I didn't teleport back to my vault.
I walked.
Needed the time to cool off, let Diana's face fade from behind my eyes before I broke something. Or summoned something. Preferably both.
The streets were mostly empty, city lights casting their usual glamour—charming from far off, grubby up close. My boots tapped along cracked pavement, power humming low and irritated beneath my skin like a storm that hadn't chosen where to hit yet.
When I reached the vault's outer perimeter, my wards shivered.
Not in warning.
In recognition.
Something had already breached the outer seal.
"Shit," I muttered, flicking my wrist and triggering a silent perimeter check. My rings lit up, and I felt the ripple.
No damage to the locks.
No signs of forced entry.
But the protection spells on the mirror room?
Dead.
The kind of dead that meant something powerful had simply asked them to lie down.
And they'd listened.
With every step deeper into the building, my senses screamed louder.
I slipped a blade into my palm—a silver-edged crescent, spelled to hold until death or deal—and pushed open the main door to the showroom.
The lights were still on.
So was the kettle in the back kitchen.
The tea smelled like roses.
And someone was sitting in my chair.
A man.
No aura I recognized—just cold. Cold like the ocean floor, like bones in a forgotten grave. His skin was pale. Not vampire-pale, but moonlight pale. Clean-cut. Neatly dressed. Almost boring.
Except for the eyes.
Pitch black.
Like someone had scooped out his soul and replaced it with mirrors.
"I'd offer you something stronger than tea," I said, not lowering the knife, "but I get the feeling you're not the drinking type."
"I'm here on behalf of the Council," he said calmly. His voice wasn't cold. It was… absent.
Like something wearing a human's throat.
"Oh, good," I said, slinking sideways toward the potions cabinet without looking like I was slinking. "I was starting to miss being blackmailed before breakfast."
He smiled thinly. "You're late for your bi-monthly report."
"I've been busy derailing destiny. You know how it is."
"You tampered with a forming bond." His tone didn't change. "One that had a ninety-four percent success rate."
"I'm charming like that."
He didn't blink. "You're making a lot of noise, Gray Armini Yoit."
I rolled my shoulders. "Noise is the only way to get your attention. Guess it worked."
He stood, finally.
And that's when I saw it.
The object on the table beside him.
Not just a mirror.
The mirror.
I froze.
Venetian glass, silver-backed, rimmed in obsidian and wrapped in a snake of runes that weren't just etched—they were alive. Crawling.
My blood went cold.
"That's a Binding Glass," I said, flat.
"It was recovered during the Malthus raids," he replied. "Reactivated last week. Connected to a broken thread of timeline echo."
"Which one?"
"Yours."
My mouth went dry.
"This is your warning," he said, walking slowly around the table, fingers trailing over my walls, my furniture, my home. "The Council will tolerate interference for only so long. If the sixth mate is disrupted—again—we step in."
"You step in now, you get war," I said, low.
The man—or whatever he was wearing as skin—didn't even twitch.
"You're a contractor with a frayed record, three probationary deals, and no official backing from any court. You are not a war."
I smiled.
Not the pleasant kind. The kind that made demons reconsider contracts and fae reword their deals.
"See, that's where you're wrong," I said, stepping forward and letting the magic slough off me like old skin. The vault responded—dim lights flickering to a deep violet as my wards shifted tone. Not defensive. Territorial.
I dropped the blade into the table with a sharp thunk. "I'm not a war. I'm a cataclysm."
His head tilted slightly.
"I've got favors called in from the Plague Keepers of the Eastern Waste. Blood chits owed from the last Time-Thread crisis. The Cinder Sisters still owe me five miracles and one apocalypse, and before you ask, yes—those are separate line items."
I took a step forward, slow and deliberate.
"I've got a standing agreement with three Lesser Deaths, a drinking debt the Kraken still hasn't paid off, and a nightmare curse keyed directly to the bloodline of the Council's fourth speaker—whose name I remember, even if you don't."
The shadows in the vault twitched.
The Binding Glass rattled on the table.
"I brokered the ceasefire during the Schism Wars. Taught the Red Witches how to stabilize soulfire when your little magical elite couldn't figure out why it was killing half their initiates."
His hand twitched—just barely.
"Hell, the only reason your fancy Council still exists is because I haven't bothered to collapse the original pact sigil, which, surprise, surprise—I designed."
A pause.
Then, in a voice so soft it nearly slid beneath hearing:
"You are not in their records."
I grinned.
"Good. I worked hard to stay that way."
His black eyes narrowed. For the first time, he seemed to hesitate.
I let the silence stretch.
Then I leaned over the table, fingers just brushing the edge of the Council's card.
"You want to remind me of the rules, darling? I wrote them. You want to threaten me with exile? I live outside your reach. You want to talk leverage?" I tapped the Binding Glass. "Try again. You're in my house. My magic. My terms."
The card smoked.
Just a wisp.
He took a step back. The tiniest flicker of tension around his jaw.
"I'll report your position," he said.
"Do that. And make sure to tell them I said hi." I smiled wider. "Tell them the 'Evil Contractor' sends her regards. The first one. Not that little idiot they trained after I left."
He vanished.
Not gracefully.
Not even magically.
He folded out of reality with a jagged edge like torn fabric and rage, leaving behind the smell of scorched iron and static.
The moment he was gone, I slumped back into my chair, letting the wards settle around me like a second skin.
The card was still there, charred on the edges.
I stared at it for a long time.
The way you stare at a knife you know you'll have to use.
The hum of the wards faded. The walls stopped listening. My magic stilled—exhausted, like the rest of me.
I dropped into the nearest chair, not gracefully. Just down. Bones first, soul second.
Everything ached.
My head. My hands. My memory.
That thing—whatever the Council sent—wasn't wrong. I was frayed. Worn thin. I had power, sure. Connections. Favors owed in blood and curses and miracles. I could still shake the world if I wanted to.
But tonight?
I didn't want to.
I just wanted quiet.
One night without echoes of timelines I'd already failed. One breath without the taste of old ash and older regret.
I ran my hand through my hair, fingers catching in tangles. I hadn't even taken my coat off. My boots were still wet. The Binding Glass pulsed quietly from across the room, like it knew. Like it remembered more than I did.
I didn't want to touch it.
Didn't want to see.
But I would.
Because I always did.
Because every time I made a choice, a version of me somewhere paid for it—and I owed them that much.
I looked at the card again.
Black. Embossed. Still smoking slightly at the edges, like it hated being here as much as I hated looking at it.
"You should've stayed forgotten," I whispered.
But the Council remembered me now.
And that meant the game had changed.
Again.
I leaned back and let the silence hold me.
The tired wasn't just in my muscles anymore—it had sunk into my bones. Old soul, old magic. And no matter how many times I came back, the wear never quite washed away.
The mirror shimmered once more. A soft flicker. Like a breath.
I closed my eyes.
Tomorrow, I'd face it.
Tonight, I just sat in the stillness, and let myself feel every crack the years had carved into me.