Chapter 62 Towards the Light
Daisy kicked the doors to the council chamber open with enough force that the battered hinges wailed in protest. The room was a tempest: three separate camps had claimed three corners, each circled by its own plans and panic. Samuel’s crew looked like the ghosts of failed apprentices, their faces hollowed by exhaustion and fear, all hunched together over a flickering candle. Eleanora’s nobles stood in a tight wedge, their clothing still rich but now streaked with grime and blood, eyes darting between her and every possible exit. At the far end, Cornelius and Oliver squared off, the line between mercenary and street kid erased by the mud and weaponry both wore.
The table at the room’s center was already a disaster: its surface pockmarked by dagger stabs, spilled ink, and at least one dried puddle of blood. Daisy stomped over, flung her mother’s journal down so hard that the boards splintered, and let the shockwave roll over the room.
“All of you. Shut up and listen.”
The words hit harder than her entry. Even Eleanora, who’d been mid-sentence, closed her mouth with an audible click.
Daisy scanned the crowd, taking in the wary stares. She felt her pulse through the scales at her neck, the rhythm synced to her voice. She ignored the pain in her knuckles, old wound, new life, and flipped the journal open to the final pages.
“That’s our target,” she said, stabbing a claw at the page. “Not the army outside, not the city’s wards. The engine. They’re going to bleed us dry, unless we end it first.”
Cornelius smirked. “So we hit it. We already planned that.”
Daisy bared her teeth. “Not like this, you didn’t. Read the notes.”
She shoved the book closer to Samuel, who read the scrawl, his lips moving with each line. “It’s locked to a bloodline. The engine can’t be shut off by normal means.” He looked up, sweat crawling down his temple. “It needs a Ravensworth.”
Daisy’s scales flared, the light catching every uneven surface of the chamber. “I’m a Smithson. But also a Ravensworth. Turns out I’m the only key.”
A silence cut through the air, not even the flames in the fireplace dared to snap.
Eleanora stepped forward, all noblesse and bone. “You’re one of us.”
Daisy shrugged, a motion both defiant and tired. “Apparently.”
Oliver’s eyes met hers, and something changed there, a respect, maybe, or just the recognition that every grifter dreams of finding out they’ve got a title.
Cornelius went next. “So you sneak in and shut it off. What’s the rest of us for?”
Daisy’s answer was surgical. “Distraction. You lead a push against the nearest camp, drawing every mage and enforcer you can. Eleanora, you mobilize your people to retake the market square. Samuel, you coordinate the street teams to sabotage supply lines and make enough noise that nobody cares what I’m doing until it’s too late.”
She paused, letting it settle. “Xeris and I will take the tunnel route. If we pull it off, we get a clean city. If not, you burn everything.”
Delia whispered, “That’s suicide.”
Daisy looked at her and grinned. “If I die, at least I’ll know it counted.”
Cornelius snorted, but his eyes were all calculation now. “When do we move?”
“Now,” Daisy said. “They’re charging the engine as we speak.”
The factions split, and everyone barked orders or grabbed weapons. For a moment, Daisy watched the swirl, the chaos, and felt nothing. The world had turned into a chessboard, and every piece was blood-related.
Oliver lingered at the door, waiting. “You sure about this?”
Daisy nodded, then caught his sleeve before he could leave. “I meant what I said before. You don’t have to follow me.”
He looked at her, eyes shining with that old half-mad optimism. “I always do.”
They hugged, a fast, brutal thing, more like a pact than an embrace. When he left, Daisy felt the air grow colder.
Eleanora drifted closer, her gaze as sharp as any dagger. “What’s your plan for once you’re inside?”
Daisy grinned. “Improvisation.”
Eleanora snorted, and for a second, they almost looked like sisters.
Samuel shuffled up, dragging a battered satchel. “The incantation’s in there,” he said, gesturing at the book. “But I’ll walk you through it. It’s going to hurt.”
Daisy’s voice was flat. “Everything does.”
He tried to say something more, but she was already gone.
The stairwell to the roof was half-collapsed. Daisy climbed it anyway, her claws finding purchase in the gaps. The world up here was all wind and smoke and the endless, predatory city. Xeris waited for her at the top, perched on a broken archway, wings drawn in tight to fit the space. He’d shrunk himself to the size of a truck, but the bulk of him still made the roof creak.
