For the first time since we entered the Wyrdwood, the magic running beneath my skin didn't feel entirely like my own. Something answered my magic, and it wasn’t Malric.
And whatever waited within that tower had sensed us as clearly as we had sensed it.
Chapter Two
AVELINE
Isensed it before I saw anything.
The tower shifted around me, not in sound or motion, but in awareness. The stone beneath my feet held a memory in it, an emotion that responded to my father and me. It indicated changes in the weather, my mood, and more. Today, though, as I was still drained from dinner with Father a few nights previously, I had been slow to leave my bed when the tower changed. Something prompted me to rise from the window seat—my book forgotten on the cushion beside me—and go to the balcony. The late light had faded into a dull copper glow, and the trees beyond the glass looked darker than they had moments ago, as though the forest had tightened around the tower.
The narrow balcony waited beyond the arched door, its iron railing cold against my palms. I stepped out, and the wind brushed my cheeks with a damp coolness that smelled of wet leaves and old earth. The height made my stomach flutter, and I clutched the railing to ensure I was safe.
Below, the forest lay hushed. The canopy was a dark quilt of overlapping branches. The last light caught in the higher leaves like embers refusing to go out. The shadow of the towerpooled thickest at its base, the vines twining around the stone like sentries. I leaned forward, scanning the darkness as I had countless times, searching for movement that never came.
Two figures stood at the foot of the tower.
My breath caught as the change registered.
For a long moment, my mind refused to accept what my eyes insisted on. Men. Not ghosts. Not the lonely tricks of a tower that shifted hallways and hid rooms when I tried to map it. Men in travel-worn leathers, their posture indicating they were warriors, weight balanced as if they expected an attack.
One stood slightly forward, still and watchful, his attention fixed on the boundary that ringed the tower. The other moved with a restless energy that reached even up here, his head tipped as though listening for something beyond hearing. When he shifted, the air seemed to shift with him, pressure tightening and loosening in a slow pulse that made my skin prickle.
I had not seen another person in years, except for my father.
Father came and went as he pleased, on his schedule, never lingering long enough for questions, not that he would answer them when I dared ask. Beyond him, there had been no one. No guards. No servants. No court. No footsteps in the hall. No voices drifted up the stairwell.
Except—a memory slid up through the fog in my mind, sharp and unwelcome. A corridor lined with torches. Steel glinting. Boots striking stone in unison. A woman’s laugh in the distance, light and controlled. A servant’s hands smoothing my hair while I sat still.
My fingers curled around the iron rail until my knuckles ached.
The men below conferred, their heads bent close. I couldn't hear their words, only the shape of their focus. The forward one, the dark-haired one, lifted a gloved hand and tested the barrier—thorns woven into living vines, coiled tight around the tower’sbase. The vines shuddered beneath his touch but didn't strike. Their spines remained folded inward, alive and alert. Assessing.
The tower would protect me.
That was what Father said.
The thought came automatically, the way a prayer comes when you have said it too many times to remember choosing it. I tried to hold it in place, tried to let it settle me the way it always had.
But I wasn’t calm.
The tower wasn’t reacting as I expected, rejecting the strangers. It was considering them, testing them. I could sense the tower’s curiosity, as if it were a living entity.
They didn't circle like predators. They didn't draw weapons. They didn't shout challenges or call for guards. They stood as if they had expected stone and found something stranger. The dark-haired one studied the barrier the way Father studied me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Not with cruelty. With thoughtful measurement.
A slow chill moved through me, followed by something warmer beneath it that didn't belong to the evening air.
The fair-haired one shifted from side to side, restless, then, as if some thread had tugged his attention upward, he looked toward the balcony.
Our gazes met.
The moment snapped tight. A line drawn between us that stole the breath from my lungs. His eyes were too bright to be softened by distance, a stormlight intensity that made me feel seen in a way I had not been in so long it almost hurt. Not just seen as a figure in a window. Seen as something that mattered.
My body reacted before my mind did. The heat that had been simmering low inside of me flared sharply and caused cramping in my lower belly. I gripped my stomach, doubled over a bit to ease the pain, and stumbled back into the archway, my shoulderstriking stone. The cold bite of granite grounded me. I pressed my palm flat against it and tried to force my breath into a steady rhythm.
The warmth inside me spread, low and sudden, curling inward before pushing outward again. It was not fear. Fear had sharp edges. This was softer, stranger, threaded through with a restless awareness that made my skin feel too close. As though something beneath it had stirred and was pressing outward, seeking something, a connection to something or someone.
I stayed in the shadows, listening to my breath and the faint hum of the tower beneath my feet. The hum was different now. Not the distant, steady thrum I’d always felt in the walls when Father was near. This was lighter. Higher. As if the tower were listening.
