the chimney, her boots nearly losing grip on the wet shingle. She crouched low, flexing her hands to work the circulation. Each movement sparked pain up her arms, and the veins glimmered blue in the dim. She pressed her thumb against the ceramic locket at her neck—a daisy, but the real one, not the mockery stamped on every banner—and felt the magic pulse, hot and urgent, as if the locket tried to channel or contain what built inside her.
A patrol crossed the market’s edge: four deep, faces hidden behind mirrored masks. Their boots sank into the muck as they moved slowly. One soldier paused to check the barricade nearest Daisy’s alley. His head tilted up for just a second; she ducked instinctively, flattening herself against the roofline.
When she risked another look, the patrol had moved on. But something was different: a ring of ceramic daisies—actual fragments, like someone had smashed a hundred of them and then glued the pieces into the stones—circled the tent. With every clap of thunder, they lit up, not with fire but with a cold, phosphorescent glow. The pain in Daisy’s chest tripled.
She’d seen that kind of ward before. Last time, it had been on a slave collar—the kind that kept blood magic sealed tight, stopping the wearer from burning out or breaking free. The magic in the ward pulled power inward, trapping it behind the skin, making every attempt to use it feel like pushing against unyielding iron. The more Daisy tried to reach her magic, the more it recoiled, twisting pain through her veins. Now, the effect radiated throughout Brightwater itself: the stones of the buildings thrummed with the ward’s power, and the air seemed heavy, dense with suppressed energy. Every street and square anchored her magic down, as if invisible chains crisscrossed the city, pressing in from every direction. Someone had fused hundreds of these wards together, embedding their power into the city’s very foundation, turning all of Brightwater into one vast snare for anyone marked by the old blood. The city had become a prison not in name alone, but in the tangible oppression of its very atmosphere, and she was trapped within it.
A hiss from the alley below. Oliver’s shadow, perched between rainpipes, beckoned her down.
She eased herself off the roof, landing awkwardly and steadying herself before letting Oliver drag her into the lee of the wall. Up close, his skin was pale from cold, but his eyes burned fever-bright.
“South wall’s soft,” he whispered, breath white in the rain. “They rotated the second shift early. Ten minutes and the whole square will be in the tent for muster.”
Daisy nodded, feeling the chain in her blood twitch. “What’s the plan?”
He smiled, crooked. “You’re the plan. You and whatever this is—” He gestured at her arms, the lines visible even in the gloom. “That’s what they’re hunting. That’s what they’re afraid of.”
She wanted to punch him, or maybe herself. “Great. That makes it easy.”
He leaned in, touched her face, the contact sending a shiver up her spine. “You ever think about running? Just… out the other side, never look back?”
She almost laughed, but the pain stilled it. “And go where, Ollie? It’s not just here—everywhere you turn, there’s something holding people down, only the names and faces change. You think Treslin is so different, or Red Harbor beyond the mountains? Maybe the banners look new, and maybe the wardens have different badges, but it never feels like freedom.”
He dropped his hand, eyes flitting to the edge of the alley. “Didn’t think you’d go soft on me.”
“I didn’t,” she said, but it sounded less convincing than she’d hoped.
Footsteps. Cornelius, mud-spattered, the scowl fixed and feral.
“Clock’s running,” he said. “They’re bringing in Veilseeker mages. The real ones. We need to move now, or we don’t move at all.”
Daisy glanced at the tent, then at the daisies in the mud.
“How do we cut the chain?” she asked.
Cornelius didn’t blink. “You’re the root. That’s what they think. Our plan is to let them believe they’re closing in. When they’re close enough—”
She finished it for him: “We break it.”
He nodded.
Oliver shrugged. “Simple, then.”
It wasn’t, and they all knew it.
They edged forward as one, slipping between barricades. Daisy kept her body low, synching her steps to the thud of rain, shoulders hunched against the cold bite of the downpour. The rain worked in their favor; even the Ironclaw soldiers, hating the wet hoods pulled low, hands shoved into pockets. Closer to the daisy wards, Daisy tensed, the heat radiating from them building to a low, sullen burn that made her teeth itch.
At the edge of the tent, Cornelius peeled off, knifing toward a gap in the far barricade. Oliver went up, scaling a drainpipe to the awning, leaving Daisy alone in the shadow of the warlord’s lair.
She pressed a hand to the locket, whispered the word Delia had taught her, and felt the chain inside her twist, seeking the magical wards that bound her. For a heartbeat, she thought she could hear her mother’s voice—just a memory, nothing more, but it steadied her as she prepared to face the magic head-on.
She stepped into the circle.
Inside the circle, pain leapt from a simmer to a boil, every nerve a live wire, but Daisy kept walking. The soldiers at the tent door, lost in their own misery, barely glanced at her. She slipped past with the ease of a ghost.
Inside, the air was thick with incense and hot wax. The warlord—now close, Daisy saw the silver thread at his temples and the perfect, deliberate calm of his hands—sat at a makeshift desk, poring over maps lit by a cluster of electric lamps.
He looked up, and for a second, the whole world slowed.
“Daisy Smithson,” he said, voice soft, “or do you prefer the title they’ve given you?”
She said nothing. Her hands curled at her sides, every daisy on her skin flaring with its own light.
The warlord gestured at the map. “You know why you’re here. Why I need you to walk into the chain’s heart.”
She shook her head. “You think you’re the first to try? You think the chain started with you?”
He smiled, and it was real. “It started long before either of us. But you—” he pointed, and the Ironclaw sigil on his coat glowed blue “—you’re the end. The last link.”
Daisy took a step forward, the locket in her fist.
“Then let’s end it,” she said.
The warlord nodded. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
In the moment before everything unraveled, Daisy saw Oliver’s face at the window, his eyes wide, mouth silently shaping her name. In that split second, she registered the intensity of his fear—a fear sharpened not only by the imminent danger, but by the possibility of losing her. Alongside it, a fierce determination surfaced: if disaster struck, Oliver was fully prepared to act as bait, to draw the soldiers’ attention even if it demanded his own capture. Behind the warlord’s chair, Cornelius’s shadow edged closer, his jaw clenched in unwavering resolve. He held a worn knife, every muscle coiled with tension, accepting that the distraction required for Daisy’s success could cost him dearly. In that suspended instant, Daisy understood the profound weight of their plan—each friend standing ready not only to risk but potentially to sacrifice themselves for her and for the fragile hope they shared. The emotional stakes of their pact crystallized, fierce and unmistakable.
She braced herself.
The world didn’t break, not yet.
But she heard the first crack.