Mateo nods, clearly unsure whether that’s better or worse than whatever his imagination conjured.
Harper’s voice cuts through, soft but steady: “Sometimes the ones who come back are the hardest to look at.”
I turn to her. No anger fills me. Just weight pressing down on every word. “Then don’t.”
But Harper doesn’t look away. Her gaze holds steady, not with pity or fear, but something else entirely. Something that sees right through me.
Harper’s hurting. I saw it in her face this morning. But she’s still here, offering comfort she probably needs herself.
I move past them both, Harper’s mug still warming my palms. The heat feels like the only real thing left in a world going soft at the edges.
I shut my cabin door, pressing my back against it as I turn the lock. Set the tea on the table, untouched.
My cabin looks normal. Bed made. Floor swept. The small desk cleared except for a stack of notebooks and a pencil case. Everything where I left it.
But my body isn’t right.
I flex my fingers, watching them move. They obey, but something beneath the skin feels altered. Like finding your furniture shifted two inches from where you left it.
I pull a notebook from the stack on the desk and flip to a blank page. The pencil feels heavy as I start to trace shapes. Not symbols. Not the glyphs Lyanna taught me to recognize. Just ... impressions. The cold that gripped me at the boundary line. The pulse that traveled from dirt through skin into bone.
My hand moves without conscious thought. Circles become spirals. Lines fracture and reconnect. Loops interweave, edges breaking and reforming in patterns that feel inevitable.
Silver knotwork. The same design that marks my wrist. The same pattern my blood formed in the Fade.
I trace it again. And again. The shape repeating across the page like my hand knows something my mind refuses to accept.
The pencil slows near the bottom of the page, and I find myself writing a single word:his.
Not Faelan’s name. Just the pronoun.
I stare at the word, my pulse quickening. I didn’t mean to write that. Didn’t think it.
The page rustles as I tear it from the notebook. I carry it to the small sink, strike a match, and hold the flame to the corner. The paper blackens, edges curling inward as fire consumes my unconscious work. The ash crumbles between my fingers, washing down the drain.
I cross to the window and push it open. Cold mountain air rushes in, filling my lungs. Real. Solid. Present. I drag in another breath, forcing my shoulders to relax, my spine to ease.
My magic hums beneath my skin; quiet but strange. Unfamiliar vibrations, like an instrument tuned to the wrong key.
“What did you leave in me?” I whisper.
The question hangs in silence. Outside, branches sway in the breeze. Inside, nothing moves but dust motes caught in fading sunlight.
My reflection stares back from the glass. Eyes steady. Face calm. Too calm for what boils beneath.
The urge to look away wars with something deeper. I turn from the window, but something makes me glance back. For just a moment—a fragment of time too brief to measure—my reflection remains, watching me with eyes that don’t move when I do.
The door opens without hesitation beneath my hand. No need for stealth when purpose drives every step. The compound sleeps, fires banked to glowing embers, security lights dimmed to minimum. My feet remain bare, boots left deliberately beside my bed.
Cold presses against my soles as I cross the packed earth. The sensation grounds me; real, immediate, tactile. Night air slides over my skin, carrying pine and distant smoke.
I head for the treeline beyond the eastern checkpoint. Not the breach site itself. That spot remains quarantined behindLyanna’s wards. I walk toward the space adjacent. To where that first cold ripple slid beneath my skin.
No one challenges me. The night watch focuses outward, scanning for external threats. They don’t expect danger from within.
The grass transitions to pine needles as I reach the forest edge. Moisture seeps between my toes. I stop where shadows deepen, kneeling slowly on the damp ground.
My palms press flat against soil and decay, fingers spreading wide. I close my eyes.
