She was near.
The quiet in the room adjusted around that knowing, settling more densely, as if it had been waiting for her arrival.
When I turned, Caelira stood just inside the doorway.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t announce herself or ask any questions. Her gaze went first to the ledge beyond where I stood.
To the raven.
I felt the change in her then. The same stillness I’d noticed all morning found purchase in her posture, sinking past skin and bone.
The raven didn’t turn toward her. Its silver eyes remained fixed on me.
Caelira held where she was, shoulders easy, stance balanced. She was too composed given the alertness in her eyes.
Joren shifted beside the desk, glancing between us and then back to the bird, clearly aware that something had changed without knowing what.
I turned fully to her.
She met my gaze without hesitating. Her face gave nothing away, but her eyes were sharp, measuring. Taking in details I hadn’t yet offered. She was steady in a way that didn’t come from calm.
It came from readiness.
She didn’t look at the raven again. She watched me instead, as if waiting to see what I would do with what we were both sensing and neither of us was naming.
The bond tightened between us, warm and unyielding, a reminder that whatever had begun was no longer content to stay distant.
Caeliras gaze flicked briefly and deliberately to where Joren stood.
Joren followed her look, then mine. Whatever he saw there made his expression shift. Not alarmed or offended, just understanding.
“I’ll give you a moment,” he said easily. “I should check on the lower tier anyway.”
He didn’t wait for agreement.
He left. The door closing softly behind him.
She stayed where she was, eyes on me. “I didn’t sleep well,” she said.
It was the kind of sentence you used when the truth behind it was too large to lift all at once.
I didn’t ask what she had seen. The weight of it pressed in anyway, a held breath. A sense of something vast and unfinished crowding the space between us. Whatever had followed her out of sleep hadn’t left her yet. It waited, patiently, just beneath the surface.
I went to her.
There was no hesitation in it. I drew her in, one arm firm at her back, one arm firm at her back, the other settling at her waist. She leaned into me fully, her forehead finding my chest, her breath catching once before evening out. The simple fact of it, her weight, her warmth, hit harder than any warning.
For a moment, that was enough.
The world narrowed to the quiet space between our heartbeats, to the steady proof of her there, real and unbroken.
Chapter 41
Messenger from the Hall
ATLAS
The storm does not announce itself when it means to kill you. It waits until you believe the air has settled.
