Joren chuckled. “That’s helpful. I’ll bring a battering ram and a warning bell next time.”
Caelira tipped her head just enough to look at him. “Please don’t.”
He grinned widely, eyes lighting up as if the idea delighted him far more than it should. “No promises.”
He let the grin linger for a moment longer.
“I did actually come to be useful,” he said. “City’s calm. Patrols are bored enough to start inventing stories. No runners, no alarms, no ravens doing anything dramatic. If something were wrong, we’d have heard about it by now.”
He shrugged, easy and unbothered. “Feels like a gift.”
Caelira shifted slightly against me, her weight familiar, grounding. I felt her glance up at me, waiting for my read.
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
Joren nodded, satisfied. “Good. Then I’ll leave you to… whatever this is.” His grin flicked back into place. “Try not to make me regret knocking politely.”
Joren stepped back into the corridor, the door closing behind him with a soft thud.
The room settled again.
Caelira remained where she was, her weight still warm against me. Her presence steady in a way that made the quiet feel earned rather than imposed. I lowered my head, pressing a brief kiss into her hair and rested my cheek against the crown of hers.
Outside the city continued exactly as it had before. No alarms. No movement out of rhythm. No sign that anything had been set into motion at all.
I tightened my arm at her back, not in warning or fear, but in acknowledgment of something neither of us had named yet.
The calm did not belong to us.
It was the stillness the storm leaves behind when it has already decided to come.
Chapter 39
Dream of the Broken Court
CAELIRA
The court was already burning when I realized I was standing in it.
Not fire as it should have been. No roar, no heat I could feel. The flames moved without sound, climbing pillars of white stone and gold veined arches as if they were remembering how to destroy.
Above me, the sky was wrong.
It wasn’t night or day, but something split between them. Clouded and bruised, light breaking through in sharp, violent seams. Lightning threaded the air without thunder, striking again and again into nothing at all.
The ground beneath my feet trembled.
The court had been abandoned in a hurry. Banners lay torn across the steps, sigils half burned, their meanings unraveling as I watched. Stone cracked where no blade had struck it. Glass fractured without a hand to touch it.
A pressure built behind my eyes, sharp and sudden, and the air shifted.
Not toward me.
For me.
The court responded as if it had been waiting. Stone hummed under my feet, not with warning but with recognition. The sound sank into my bones as though it knew them. Light bent, drawing inward, not attacking, but aligning.
I felt it then. The pull wasn’t external.
