Elma, six months into her involuntary second life, lay flat on her back, staring at the perfectly sculpted, corniced ceiling of her nursery. The room was a pale, sickening shade of blue.

  She had woken into this existence after a deal she did not remember making, bound to an entity she had never even heard of, its presence lingering at the edges of her thoughts like a name swallowed before it could be spoken.

  This. The thought rasped through her like steel on stone.

  This is an obscenity.

  She had been forged to be a weapon: a machine of war, capable of closing five hundred feet in a heartbeat, regenerating from a snapped spine in seconds, tearing a man’s head from his shoulders with a flick of her wrist.

  And now she was attempting to roll over.

  The pristine silk sheet beneath her—something D-66 would have used as kindling—bunched under her shoulder. She poured every scrap of veteran consciousness into the task. Contract the left serratus! Torque the hips! Use the momentum of the head to—

  The effort ended in a puff of infant exertion. She flopped back onto the mattress, the only result a slight, useless wobble of her cheek.

  Rage swelled, cold and precise, a familiar pressure pressing behind her eyes—the first stirrings of the ravaging instinct. Unleash! We tear the ceiling down! We rip the lace from the window! We consume the crib!

  Then, Christa’s gentle voice floated in from the hall, humming a soft, utterly useless nursery rhyme.

  “Restrain!” Elma’s rational mind slammed on the brakes of her rampage. She had thought this through—if she wanted to survive, she would have to act compliant whenever others were present.

  The repressed energy had to go somewhere. Her tiny, soft hands closed into absurdly small, trembling fists. She opened her mouth and latched onto the nearest available target: the cuff of her own cotton sleeve.

  She chewed with grim, singular purpose. She was trying to tear the weave, to test her new teeth, to exert some shred of control. But the cotton was surprisingly resilient, and her gums were pathetic. It was a futile gesture, and utterly humiliating.

  "Is my little doll playing with her clothes again?"

  A maid, a plump, smiling woman named Leta, leaned over the crib. She had the audacity to coo.

  "Such a strong little girl!" Leta gently disengaged the chewed sleeve from Elma's mouth and offered her a brightly colored wooden rattle.

  She settled for clamping her jaw down hard on the rattle, glaring daggers at the maid who continued to smile obliviously.

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  Elma found the sheer scale of the manor a strategic waste of space—but it had one immense, saving grace: her father, Lord Valerius Altheris, was almost always absent.

  Lord Valerius was not a man of quiet authority. Towering and broad-shouldered, draped in his Guild's gold, richly embroidered silks, he was defined by a single, deafening characteristic: his laughter.

  It rolled endlessly through the halls, a booming, joyous proclamation of his confidence and his House’s ascendance. Always too loud, too frequent, and utterly devoid of genuine merriment.

  The occasions when Lord Valerius Altheris remembered he possessed a daughter were terrible.

  It happened roughly once a week. Lord Altheris would appear, freshly armored in his civilian silks, and sweep Elma up from the arms of her panicked maid.

  “Ah, the little jewel! Come, little Elma. Your father has matters of state to attend to!”

  She was strapped to his chest, usually in a cradle that reeked of expensive leather and her father’s metallic, ambitious scent. From this vantage point, she became intimately familiar with the gilded cage of high politics.

  They had gathered in the Grand Study—the room where important people traditionally sat around a heavy table to negotiate Important Things. Borders, alliances, troop movements, trade disputes… Statecraft. They trade words instead of blood. At least the arena was honest.

  And today was no different—except for the fact that the infant in the crib to the side, Elma, was the entire reason both Houses bothered tolerating one another.

  The heavy oak doors groaned open. A woman stepped forward, the sunlight catching the sharp angles of her Altheris gold-plate armor.

  “Thiyya,” Valerius barked. “The situation at the shore.”

  Thiyya didn’t offer a bow; she looked like a woman who hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. “My Lord, the situation is dire. Six Clots formed in a single night. Our current coastal garrison is being Picked apart. They can’t hold the line, let alone contain the spread.”

  From her leather cradle, Elma’s eyes narrowed. Six clots? She didn't know the terminology, but she knew the tone. That was the voice of a commander reporting a breach in the perimeter.

  “I see,” Valerius said. “Then we don't play at defense. We strike with efficient, overwhelming force.”

  “Surely, Lord Altheris,” Nina interrupted. “It isn't so bad as to require your personal presence? I’m quite sure our 'brave' guilds could handle a few shore-growths."

  Elma felt the shift in her father's posture—the subtle tightening of the shoulders. “I’m not going alone."

  He turned to Thiyya, gesturing broadly. “Call the other Houses."

  Thiyya nodded grimly. Then retreated.

  Valerius crossed his arms. “Once the Tide claims a land, it never retreats. If we let it incursion any further, Resonance alone might not be enough to quell it anymore. We’re reaching the breaking point.”

  Resonance.

  She had been killed by this power, then offered it in the void. She had said yes. She had said please.

  Six months. The entity had not spoken. The debt had not been collected.

  What did it want from her? And what price would she pay if she broke the deal?

  The thought sent a cold shiver down her spine.

  Her gaze shifted to her father. Valerius wasn't just a loud, boisterous man. He was the High Master of the Altheris House and a Strategoi—a title that suggested he was as much a butcher as he was a leader.

  Opposite him sat the shadow to his gold: Nina, the Head of the Kresnik House. Together, they controlled most of Veraxys.

  Elma’s mind raced, her gaze fixed on Nina Kresnik’s impassive face. It had stood in the cold chambers of her past life. No hesitation. No doubt. Just the calm authority of someone who had already decided Elma was expendable.

  Elma listened to every word Nina uttered, waiting for a single designation to surface. D—67. Proof that she still existed.

  But there was nothing. No familiar weight in the air. No silent footsteps threading the halls. Not a single sign that D—67 had ever existed at all.

  Is she even still alive? Elma wondered.