The third call was coming.
It pressed against the edges of my awareness like a wave preparing to crash. My body was already bracing for impact—shoulders tight, lungs aching, every muscle coiled like I could somehowoutruna sound.
Because once the third cry came, it would be done. The spell sealed. The choice gone.
And we would all obey and come to heel.
Whether we wanted to or not.
Chapter2
The third call vibrated up through the stone and into my spine. My body locked. The ground seemed to tense beneath me, like the creature behind the sound was curled somewhere deep below.
The compulsion pressed down on my shoulders, dragging me forward step by step. I tried to resist it … I always did. When I was younger, I thought if I clenched my jaw hard enough, if I braced my legs, if I justwantedit badly enough, I could hold on to my will.
The Aetherthorn compelled with magic though. And I definitely wasn’t strong enough to resist that.
My toes cut shallow prints into the red dust as we stepped through the manor gates and into the light.
I squinted against it, the morning sun already high, pressing down on my face like the flat of a hot hand after the manor’s dim corridors. I lifted one hand to shield my brow, breath still tight in my throat, heart pounding … not from exertion, but from the unbearablestillnesspressing down over the city.
Everything waswrong.
The road ahead was full of bodies. Silent. Shuffling.
People spilled from every gate and doorway, men still pulling on robes, women with half-braided hair, children gripping their mothers’ skirts. All of them walking the same direction, heads low, mouths clamped shut. Not out of choice though.
That was the Aetherthorn’s other cruelty.
Once it made its final call, it demanded silence.
I took another step, then another, the pull steady now, threaded through my veins like it had always lived there. My eyes flicked to the side, searching the crowd without meaning to. Looking for a sign. A face. A reason.
They were looking too.
At me.
Even in fear, even under a spell, their eyes followed me like a body caught in orbit.
A woman in a soot-streaked apron stumbled mid-step as I passed. A boy gawked so hard his mother tugged him forward by the wrist. An old man moving in the shadow of a shuttered stall turned his head to follow me, his mouth slightly open, eyes wide with something that looked like awe.
They couldn’t speak. But their stares screamed loud enough.
I felt their awe crawling across my skin. I’d never get used to it.
The weight of it. The way their silence made it worse … no whispered comments, no feigned indifference. Just that bare, hungrylook. Like I wasn’t one of them. Like I was somethingother, moving among mere mortals.
I pulled the robe tighter around myself, though I knew it was useless. The fabric clung to the curve of my waist, to the line of my neck.
The Aetherthorn’s call echoed again and my skin prickled.
Calismae shot me a look, her face drawn tight with irritation and judgment. She couldn’t speak, but her lips moved anyway, muttering her fury in silence. Likely about waste.
Of water. Of time. Ofhope. She had plenty to choose from.
I looked down at my feet.
The red dust was already clinging to my freshly scrubbed skin, streaking my ankles, packing into the lines of my soles. The grit rasped with every step, grinding against the tender spots still pink from the bath.
