Page 45 of The Vespertine Treaty

“You have five minutes, My Lady,” Silas murmured, his voice barely audible, strained as if the words were being dragged out of him against his programming. “Any active magical thread detected after that will be isolated by the estate's wards. And any prohibited object found during my sweep of this room will be confiscated.”

“Thank you, Silas,” I breathed.

I didn't waste another second. I placed the stone carefully on the cold marble of my vanity table. The light in the centre was sputtering, a dying ember in a pile of ash.

I closed my eyes and focused. Scrying was usually a matter of simple arithmetic—aligning the unique frequency of my corewith the recipient’s to create a bridge through the ether. It was a universal principle, shared by Cenites and Aenites alike.

But here, the magic felt heavy. The Alistair estate wasn't Void of magic; it was drowning in the wrong kind. The ancient wards saturated the atmosphere with the heavy, static hum of Death-magic, a suffocating blanket that sought to reject any spark of Life energy.

However, the defences were built to crush sieges, not silence whispers. It was a flaw born of pure Cenite arrogance—assuming that anything small enough to slip through the cracks wasn't worth stopping. I had to thread the needle, keeping the vibration thin enough to slip between the heavy weave of his wards.

I reached out with my spirit, tuning the stone to search for Aemelia’s specific resonance—a brilliant magenta aura that always felt like summer strawberries and sunlight.

I poured my Empathy into the stone, feeding it the last of my energy to stabilise the connection.

Please,I begged the universe.Find her.

A moment passed, then another. The silence of the room mocked me. I was about to give up, to accept that the darkness had finally won, when a faint, familiar warmth brushed against my mind.

It was Aemelia.

“She’s still alive!” Poppy chirped in my head, jumping onto the vanity to stare at the stone. “I was beginning to think the big bad wolf got her, too.”

My heart ached with the absurdity of it all. I reached out along the magical thread.Aemelia.

“Ophelia? Finally! You promised to signal me the moment you reached your bedchambers!”

Aemelia’s mental voice hit me like a burst of sunlight. It was vibrant, loud, and full of worried energy, flooding the link with a force that made me gasp. Her emotions were a brilliant, chaotic tapestry of concern and love, a stark, beautiful contrast to the desolate wasteland of the Alistair estate. It was jarring, like opening the door of a crypt and finding a garden. I savored the feeling. If our connection truly worked both ways, let him feel the phantom sensation of my laughter. Let him choke on the pure, uncomplicated joy of a life he cannot touch.

My Empathy went into overdrive, drinking in the genuine affection, starving for it.

But the sudden surge of emotion came with a cost.

Simultaneously, I felt the bond tighten around my ribs. It wasn't physical, but psychic—a cold, metallic constriction. The Void.

Cain.

He couldn't hear us. He couldn't hear Aemelia’s voice or know who I was speaking to, but he would be able to feel the sudden, blazing heat of my relief and joy. To a creature of the Void, my sudden burst of emotion must have felt like a blinding flare in the dark.

I felt a pressure shift in the back of my mind—a cold, alert heaviness. He was sensing the anomaly, a predator raising its head to investigate a change in the wind.

“Aemelia”,I sent, trying to calm the frantic beating of my heart so the feedback loop wouldn't alert him further. “I’m here. I’m okay.”

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re okay,”Aemelia snapped back, her thought-voice trembling.“When we spoke in the powder room, you were shaking, Ophelia. And then you walked out of the ballroom with him and vanished. I haven’t heard a single word since. The consuls are saying it was a romantic retreat, but I saw his face. I saw yours. Did he punish you for the scene on the dance floor? Is he hurting you?”

The questions hung in the ether, dangerous and sharp. The fear in her voice spiked my own adrenaline, and I flinched as a wave of cold washed over me from the bond—a reflex reaction from the other side.

“No”,I lied, forcing my internal state to smooth out, dampening the panic so he wouldn't feel the jagged edges of it. “He hasn't raised a hand to me.But he had flayed my mind open. His quiet, calculated cruelty was a more insidious poison.It’s… it’s strange here. The air is so heavy with nothing. No emotions. It's like living in a library full of ghosts he refuses to release.”

The cold pressure in my mind intensified. It felt sharp, agitated. I didn't know if he was angry or simply disturbed by the foreign warmth of my connection, but the sensation was like ice water trickling down my spine.

“A library full of ghosts sounds better than living with that brooding, terrifying prince of darkness”, Aemelia scoffed, her mental tone filled with disdain.“I hate this, Ophelia. I hate that you are the one paying the price for the world’s safety. It makes me sick to think of you trapped in that ice box, serving as some sort of stabiliser for a monster who doesn't know the meaning of mercy.”

I laughed, a genuine, rusty sound that felt foreign on my tongue. It was a sound of grief, not humour, but it was a release. Isavoured the feeling. If the bond truly worked both ways, let him feel the phantom sensation of my laughter. Let him choke on the pure, uncomplicated joy of friendship.

“I can’t change it, Em,”I sent back, the laughter fading into a heavy resignation.“I am the sacrifice. That’s what we were born for. If I leave, the balance tips, and everything we love turns to ash. I have to stay.”

“Then make him regret underestimating you,”Aemelia’s voice was a hiss of pure frustration, mixed with a fierce, protective steel.“If you have to stay in the cage with the monster, you make sure he knows you have teeth. You are not just his Void calmer, Ophelia. You are the only thing standing between him and total madness. That gives you power. Use it.”