A wave of heat pulsed through my wrist, receded, then rushed forward again, even stronger than before.

I sucked in a sharp breath as the sensation crossed that shallow line between discomfort and pain, between hot and burning.

My Wielder was dead. I'd seen his corpse. His empty blue eyes, his empty hands, his impaled chest. And yet his mark was throbbing upon my wrist, as if he were summoning me.

No — not Brendan. Any mage in his employ, who he had deemed worthy of a Catalyst, would have been able to operate the mark. While Brendan was alive, none of them would have dared summon one of his personal Catalysts. But now that he was dead, there were six mages in the city who could activate the mark.

Heat washed over me again, internal fire streaming up through my veins, down to the tips of my fingers and up as far as my elbow. I'd never felt it like this before — never risked not getting to Brendan before it reached this point. And it would only keep getting worse.

The pain came again, hit me like a fist and sent me stumbling back against the bookshop's brick wall.

"Severine?" Juhan was next to me, a worried hand reaching out, but not quite touching. "What's wrong? What's happening to you?"

"My mark—" I managed to squeeze out before the heat shot through me again, rendered me speechless. It took me a moment to find my voice again. "Being summoned."

"Your mark?" He sounded confused, as if he couldn't quite understand what was happening. "Does it hurt?"

I couldn't answer. The mage on the other end of the mark was wielding it like a red-hot poker, driving that searing tip into me again and again. Pain pierced through my skin, plunged down into my flesh, drilled into my bones, until it was the only thing I could feel. If it had been real, my arm would have been melting, skin dripping away like wax — but it was magic, and my wrist was untouched and unburnt. This pain could continue forever, until it was my mind that melted away instead.

A fresh wave of agony ripped through me. I collapsed back against the brick wall, my other hand clamped over my mouth as I fought back the screams that were clawing their way up my throat.

Juhan's hands found me, one a heavy weight steadying my shoulder, the other offering itself as a noble sacrifice to my clutching fingers, to my nails that dug into his skin. "Talk to me, Severine, tell me what's going on."

But there was no talking. Invisible flames were pouring out from my mark, burning me alive. Not just my arm now, but my whole body, as if I were the condemned witch at the heart of a pyre. My back arched as I writhed against the brick, holding back a shriek.

Somewhere there was a mage who was calling me, summoning me, and the only way to make it end was to go to them. In that moment, with tears trailing hot down my cheeks, I wanted to. I would throw myself on my knees, beg, scream, cry, plead, whatever it took. Whatever I had to do to make the pain end. I jerked away from the wall, ready to bolt back to the office.

Juhan grabbed me, pinned me back into place. "Severine!"

A sob escaped me. I shook my head back and forth. "I can't. I can't. I can't—"

Another wave of pain made me grit my teeth, and I could feel my face twist with the effort to bite back the screaming.

"Trust me," he said.

Trust me, he said, and then his hand clamped down over my wrist.

Trust me, he said, and then it was lightning that filled my body. Electricity shot through me, a new and sharper type of pain, cutting jagged lines back and forth across my senses as it arced from my wrist to my limbs, to my heart, to my lungs. The mark on my wrist became a burning star, a constellation of agony, a white-hot supernova that exploded out over me.

Trust me, he said, and then the blackness came and ate me alive.

---

I woke up in the back of a strange car.

My head felt like it had been deep underwater. I groaned as I turned it, blinking. The view in front of me was the back of the passenger seat. It had elastic netting slung across the back, forming a pocket: in it was a half-empty water bottle, a partially used roll of bandages, three candy bars, and a tin of mints.

"Hey," a voice said from somewhere above me. I looked up, and belatedly realized my head was in Juhan's lap. "How are you feeling?"

"What happened?" I asked, and my voice sounded dry. My body felt oddly stiff, like I'd been laying in one position for a long time. Say, curled up awkwardly in the backseat of a car.

"I was about to ask you that," he replied, fingers skimming over the slope of my shoulder. The touch was light, tentative, almost a little afraid. Not of me, but of touching me. Of hurting me, perhaps.

I shifted, cautiously lifting a hand to touch my face — and noticed the white gauze that had been wound about my wrist. That explained the used roll of bandages. "My mark…"

"Did something go wrong with the spell — did Brendan's death warp the magic behind it?" There was genuine curiosity mingled with concern in Juhan's words, as if he hadn't watched the whole thing unfold.

