For the first time, I feel like I might be standing at the doorway of something else.
Home, perhaps.
Or something very much like it.
Chapter Forty-Two
Bonus Scene One – Hunter in the Woods
Lander’s point of view
One moment it’s there—bricks,wards, impossible awareness—and the next it’s gone, ripped out of reality. I stand on the empty plot, jaw clenched, pretending the hollow in my chest is anger, not loss.
“Where did it go?” Meredith shrieks, stamping her foot in frustration. “Councillor Kane, what did you do? Where did the house go?”
I ignore her. I warned her the house could move. My arm stings where I shrug off her clawed grip. If she’d done a better job locking the place down, I’d never have had to intervene.
I felt the house’s magic roar against mine—a perfectconnection. But when the tiles shattered and the chimney crumbled, something in me broke. For the first time I felt not righteous anger but shame.
I think I’m losing my mind.
Ridiculous, of course. It’s a sentient structure, an anomaly, a threat. I’m the Ministry’s blunt instrument, their bogeyman.
Human Sector police escort Winifred Crowsdale and her dog away; I follow. Our only witness must be watched.
While I wait at the police station, a late report flashes up on my phone. Branham Woods, Magic Sector—explosion on or near the ley line. Every Ministry channel lights up: ley line surge, minor forest fire, no casualties. Staff swarm the site. I skim the first-pass report between human briefings and press on.
Night has fallen by the time I’m free. Then the follow-ups start—witness statements, half-garbled reports. One kid swears he saw ‘a flying house, like a cartoon’ tumbling out of the sky before the blast.
Skin prickling, I pull the satellite images, the blast pattern, the signature at the impact centre?—
House.
While I was negotiating with humans, the teleporting house collided with the ley line.
I need a closer look.
Arthur, what are you up to?
A tug slides behind my eyes—the bond, sharp and insistent. I let my awareness sink along it until the world blurs, the car interior dissolving to grey. Vision jerks and resolves through Arthur’s eyes—high, fast, banking over scorched trees.
Why is he already there?
I taste smoke with a beak that isn’t mine. The ley line thrums under claw like a plucked wire. Arthur alights on a charred branch. Below, tape flutters where the recovery team has sealed the area, but his gaze fixes on a heap of broken branches instead. Sensing me watching, he looks away—protective. He seldom shows interest in anything non-edible.
Show me.
He obeys. The memory unspools: the scene rewinds to afternoon light as he shows me exactly what he saw. A ring of blackened trunks, at its centre a raw, glassy circle where magic burned the earth clean. The ley line fissure still glows—a thin crack of light.
Something moves.
What is that?
A woman drags herself out of the shimmer on hands and knees, naked, streaked with ash. She’s shaking so hard she can barely keep her elbows locked. Whatever magic she had is torn away, its echo shoved deep into her bones. Ley line residue clings to her like a cobweb—and old brick dust.
Every instinct I own goes quiet, then screams.
No one should be there. No one should survive that.
