Then he looked up.
It wasn’t abrupt, nothing in the room shifted to announce it. His attention lifted, as though something had brushed against him, and when he looked up his gaze was already searching for mine.
He found me and forgot that he’d been speaking at all. The conversation around him kept going, voices overlapping, laughter rising and falling, but his focus narrowed.
His eyes took me in fully now, the heat in them immediate and unmistakable. Hunger flared there too, unrestrained by caution, as if the room and everyone in it had ceased to exist.
I felt it like a pull, sharp and grounding all at once.
Joren followed his line of sight and straightened. “There you are,” he said, pushing off the column. “We were starting to think Maren decided to keep you.”
Maren laughed, the sound light and genuine.
Atlas’s gaze lingered for a moment longer before he finally shifted, the heat still there, banked rather than gone.
Calder clapped his hands once, “All right, let’s head out, before Joren starts telling that story again.”
“I tell it better every time,” Joren said, already turning toward the doors.
“You exaggerate,” Kade replied mildly, falling into step beside him.
The group moved without discussion, bodies angling toward the exit, the motion familiar and unforced. Someone reached for a cloak. Someone else held the door before it could swing shut.
Atlas moved behind me, his hand settled briefly at the small of my back as he reached past me to pull the door open. Not lingering, just there, steady and certain.
The touch sent a quiet awareness through me all the same.
Then the door swung open, and the night rushed in.
Cool air spilled across the threshold, carrying salt and the distant hush of waves against stone. Lanternlight flared and steadied, stormglass catching moonlight and breaking it into soft blues and silvers that shifted as we stepped forward.
The Storm Court waited, open and alive beneath the stars.
Beyond the gates of the castle, the streets curved gently downward toward the harbor, stone smoothed by generations of passage and salt air.
Water threaded through the city in narrow channels, reflecting lanternlight in fragments that danced across the walls and undersides of balconies. Music drifted from open doorways weaving through conversation and laughter like a familiar pulse.
People easily moved through it all. Couples walking arm in arm. Groups standing about, smiling, laughing. No one watched us with more than passing interest that faded quickly. Swallowed by the rhythm of the night.
I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t that.
Maren breathed out beside me, a sound that was almost a laugh. “I forgot sometimes how good this place is when the storms are quiet.”
“Not quiet, Joren said, angling toward a narrower street lit by a string of lanterns. “Just behaving.”
Fenix snorted. “Give it time.”
Calder and Kade fell into stead ahead of us, their conversation resuming without pause, the cadence familiar and easy. The group moved as one without needing to decide it, the city guiding us forward.
Atlas stayed just behind my shoulder as we walked, close enough that his presence was a constant warmth without pressing. It felt natural.
Like this was how it was meant to feel.
The street narrowed as we followed it, the lanterns strung overhead swayed gently with the breeze. The air smelled of salt and citrus and something warm rising from kitchens tucked behind open windows.
The tavern came into view around a bend, its windows thrown open to the sear air, light and music pouring out onto the stone. A fiddle cut through the hum of the voices inside, accompanied by the steady beat of a drum that set feet tapping whether they meant to or not.
Fenix slowed, nodding once toward the open doorway. “This is the place.”
