“A Hollow’s stitch,” Lady Limora said, standing a little apart, as if listening to a dance no one else heard. “Ancients use it to bind wilder places to calmer ones. It’s slippery as eels, but once you have it, you can pull a whole bend into the magic andmake it behave.” Her smile turned rueful. “For a while. That’s how a truce is made.”
A truce with Gideon?
“Where?” I asked.
Bella pivoted like the compass had decided to be a fox for fun and pointed her nose toward a row of ice-laced birches ahead. Their white trunks gleamed with that soft internal light the Luminary gave to anything that had agreed to winter without complaining.
“Of course,” Stella said. “The birches.”
We moved again. The bramble mule minced like a gentleman in patent shoes, ears flicking at the whispering frost. Twobble slid his earmuffs off one ear so he could hear the snow’s ideas and on again when the ideas became criticism.
Skonk tried not to step on his own scarf and failed, then pretended he’d meant to bow to the ice, which accepted the gesture with grave courtesy. Ardetia walked as if she feared breaking a rule she could not name.
As we drew nearer, the birches leaned together like gossiping aunts. Their branches had frozen into tiny chandeliers
“Neutral ground tightens here,” Nova murmured. “It will pinch if we try to force anything.”
“So no forcing,” I said. “We breathe, listen, and ask.”
Stella beamed. “Finally, a place that understands manners.”
We stopped in a shallow dell nested by forest, where the frost had written a lace tablecloth over the ground. The thread braid sagged above us, one loop hanging low enough to touch if I stood on tiptoe and ignored every sensible fiber in my being.
“Don’t touch with fear,” Nova warned, reading my mind. “Fear makes knots and kinks, and knots in magic make for very unsavory outcomes.”
“What makes unknots?” Twobble asked.
“Tea,” Stella said promptly, rummaging in her bag. “Which we will have after we don’t die.”
Keegan’s low laugh crystallized in the air and hung there like a charm. It steadied me enough to look up at the loop properly. There was a slip. A single strand had missed the catch and made a sulky little detour that would, given time, pull the whole braid into a mess.
“I see it,” I breathed.
“Then be the hinge,” Nova said.
“Leave the hammer,” I murmured, and reached up.
As before, the cold bit, but now it felt familiar, like the second plunge of hands into snow when you’ve decided frostbite is worth this much beauty.
I coaxed the loop the way Luna would have with patience and stubborn kindness.Come on. You belong here, not wandering. Back with your sisters.It resisted once, then sighed and slipped into place. The braid shivered, relieved, and pulled tight.
The air changed.
It wasn’t warm, but it was easier. A path sketched itself in frost-silver along the birches and out over a sheet of ice that flared like a lake in moonlight. Something far off chimed again.
A raven’s shadow slid over us without the bird. It left confidence in its wake, but I felt uneasy with every step closer to the unknown, to Gideon…
And Luna.
What if that was nothing more than an elaborate trap?
“That,” Bella said, ears pricked, “is the way.”
“Or the bait,” Keegan said, only helping my worries right along.
But at least we were on the same page.
“It’s both,” Nova said serenely. “That’s how neutral ground works. It gives you the truth and asks whether you can be trusted with it.”
