I felt him before I heard him, the subtle shift in the air that always came with Joren’s approach. A presence I trusted behind me without needing to turn.
“Let me guess,” Joren said as he came up behind me, voice as dry as kindling. “You’re brooding because the Storm Court is on edge, or because you’re about to do something you’ll regret later.”
I didn’t answer.
He stepped up beside me and rested his arms on the parapet, easy and unhurried. For a few quiet seconds, the storm, the politics, the weight of the castle all faded into the background, leaving only the quiet comfort of him standing there.
Joren exhaled once, “That’s usually when you say something grim.”
I stayed silent.
His gaze shifted then, not to the horizon, but to me. To the way my shoulders were set. To the fist I hadn’t opened.
“What’s in your hand?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said.
That drew a faint crease between his brows. “Since when do you hesitate before looking at what the world hands you?”
A corner of his mouth tugged.
“You’re holding that like it bites. Which is usually my cue to either run or get a drink.”
The storm rolled distantly below us, low and hollow.
I exhaled once and opened my hand.
The thread caught in the light as my fingers spread, for a heartbeat nothing happened. Then Joren’s breath caught, like a man who had stepped onto ground he hadn’t realized was hollow. The faint curve at the corner of his mouth vanished, his expression emptying of humor so completely it was almost unsettling to watch. He leaned closer without meaning to, carefully, as if the air between us had turned fragile.
The black and silver glimmered faintly, the light skating along its surface in soft, restless pulses. Joren stared at it for a long moment.
“That’s not possible,” he said at last. His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even firm. It was quiet in the way a belief sounds when it cracks for the first time.
He looked up at me then, eyes sharp now, searching my face instead of the thread. “Where did it come from?”
“A raven,” I said. “Not one of ours.”
“It landed on the parapet,” I nodded toward the stone, “dropped this in front of me, the flew straight back out over the cliffs.”
Joren went quiet at that. I hesitated, then added, “Before it left… it wasn’t looking at me.”
His gaze sharpened. “Then who?”
“The windows to her rooms,” I said. “It was watching her.”
Understanding moved across his face in slow, grim stages. He didn’t look at me. His gaze drifted instead toward the castle, toward the stone and towers and the woman moving somewhereinside, unaware that something old had just spoken without a word.
A breath left him, low and measured, like a man recognizing a signal he had never hoped to see.
“That wasn’t sent to be found,” he said at last. “It was sent to be answered.”
The storm shifted overhead.
I closed my hand and let my arm fall to my side, as if by hiding it I could delay what came next. For a heartbeat, fear lanced through me, not of her, not of the magic, but of the scale of what I was about to place in her hands.
I paused outside her chambers longer than necessary, then knocked lightly. Her chambers were dim when I entered, the curtains drawn against the lingering light outside, the air holding that fragile stillness that comes after something has already broken.
She stood near the window, back to me, the glass still marked by the faint smear of rain. The space between us felt heavier than it should have.