I felt my brow furrow. "No, I don't think so." My attempt at sitting up was short lived; a hammer thudded against the inside of my skull when I tried to go vertical. Wincing, I dropped my head back down into Juhan's lap. "I was being summoned… one of the other mages. Since I couldn't respond in time, it started burning."

The muscles under my head were suddenly very stiff. "It burned?"

Trying to nod my head seemed like a very bad idea, so I didn't bother. "Yes. Not… real burning. It just feels like it's burning."

"And that's normal?" Strange, now his voice was stiff too.

"If I don't respond in time, yes." Why was I explaining this to him again? Juhan was a mage. With a Catalyst of his own. Surely he knew how marks worked?

"…I'm starting to regret not having been the one to kill Brendan," he muttered, only half under his breath. He shook his head, then sighed. "Severine, I don't— I don't know how to say this without sounding condescending, but I can't not say it. Your mark should never cause you pain. A mage summoning you should not cause you pain. None of this should cause you pain."

I blinked, then squinted up at him. I was pretty sure it was something he'd done — and not the mark — that had resulted in my brain feeling like it was trapped in a vice. "So why does my head hurt so much now?"

"Shit." A fingertip trailed over my forehead, forming a string of runes. Tiny rainbows danced across my vision, and I quickly closed my eyes in case the whirling shapes made the aching in my skull worse.

When I opened them again, the pain was gone. My head felt clear and light.

Juhan was peering down at me. "Better?"

"Yeah." This time I was able to push myself upright without anything beating at the inside of my skull. A definite improvement. Now I could see more of the vehicle we were in, though I was starting to wish I couldn't. We were crammed in the back seat of a four-door sedan that had to be nearly two decades old. It still boasted a CD player and manual buttons on its dash, along with a concerning and somewhat suspicious stain on the front passenger seat. I wasn't sure what kind of spill would produce that shade of green. "Why did it hurt in the first place, though?"

A look of contrition flashed over his features, darted through those pine-and-amber eyes. "Marks generally don't like to be messed with, and yours was no exception. I didn't realize it would react… quite as strongly as it did. It took a lot of power to override it." He shifted in his seat. "I healed you as much as I could, before I reached my limit and needed to recharge. If there's anything else that still hurts, I can probably take care of it now."

I shook my head, despite the dull ache that still pulled across my hips. Probably from lying twisted for so long. "Conserve your magic. You may need it later." Now that I was sitting up, I took the opportunity to look around. Based on what I could see out the vehicle's windows, we were in a parking ramp of some kind. A large green square painted on the closest pillar was emblazoned with a "3W" in block letters. The sunlight suffusing through the structure's open sides put us above ground — my guess was three stories up, based on the green square — and sometime in the early afternoon. "Where are we?"

"Mall parking ramp. Seemed like a good place to hide for the moment." Juhan leaned forward, scooping a bottle of something orange that definitely wasn't orange juice off the floorboard. "Here. You must be thirsty."

I gave the bottle a dubious look when he offered it to me, but took it anyway. The taste of fake orangeade was only mildly unpleasant when it hit my lips, but it was better than that dry feeling that had been sticking to my tongue. "I think… I think you need to tell me everything."

He nodded. "Of course."

I waited, but Juhan didn't seem inclined to say more than that. He was staring down at his lap, a wrinkle creased deep between his brows.

"Why were you in Brendan's office?" I prodded.

His shoulders rose, then slumped again as he gave a slow sigh. Finally his hazel eyes flicked up towards my face. "My father wanted me to attempt to continue negotiations, despite the revelation about Brendan's intentions. I arrived for the morning's meeting, as planned. A woman I thought was Odyssa let me into what appeared to be an empty office…" Juhan trailed off, then shook his head. "It smelled wrong. The illusion was near-perfect, good enough to fool me, but they got sloppy when it came to the scent. Smelled too much like blood and ash in there. Once I started prodding, the whole illusion collapsed."

He ended there, frowning, but I wasn't satisfied. "And then?"

"And then I was alone in an office with two bloody corpses," he replied. "It seemed obvious enough that it was a set-up, so I threw on an invisibility spell. The plan was to sneak out with whoever came into the office next — and then you walked in."

I tipped my head, studying his expression. "Why would that change anything?"

"Severine…" Confusion and sorrow mixed in equal measure in his features, then were chased away by something I could only call a determined regret. "I was not going to leave you there, not knowing someone in that building had already killed one Catalyst. If another mage is willing to do that…" Juhan let out a heavy breath. "I would never forgive myself if I left you there, and found out you were the next to die. Or if you were blamed for letting me sneak past you, or accused of being my accomplice."