She sat next to him, legs dangling over the void.
In the silence, the link between them vibrated. Daisy watched the city with her own eyes, but in the corners of her vision, she saw it through his, streets mapped in heat, scents catalogued, every sound a potential meal or threat. She wondered how long it would take before she saw everything that way.
“You’re restless,” she said.
Xeris flicked a talon, carving a spiral in the stone. “You’re scared.”
She thought about lying, then shrugged. “Maybe. Not of dying. Of failing.”
A moment passed.
“I’ve never seen you fail,” he said, the words both hiss and comfort.
Daisy laughed, the sound cutting through the cold. “You didn’t know me as a kid.”
He turned, golden eyes fixed on her. “I know you now.”
They watched as the city below flared with the first shots of the new war. Incendiaries, spell-lights, the angry pulse of a thousand desperate plans colliding. From here, it looked beautiful.
She reached for his mind, let herself fall into his old memories: the taste of the first sunrise after a killing frost, the hot stink of a rival’s death, the long, lonesome hunger of being the last of a kind. In return, she showed him what it was to lose family, to bleed for a home that never wanted you, to have nothing left but the will to keep crawling forward.
They sat together, the monster and the girl, two scars in the shape of survivors.
When she stood, Xeris matched her.
“You ready?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
“Always,” he said.
Together, they leapt from the roof into the heart of the burning city.
The world below was chaos, but with a clarity Daisy had never felt before. Every scream and crash was a thread in the tapestry, every move of the enemy a note in a song she already knew by heart. She cut through the alleys, her feet barely touching ground, Xeris keeping pace above her in a silhouette of scaled muscle and hatred.
She reached the tunnel entrance first, the old cistern behind the granary, just as Cornelius’s attack began in earnest. Smoke and dust poured through the streets, hiding her as she darted through the shadows.
At the gate, Samuel waited. He looked scared, but also resolved. “You know the way?”
Daisy grinned, holding up the journal. “I always know the way.”
They dropped into the tunnels, the air turning from war to tomb in a step. Eleanora and a squad of slum runners caught up a minute later, her hair wild and her eyes brighter than any torch.
“You’re late,” Daisy said, but there was no heat in it.
Eleanora drew her sword and nodded. “After you.”
They moved through the darkness, the only light the blood-red glow from the spiral on Daisy’s wrist. It pulsed faster as they approached the engine, the magic in the air turning thick, almost suffocating.
Xeris couldn’t fit in the tunnels, but she felt his presence, always above, always near.
They reached the chamber. It was worse than the maps had promised: veins of living crystal lined the walls, throbbing with stolen power. In the center, a column of black stone, the spiral engraved down its length, each curve a little deeper than the last. At the base, wards of blood and bone. Daisy could smell the history in it, the pain, the centuries of sacrifice.
She stepped forward, feeling the scales on her arms shimmer.
Samuel started the chant. Eleanora watched her back. The air vibrated, the old magic waking up, angry at being disturbed.
Daisy slashed her palm and smeared the spiral on the stone, her blood smoking as it soaked in. The wards tried to bite her, but she bared her teeth and forced the magic back with sheer will.
The engine howled, a scream so loud the world outside paused.
Daisy pressed her hand to the core, felt the spiral twist through her veins.
At first, nothing. Then everything, memories she didn’t own, pain that wasn’t hers, the whole lineage of Ravensworth running backwards through time, each ancestor screaming for their own survival.
She held on, let it burn.
And when the world finally snapped, Daisy’s scream was the only sound left.
She woke on the floor, the engine shattered, the crystal veins bleeding out into the dirt. Eleanora hovered above, one hand pressed to Daisy’s chest.
“You did it,” she whispered. “It’s gone.”
Samuel slumped against the wall, face gray but alive. Xeris roared from above, the tunnel shuddering with the sound.
Daisy sat up, wiped the blood from her mouth, and looked at the spiral on her wrist. It was there, but different, open at the center, the lines no longer burning but alive with their own strange energy.
“Is it over?” Daisy asked.
Eleanora shook her head. “Not for them.” She meant the city, the survivors, everyone outside waiting for the new day.
Daisy grinned, wiped her face with the back of her scaled hand, and stood.
“Then let’s get to work.”
Together, they marched into the light.