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His gaze moved toward the sealed doorway behind her. “What’s down here?”
She waved him off, dismissing his question. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
Which naturally made him more concerned, the tell being the single upward lift of an eyebrow.
Agatha huffed out a breath and turned back to the door. Young people truly were exhausting.
The humming beneath the floor pulsed again, and Caelyn’s voice came out with tension laced within it.
“You feel that too.”
It wasn’t a question. He already knew.
Agatha said nothing as she held his gaze.
The resonance beneath the foundations stirred again, and then she saw it.
Recognition.
Not quite the sensitivity common to the Astrari, but something else.
The boy could hear the pattern, she thought. Elowynn could as well, just like Agatha. The ability to sense resonance this clearly was rare, even among the Astrari. But humans should not have been capable of it at all.
Unless…
Caelyn's gaze remained fixed on the doorway, every muscle drawn taut as though he could hear a voice none of them could.
A cold knot of dread coiled in her chest.
Stars preserve them. Were Nulls somehow connected?
How long did they have before the next Blackwake?
As the pair walked back up toward the warmer corridors and away from the sealed doorway, Agatha’s attention caught something glinting from a nearby lantern. She turned toward it to see a folded letter tucked into Caelyn’s shirt pocket, along with the tiny resonance tool she’d sent along with it.
Ah, that was what caught the light.
Agatha raised a questioning brow at Caelyn. Noticing where she was looking, he made an immediate attempt to appear casual in the exact way people do when they are guilty of something.
Agatha snorted and fixed her attention forward.
“What?” he asked as he looked down at her profile.
She waved him off. “Oh nothing. You just become melancholic when you need to delay writing back. No more couriers will be going out for the next few Moons.”
His expression darkened.
“I know, Sister. And …what? I don’t become… melancholic,” he denied.
Agatha kept walking while looking straight ahead. “Might I point out, you stand before the library windows and sigh quite loudly. Like a child not getting their way.”
“That—What? I just watch the storms and breathe normally.”
Agatha stopped her walking, and Caelyn paused, turning to look at her. She stared at him with a leveled expression.
“You quite literally repaired an already functioning lantern last sun because you were upset you’d not be able to write or hear from her again until the thaws.”
“That was maintenance, Sister A—”
