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"Hazel, for the love of everything…"

"It commented on my footwear, Grandmother. It's an insult." Couldn't she see it?

The creature waited through the exchange with what I could only interpret as patience. Then it took another step into the office, bringing the gray with it. The edge of that strange absence spread beneath its feet and swallowed the corner of Danika's rug without changing shape or texture.

"Twenty-six years ago," it said, "I made a promise to a young witch."

Everything that I found funny evaporated from my head.

The magic around my hands remained, but I barely felt it anymore. I thought of my mother at twenty-two years old, sitting in an apartment kitchen making a decision that had somehow reached through her entire life and into mine.

"You're the one," I said. "You're who she bargained with."

"I am."

Danika's fire didn't go out, but it stopped moving. I understood without looking at her that my grandmother had entered this moment prepared for a fight and had now found herself facing something much worse for a woman like her. An explanation she hadn't expected.

"You came to me," she said slowly. "The night Lyra died. You stood in my house and told me the child could not be traded."

The creature's attention shifted toward her. "I did."

"And I didn't believe you." Danika stared at it for another second before adding, with considerably less dignity, "I thought you were a hallucination brought on by grief and a great deal of wine."

"That was also true at the time."

I looked from my grandmother to the creature, trying to decide which part of that statement offended me most. "Let me make sure I understand this. Twenty-six years ago, this thing appeared in your house and told you the exact thing you've spent this entire week trying to figure out, and you ignored it?"

"I did not ignore it. I dismissed it." Danika's expression could have flattened steel. "There is a difference, although not one that reflects particularly well on me."

I might have enjoyed that admission under different circumstances. Before I could, the gray shifted again and the creature's attention returned to me.

"Your mother purchased one provision. No creature in any realm may take you as payment, price, toll, forfeit, wager, tribute, or exchange. The provision is absolute. It does not expire, nor does it contain an exception that can be invoked by another contract. Your mother read the terms twice before she agreed to them."

My throat closed up. I had spent days trying to understand what Lyra Byrne had bought with everything she possessed. Hearing it reduced to terms and provisions should have made it colder somehow. It didn't.

"She was twenty-two." I muttered through numb lips while fighting tears.

"Yes." There was a strange pause before the creature continued. "She was twenty-two, and she negotiated better terms than any creature I have dealt with in four thousand years. I have thought about her often."

I blinked hard against the sudden burn in my eyes.

My mother had known. Whatever else she hadn't known, whether she would live long enough to raise me, whether Danika would keep her promise, whether I would ever understand any of it, she had known exactly what kind of world she was bringing me into. She couldn't stop people from wanting to own me, use me, bargain with me, or turn me into something valuable enough to kill for.

So she had made sure they couldn't.

Lesson number thirty-five: the people who love you don't always get the chance to tell you about it. Sometimes all they can do is build a wall to protect you and hope one day you understand why it was there.

I swallowed before trusting myself to speak. "So that's why nobody has ever been able to close the deal. Danika couldn't do it. The Council couldn't. Neither could any of the fallen."

"That is correct."

"Then why are you here?"

For the first time, the creature hesitated.

"On Saturday, your grandmother's contract will go to auction. Several of the creatures intending to bid have examined your mother's provision and concluded that it does not apply to them."

Blue fire surged around Danika's hands, bright enough to throw shadows across the office. I ignored it.