“Fenrik is downstairs,” I said, though the draft was nudging me toward the West Wing again. “Why send me there?”
“Perhaps the source isn’t the man, but what the man has forgotten.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Buildings obey bloodlines not out of loyalty, but out of resonance. Like a tuning fork. Fenrik is the frequency this house vibrates to. When he unravels,the mortar cracks. If it is sending you to the West Wing, it is because there is something there that vibrates with the same frequency as his curse.”
She stepped back into the shadows, offering no help, only a grim sort of permission.
“Some rooms refuse entry to those who aren’t ready,” she said. “And some rooms refuse to let you leave until you know the truth. I suggest you stop fighting the current, miss. The house is much older than you, and far more stubborn.”
I might have followed Fenrik’s rules and stayed away from the West Wing, but apparently I didn’t have much of a choice. The corridor behind me had practically inhaled itself and Mrs. Crane with it, leaving only the forward path through the arched doorway. The shadows that huddled in the corners of the main house didn’t exist here. They were scoured away by a rich, honey-gold light that seemed to come from the mortar of the stones.
It was the same colour Fenrik had claimed my magic was.Sunlight through honey.I’d never believed him, magic had always been frost in my veins, a necessary numbness to stifle the screams of dying things. I reached out, pressing my palm against the rough-hewn stone of the wall. I gasped, jerking my hand back, then slowly pressing it flat again. The wall was vibrating. It was the hum of my own gift.
“You’re copying me,” I whispered to the empty air.
A low, grinding snarl tore through the golden haze ahead. I rounded the corner and froze. Blocking the hallway was one of the sentinel beasts, the Leonine. Besides the time it tried to eatme in the hallway, I’d seen it now and then perched frozen on the roof eaves, like a gargoyle. But right now, the thing looked terrified.
Its shoulder height reached my chest. Fissures ran along its flanks, and from inside the cracks, that same brilliant gold light poured out, blindingly bright. It paced frantically, claws gouging deep furrows into the floorboards, its stone tail lashing.
Every time it moved, sparks of gold flew.
“Oh,” I said, the realization hitting me. It was trembling with the strain of holding the lightin. It was fighting its own nature, trying to remain cold and silent stone when everything inside it wanted to burn.
“You’re hurting yourself,” I said, my voice dropping into the rhythmic cadence I reserved for the infirmary’s worst cases. “You’re holding it so tight you’re breaking.”
The Leonine Sentinel whipped its head toward me. Its eyes were pools of molten gold. It roared and bunched its muscles to spring.
I didn’t flinch. I let my instincts take the reins, my fear dissolving into the work. I stepped forward, my hands raised and my palms open.
“I know,” I said softly. “I know it burns. I know you think you have to be stone. You think if you let it go, you’ll destroy everything.”
It was what I had told myself since I was twelve years old.Be cold. Be quiet. Clamp it down or people get hurt.
The beast hesitated, a whine escaping its stone throat. The vibration in the walls spiked.
“Let it flow,” I said, stepping into the creature’s reach. I laid my hands on its nose. My Quieting gift felt like dousing a fire with ice water, but this time, surrounded by the manor’s golden mimicry, I didn’t push the energy down. I pulled it through.
“Easy,” I said, stroking its mane. “Do not fight the light. Be the lantern, not the cage.”
My magic surged, beautifully warm. The cracks in the lion’s flank didn’t close, but the violent, spilling energy settled into a steady glow and the frantic scratching stopped. The Sentinel leaned into my touch, its heavy stone eyelids drooping, a rumble starting in its chest that sounded like a colossal cat’s purr.
I stared at my hands against the glowing stone. They weren’t numb. They weren’t blue with cold. They were flushed with heat, shining with the same gold that lit the hallway. The house had led me here to show me another kind of mirror this time. All this time, I thought the coldness of my magic was its nature, but the cold was just the strain of suppression.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the beast, and to the walls around us.
The Sentinel nudged my shoulder, gentle despite its weight, and stepped aside. It sat on its haunches, glowing steadily now, watching me with intelligent eyes. The path behind it was clear.
I pressed deeper into the corridor. The golden light that had poured from the Sentinel didn’t fade; instead, it seemed to seep into the walls, illuminating the path forward. As I walked, theshadows retreated, revealing that the grey stone of the West Wing wasn’t bare. The walls on my left were a canvas. A mural, faded by time, stretched along the length of the hall. It wasn’t the stiff, martial portraiture I had seen in the Great Hall, grim men and women holding swords or gazing imperiously over their lands. This was something much older. I reached out, my fingers hovering over a flake of lapis lazuli pigment.
The painting depicted the manor. It was painted as a living heart, situated at the convergence of silver rivers that weren’t water, but light.Ley-lines. They pulsed in the painting, depicted as silver roots feeding the estate from the deep earth. And the figures. The lords and ladies of Stormgarde weren’t depicted conquering the beasts of the valley. One panel showed a woman in robes the colour of storm clouds kneeling before a massive, wounded drake, her hands glowing with the same golden light I had just seen on my own palms. Another showed a man with the Stormgarde jawline, sharp and severe, like Fenrik’s, playing a lute for a circle of timber-wolves that watched him with rapt intelligence.
“So you were meant to be a sanctuary,” I said.
This wasn’t a prison for monsters. The Stormgardes weren’t jailers; they were healers. Wardens of the wild magic that the rest of the world feared. Fenrik believed he was cursed, broken because his magic bridged the gap between man and beast, but here, on these walls, that bridge was celebrated. Interpretation flooded me. The sigils painted along the baseboard that might have been decorative crests were binding runes of protectionand symbiosis, weaving the safety of the house into the safety of the creatures. The sheer tragedy of it made my chest ache. Fenrik was starving himself of the very connection his bloodline was built to sustain.
The corridor ended abruptly in a smooth, panelled wall of dark walnut.
“Is this it?” I asked the silence. “A history lesson?”
The house answered with a vibration that travelled up through the soles of my boots. The golden light that had been acting as my torch didn’t stop at the wall. It surged forward, intensifying until it was almost blinding. It hit the walnut panelling and hissed.
