Her thoughts surged in a single, long current rather than in broken pieces. The Threadwalking when she fled the creature had not been an accident. Her mother’s failing health had set more than grief in motion. And the seer’s words had pried open what she’d tried to keep sealed.
Time was thinning. It could tear with one wrong pull, yet there might be enough left to reach her mother before fate closed its teeth.
The seer twitched violently, the motion cracking the room’s stillness, and both of them turned.
Jakobav visibly tensed but said nothing.
Ella flinched. “Um. Are you all right?”
“Oh, just another demon clawing through my skull, dear. Nothing to fuss over. Happens more often than I’d like,” the seer replied, airy and unsettlingly calm, and then her gaze cleared as if a film had lifted. She moved with a speed that belonged to a body much younger, leaning in until her breath touched Ella’s cheek.
Ella didn’t flinch this time, and Jakobav stepped closer in a single controlled shift, his fingers finding her hand and closing around it with a grip that spoke of possession and protection in equal parts. She couldn’t tell which he intended; she only knew she was grateful for the steadiness and answered by squeezing back.
“You believe you’re still hunting the relic to reopen the realms, don’t you?” the seer hissed.
Ella straightened defiantly. “I am?—”
“No, silly girl,” the seer cut in, sharp as a snapped thread. “You haven’t been hunting for that for some time.” Her head tilted, her attention sliding to Jakobav with open disdain. “Your heinous Guard is working overtime quelling those breaches rather than curing them, Commander. Quite distasteful, really.”
Jakobav shifted a fraction, placing himself half a step more in front of Ella, the line of his jaw set, his grip tightening once at her hand before easing into a looser hold. His voice came out cold. “Careful.” The word landed with threat, his stillness radiating menace into the already suffocating air.
Her attention swiveled back, pinning Ella with unnerving focus. “Tell me, Princess, have you felt the call lately? That insatiable pull?”
Ella swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.
Her heart jolted painfully as she realized the truth. She hadn’t felt it, not for days. The obsession that had once consumed her, the relentless drive to seek the relic had vanished, and the absence hollowed her in ways she couldn’t explain.
But how…?
The seer withdrew slowly, her body bending and slithering in movements too unnatural to belong to flesh and bone. “No, dear. Your thread is pulling elsewhere now, isn’t it?” Her gaze dropped pointedly to where Ella’s fingers were still tangled in Jakobav’s grip.
Ella’s lungs seized, air catching uselessly in her chest.
Her fingers slipped from his hand as her knees weakened, and she swayed into him before she could stop it. Jakobav’s arm came around her waist instantly, anchoring her, as though anticipating the collapse.
Jakobav was the key.
Gods. She’d been so wrong. The magic hadn’t been guiding her to an object at all. It had been guiding her to him. He was the match. He was the flame.
Not some ancient artifact.
The revelation struck with the force of an earthquake, rattling through every part of her until she could hardly stand. Heat gathered in her palms, unsteady and barely contained, pressure building behind her ribs in a way she couldn’t will away.
The seer turned from them as though bored, drifting deeper into the shadows with her crooked gait.
“No!” Ella cried, desperation cracking through her voice as she reached after her. “The prophecy said relic. Relic means old, ancient. The fates selected that word specifically. How could I have been so far off?”
The old woman paused at the far side of the room, her spine twisting as she turned slowly back toward them.
Her grin spread grotesquely wide. “Perhaps what is within is far older than what is on the outside.”
A terrible cackle tore from her throat, rising higher and louder until the rafters seemed to vibrate with it.
“Don’t judge the guts by the carcass, dear. They might be the tastiest you’ve ever eaten.”
Jakobav’s jaw tightened. His voice cut through the noise, low and final. “Enough. We’re done here.”
Then she vanished around the corner, her laughter trailing behind like a curse.
