One day.
Twenty-four hours of his sister's damnable bargain had already evaporated like dew in the sun, leaving him with a dwindling reserve of time and a growing, acidic rage.
Patience was a virtue Caelan possessed in abundance. He could wait decades for a political rival to misstep, a century for a favored wine to reach its peak. But the thought of Isadora, trapped in the alchemical hell of Viregate, had taken his five hundred years of composure and set it on fire.
He had one lead. A whisper from a terrified stable boy who had seen a girl matching Isadora's description speaking with a fox-masked man on the night of the ball. A man who had given her an obsidian key.
There was only one creature in Bellmere with the audacity, the skill, and the theatrical flair to use a fox mask for his sigil. Kasien Locke. The Bone-Reaper. An alchemist so depraved the Council had declared him dead two centuries ago to avoid the embarrassment of admitting they had merely exiled him.