The door creaked as I leaned back against it. "But I am your accomplice now, Juhan. I helped you escape."

"Shit." Hazel eyes blinked at me, and I thought I saw his brown face pale. "I didn't think— I'm sorry, Severine. I was so focused on getting you out, I didn't—"

I stopped him with a raised hand. I didn't need his apology; it had been my own choice to help him flee. Besides, clearly I had thought that part through more than he had, and I wasn't worried. Kasimir might be mad, but he'd never be so mad as to hurt me. Once I got back to the office, I would explain things, and life would go on from there. In the meanwhile, I still had questions for Juhan to answer. "Why was your illusion able to open the door?"

"So you did notice that," he responded softly. Juhan raised a hand to fiddle with an errant curl that had escaped his ponytail. Something about the topic made him fidget. "It wasn't an illusion. I can make a duplicate of a person — a true duplicate. Flesh and bone, the whole nine yards."

Too many questions sprang to mind; I had to take a moment to narrow it down to just one. "Can you duplicate anyone? Me?"

"In theory, yes," he answered, the words slow and measured. Being careful what he told me. Which meant he was also hiding some things. "Though it's easier to copy myself, and I can only do one at a time."

"So what happened to the duplicate?" I asked, ignoring his discomfort with the topic. In theory, I'd helped to save his life, or at least his freedom. He owed me a little uncomfortable truth. "The one we left behind in the office?"

He pulled the curl straight, then released it. More fidgeting. "When I dispel the magic, or get out of range, the duplicate dies — for lack of a better word — and leaves a body behind. It turns to ash after a few hours."

"So there's a Juhan-shaped corpse back at the office?"

Juhan shook his head. "By now, it's a pile of ash."

I looked away, staring out the vehicle's small rear window. This floor of the parking ramp seemed to be empty save for us; not surprising, given that we were at the mall in the middle of a weekday. All in all, I had to give him credit: not a terrible hiding spot. I wouldn't have thought to look here, and I doubted anyone else in Brendan's employ would either. "Will they know, what it is — what it was? The duplicate?"

"Doubtful," he answered, and I heard cloth rub against fabric as he moved. When I looked back, Juhan had pulled one leg up on the seat, a hand loosely clasped around the knee. Even though he wasn't as tall as Brendan had been, the backseat didn't offer enough room for him to fully stretch his legs. I wondered how long he'd ignored leg cramps to offer his lap as my headrest while I'd been knocked out. "Anyone with even basic skills will recognize it as magic, but exactly what kind… Probably not."

"Brendan couldn't make duplicates," I thought aloud, processing the information he'd shared. "I don't know if any of his mages could, not like that. Maybe replicate an inanimate object, but more often they'd go with illusions."

Juhan dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Nor can I summon shadows, or make them solid, like Brendan could."

…like Brendan could. Heat tried to rise to my cheeks as I thought about the last time Brendan had used his shadow magic, but I fought it back down. Instead, I focused on fiddling with the loose edge of the bandage around my wrist. Certain details I definitely did not need to offer up to Juhan. "What's the plan, then?"

"Ah, that." He tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling only a few inches above his head. "It's not great. The murder is dominating local news, there's a BOLO out for me, and apparently the police are actively patrolling all the major roads leading out of the city. Best I could think of was to try to sneak out on a rural road under the cover of darkness."

"So we just hide out until then?" I asked, trying not to frown. Sunset was still hours away, and spending those hours in the cramped backseat of what was likely a stolen car didn't sound like my idea of a good time. By now, I'd fussed enough with the bandage that the gauze was starting to unwind, revealing a hint of angry pink skin. No blood or open wounds, at least, but I bet there had been at one point. Tugging down on the gauze, I could just barely see the top line of my mark, as bold black as it had always been, except…

"Unless you've got a better pla—" Juhan stopped mid-syllable as he looked back down and caught sight of what I was doing.

…something was wrong with the mark. The shape seemed off. Different. Wrong.

"Severine," he started again, anxiety sharpening his tone. "I was going to tell you…"

In my peripheral vision, I could see him reaching for me. To stop me, maybe. But he was too slow, and I yanked the bandage down to reveal my wrist.

His hands dropped short of touching me. Even if he had grabbed me, I might not have reacted. All I could do was stare at my mark.

Well, not my mark. A mark on my body, but not a mark that I considered mine. In place of the shield bearing a tower and a sun, there was a wolf's head. Its jaws were open, and it clenched a crescent moon between its fangs.

The Parkkonen mark.