Page 115 of The Last Stitch

“You were right,” I said, holding it out to her. “About the electricity. About the changes coming.”

She stared at the ledger like it might bite her.

“So now you believe me.”

“Now I have proof you were telling the truth.” I set it on the balustrade between us.

“Which means everything else you've said—about being from the future, about the pendant, about not being a Weaver⁠—”

“Is also true,” she finished, lifting her chin. “But you needed proof. Needed it written down in ink before you could trust me.”

“I'm a hunter, Lily. I'm trained not to trust.”

“And I'm the woman you've been investigating.” She looked away. “The one you dance with while your father watches. While you decide whether I'm worth the lies you're telling.”

“You are.” The words came out rougher than I intended. “Worth every lie. Every risk.”

She met my gaze, searching for something.

“Why? Why risk everything for someone you don't even trust?”

Because I did trust her. Had trusted her from the moment she'd threatened to hit me with a pitcher, looked me in the eye and refused to cower. Had trusted her when the voice of my upbringing screamed that she was dangerous.

But saying that would be crossing a line I couldn't uncross. So I said nothing.

Instead, I slipped a chain from beneath my shirt. A pendant swung free—golden casing, an hourglass no larger than a tear. Sand inside shimmered but never fell.

Lily's face went white.

“Where did you get that?” Her hand reached toward it, then froze.

CHAPTER 34

LILY

The instant the pendant touched my skin the Weave startled awake. Heat poured from the hourglass—no bigger than a wish—and spilled up my arm in quicksilver filaments only I could feel. My lungs full of night air vanished; the world narrowed to gold, glass, and the thunder of two matching heartbeats.

It was identical to the necklace that had broken the night I tore through centuries: the same cage-fine filigree, the same grains of sparkling sand. Mine had shattered and bled light; his lay whole, latent, as if waiting for its missing twin to speak its true name.

I curled my fingers round it before he could think to stop me.

The Weave answered—threads whipping from the dark corners of the terrace, fizzing across my knuckles like live wire. The balustrade thrummed beneath my bracing palm, stone shivering as though it remembered being sand and longed—just for a heartbeat—to flow again.

Elowen’s necklace.

I looked up. “Where did you get this?” The question rasped out half-prayer, half-accusation.

For the first time his certainty sounded brittle, like ice thin over running water. “It was my mother’s.”

“I found it after she—” A ragged swallow. “After the Weavers killed her.”

Wind off the gardens could not match the cold that slid down my spine. The pendant pulsed between us, tethered to its chain, tethered to every choice we’d made.

“She never took it off,” he went on, softer, staring at the hourglass as though it might begin to breathe. “Father called it rubbish jewelry. Garrick thought it odd—glass, sand that never moved. But the first time it touched me. . .” His jaw flexed. “It felt. . . important.”

I drew a shaking breath. There would be no going back from this.

“August, your mother wasn’t killed by Weavers—she was a Weaver. She was trying to stop the Unravelling before it ever started. Her magic brought me back to this moment.”