She nods. Doesn't stand.
"I've been trying to figure out what I did at the wards last night," she says. She turns her hands over, studying her palms. The burn scar on her left wrist catches the fading light. "When those hostiles came through the junction, the power came through and I matched it without thinking. I don't know where I pulled it from."
"You'll figure it out."
"What if I can't do it again?"
"Then you'll figure that out too."
Her mouth tightens. She folds her hands, tucking the scar beneath her fingers.
I reach into my coat.
The stone sits in my hand. Bone-colored. Smooth. Small enough to hold in a closed fist. Heavier than it looks.
I set it on my open palm between us.
"Lanthar gave me this in Thessivane," I say. "It carries the truth of why he left. Every year. Every choice he made and what it cost. He asked me to carry it until you were ready."
Mira looks at it. One finger rises slowly, hovering. She touches it with the same careful test she gives wards and stone walls and every unfamiliar surface. Then certain. She takes it.
The stone brightens at her touch. The bone-white surface warms, and a luminescence rises from inside, gold-tinged and steady. The oak branch above us creaks. The bird goes silent.
She closes her fist around it.
Her eyes shut. Her shoulders drop. Her breath goes deep and full. Her expression shifts, cracks, shifts again, and I look away because this is hers.
When her eyes open they are wet.
"I feel him," she says. "He left himself in here so I would know."
"Yes."
She opens her fist. Looks at the stone resting in her palm. Her thumb moves across the surface.
"I'll look when I choose," she says. "Not before."
She puts the stone in her pocket. Keeps her fingers pressed against it through the fabric.
"Uncle Max."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
She doesn't say anything else. She stands and walks toward Seraphina's quarters with her hand in her pocket and her spine two inches straighter than when I sat down.
I stay in the garden. The oaks are still. The bird has resumed. Around me, gear checked, routes planned.
That night,neither of us needs to sleep. But the bond reaches for the dream space anyway.
I close my eyes beside her. Her breathing is even against my arm. The crescent marks pulse in tandem and the room narrows to the sound of two hearts beating in sync, and the dream takes us.
A rooftop. Atlanta spread below us. Different from the sunlit field of the first dream, different from the moonlit clearing of the second. This is concrete and city light. The skyline lit up in amber and white, traffic and music at a distance.
She stands at the edge. Black boots. Hair down. The crescent at her collar bright against the dark. She's looking at the city with the same measured focus she gave the strategy map. Holding the scope of it without flinching.
I stand beside her.
