The charms above the frame pulsed once, testing and recognizing, and then the door swung inward.
Karvey ducked inside.
In all the time I’d known him, I had rarely seen him comeinsidethe cottage from the kitchen. He preferred the front door, lintel, the roofline, anywhere that gave him a good vantage point without tracking stone dust onto Miora’s rugs. Today, he stepped fully into the kitchen, shoulders hunched slightly under the low beam, gray stone skin striated with glimmers of quartz.
His eyes, deep-set, thoughtful, normally slow to change, were bright.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked without preamble. His voice was deeper than usual, with a rough edge, like the cliff faces outside when the wind’s up.
We all answered at once.
“Yes—”
“I think so—”
“For now—”
“This depends on your definition—”
Karvey’s gaze scanned the room, counting us. Me. Keegan at my shoulder. Miora in her chair. Mom by the table. Dad half standing. Twobble and Skonk clustered near the hearth. He relaxed a fraction when he’d apparently accounted for everyone.
“Good,” he said. “Stay close.”
“Close to what?” Twobble asked. “We’re already close. This is a cottage, not a manor.”
“Something’s pressing,” Karvey said. “From below.”
The phrase landed like dropped cutlery.
“Below what?” My dad asked.
Karvey’s jaw shifted, the stone along his cheek flexing like muscle. “The ground. The foundations. The old lines under the cottage.” His gaze flicked to me. “Under you.”
My butterfly mark tingled.
I licked my lips. “Do you mean… leylines? Or something else?”
Karvey’s eyes went half-lidded, listening inward. “Old stone remembers everything that’s walked on it,” he said. “And everything that’s tried to walk through. This—” He grimaced. “This feels like something waking up that possibly shouldn’t.”
Nova would have had a precise term. I had two words.
“Oh no.”
The cottage shivered again. A spoon vibrated against the rim of a cup. The pattern the morning light made on the floor shifted, sliding toward the far wall a fraction without the sun having moved.
My mother crossed to the door, laying her fingers on the warded frame.
“Did the perimeter break?” she asked Karvey.
“No,” he said. “Not from the outside.”
“Then what…” I began.
Something flickered at the edge of my vision.
A pulse of light.
Not from the hearth, not from the lantern, not from any of the candles. A different color entirely, pale, sharp, almostcolorless. It flashed once across the kitchen floor, cutting through the shadow under the table, then vanished.
