Page 114 of The Threads Between

I left them to their not-quite-argument and lengthened my stride, giving them what privacy the march allowed. Lily's amusement brushed against mine. She had been watching too.

They're hopeless, she sent.

We were worse, I reminded her.

We were different.

Were we?

A pause. Then, softer: No. I suppose we weren't.

Oxford appeared on the horizon as a darkness against the stars. The air changed first, the clean smell of open fields giving way to coal smoke and river damp and the faint sourness of a city sleeping in its own breath. The spires rose against the sky in shapes I knew better than my own reflection. I had walked these streets as a boy, learning which alleys to avoid, which merchants would let me linger, which parks offered enough space to breathe. I had walked them as a young man, hunting, always hunting, while my father's will sang in my blood.

I had never walked them free.

Tonight, I would.

I glanced back to check on the column and found Ruth.

The young Seer had fallen into step beside Lily, her pale face intent in the moonlight. She was speaking, low and urgent, her hand gripping Lily's arm hard enough to stop her in her tracks.

Lily's face went white.

Her breath caught. Something cold flickered through the bond, and then she shut down. Stillness. The kind that came from forcing yourself to feel nothing at all.

Lily?

A pause. Too long.

Then warmth flowed back to me, reassurance and love braided together.

But beneath it, something had changed. A door I hadn't known existed now stood between us. Not locked, just . . . closed. A room she wasn't letting me enter.

Ruth released Lily's arm and stepped back. She looked like she might be sick. Lily said something to her, quiet, steady, and Ruth nodded once before slipping back into the column.

Lily stood alone for a moment. Then she squared her shoulders and kept walking.

I turned back to the road ahead.

The unease did not leave me.

Beth appeared at my side, her face pale in the moonlight.

“The Iron Spire,” she said quietly. “Where exactly?”

I pointed toward the eastern edge of the city, where a tower rose slightly higher than the others, newer construction, Gothic revival, built by a man who wanted the world to know his power.

“There. The Hawthorne seat. My father built it after my mother died, a monument to everything he believed he was owed.”

“And he'll be inside?”

“At this hour, yes. He rarely leaves. He has private quarters in the upper floors. The lower levels are where he meets with his hunters and plans his campaigns.” I paused, old memories surfacing unbidden. “There are cells beneath. For Weavers he wanted to . . . question.”

Beth's jaw tightened. She did not ask what kind of questioning.

“Defenses?”

“Men on the roof. Sentries at every entrance. The main doors are reinforced iron. They won't fall easily.” I studied the distant spire, seeing it with the eyes of a man who had lived inside its walls. “But there are service entrances. Passages for servants. Ways in that my father considers beneath notice.”