I sat back down, because my legs had decided they were done with this particular moment.
Then I got up, picked up Levon’s testimony, and went to find the others.
Marigold was in the corridor when I came out—Scout on her shoulder, her dark eyes tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
You’ve been in there for hours, she said.
I know. Come look at something.
By the time Elio and Cyrus had found their way to the common room, I’d pinned the map to the wall where everyone could see it—the red markers, the silver lines. Levon’s documentation spread on the table beneath it.
Marigold was already studying it when they arrived. She’d gone very still.
Raven’s trail goes cold in Denver, I said, before anyone could ask. Mundane transport or a clean portal… I can’t follow it further. But that’s not what I need to show you.
Marigold expression tightening, but I forged ahead. I tapped the Prague marker. Then the Budapest one. Then the three in North America.
Over break, I was monitoring the ley lines from Wickem with portal windows, just feeling the energy flow. Every direction, the same thing, a drag in the current. I paused. The same texture I know from the inside. Corrupted wellspring energy.
How many? Cyrus asked. He’d already read the number off the map but he wanted to hear me say it.
Seventeen confirmed sites, I said. Levon’s records and my portal readings land on the same locations.
Elio was leaning over the map, his finger tracing the silver lines. These connections…
Ley line pathways—nodes chosen to maximize contaminated energy flow. I looked at Marigold. Which is how Raven was corrupted.
She looked up.
Not blood magic. Not direct contact. She was downstream from a compromised wellspring for months, absorbing trace amounts. Most people wouldn’t develop full corruption that way. But she was sensitive, isolated… I chose the next word carefully. Accessible. And close to you. So she was chosen.
Marigold’s expression did something complicated. The grief didn’t go away, but underneath it something sharpened.
She wouldn’t have known, she said quietly.
No. There was nothing to notice.
Silence.
Cyrus had his arms crossed, the way he stood when he was processing something he didn’t want to be true. So it’s not just Wickem.
It was never just Wickem.
Elio straightened. My parents’ notes were tracking historical locations, patterns of movement. I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but if I cross-reference against these sites…
Yes. And Levon had practitioners on six continents noticing the same anomalies—each one seeing only their own region. They’re documented here. We’re going to need them.
Marigold had gone back to the map. I watched her absorb the shape of it, not just intellectually, but into her bones.
She looked at the seventeen red markers for a long moment.
Then we have to find them all, she said.
Yes, I said. We do.
Cyrus exhaled. My father will want a briefing.
I nodded.
