I swallowed and reached for the place inside where the Academy kept that hum and where Elira’s lessons lived like folded sheets. Cable crossed without breaking the lines as I brought the hinge and left the hammer.
I stepped between two spindly trees, their bark covered with frost that glittered faintly even in low light. We were close. We had to be.
The air barely tugged at the mark along my hip. The light overhead tightened as if waiting to be threaded.
“Here,” I said, not sure how I knew until my fingers brushed the space and felt it…give. Not a door. A loop. A place where the stitch had slipped and was waiting for the right hand to catch it.
Nova saw it when I did, and her eyes warmed in a way I rarely saw. “There.”
I drew a breath, lifted a hand, and the bramble mule sneezed at the exact wrong second, showering us all with pastel confetti like a blessing from a party that had ended three realms over. Even the foxlet seemed to enjoy the celebration.
Stella did not even blink.
“We accept,” she said regally, and squeezed my elbow. “Do it, darling. Before the show loses its audience.”
“I am the audience,” Twobble said. “And I am absorbed.”
I touched the loop.
Cold bit my fingertips, sharp as needles. The air peeled like a violin string tightened too far, and the loop tried to run, the way dropped stitches do. I followed, quick and sure, the way Luna had taught me with patience.
Catch, lift, pass back. Don’t pull. Invite.
It came. The stitch slid onto my magic like a shiver onto skin. The space between the trees smoothed, then quivered, panic trembling along its outline like a horse sensing a storm.
Keegan’s palm was flat between my shoulders. “I’ve got you.”
“I know,” I whispered, because I did, and because saying it made the shiver less.
Something shifted on the far side of the stones. A shadow skated along frost, too thin to be a person, too thick to be air. It paused, testing and waiting.
“Do not press,” Nova said softly, and the frost along her breath rimed the word.
The shadow altered, amused or annoyed, I couldn’t tell. It slid, liquid and deliberate, to the right.
“Neutral,” Ardetia warned, voice like a bell. “Do not break the quiet.”
The shadow paused. Considered. Moved again but left, this time, to the gap where the birches bent like old women comparing notes. It paused there, too. The frost did not blacken, none of us had lied, but the cold deepened as if the ground drew a breath and held it.
The Bramble mule stamped and snorted. Twobble patted his neck.
“It’s fine,” he fibbed cheerfully. “Everything is fine, nothing is pressing from a realm that should mind its own business.”
“Nobody breathe too much,” Skonk whispered. “It might notice we’re alive.”
“Helpful,” Bella said, amused and ready.
But I eased the stitch home slowly until it nestled back into the line where it belonged. No opening and no invitation.
The hum under my feet steadied as the shadow, deprived of the seam it wanted, turned away.
The darkness slid along the far birch and stopped in front of one of the pale stones. There, smudged just above eye level, Luna had tied a raven feather with blue thread.
My heart skipped, then sprinted.
“Luna,” I breathed.
Keegan saw it then, too. His jaw worked once. “She’s been here.”
