Page 30 of The Threads Between

“Stop staring,” Syra murmured beside me. “You’ll draw attention.”

“It’s unsettling.”

“It’s necessary.” She adjusted her own face—currently appearing as a respectable middle-aged woman with graying hair—and kept walking. “And I need practice. Holding three glamours simultaneously is no small task.”

Adeline walked on my other side, her usual blonde hair now appearing dark brown, her features subtly shifted. She looked like a distant Wolfe cousin—close enough to the family resemblance to be believable, different enough to be unremarkable.

“How much longer?” I asked.

We’d been walking through Mayfair for twenty minutes now, Syra holding the glamours steady while we navigated increasingly expensive streets. The plan was simple: buy Marigold a birthday present—she turned eleven today. Then return home to surprise her before the final planning session.

Simple and normal. The sort of errand people ran when they were not preparing to infiltrate the Royal Opera House and attempt something that could kill them all.

“There.” Adeline pointed ahead. “Hatchards. Best selection in London.”

The bookshop loomed before us—three stories of elegant windows displaying leather-bound volumes. Exactly the kind of place that would have adventure stories for a brave eleven-year-old who’d survived too much already.

We were crossing the street when it happened.

The ghost-thread flared.

Heat blazed in my chest. Not the gentle pulse I’d carried for months. This was proximity. August was close. Here.

I stopped walking. My breath caught on something—not air. Heat. My hand flew to my sternum and pressed hard, but the burning wasn't on my skin. It was deeper. Reaching for something. The magic in my chest had recognized him before I had, and it was straining toward him like a hound on a leash.

“Lily.” Syra’s voice was sharp. “Are you unwell?”

“He’s here.” The words came out strangled, half pulled out of me before I could stop them.

My eyes swept the street desperately. Carriages. Pedestrians. A confectioner’s shop across the way. A woman in blue descending from a carriage.

Nothing—no one I recognized.

But the connection burned like a brand, insisting he was right there.

“I don’t see him,” Adeline said quietly, scanning the street with careful eyes.

“The glamours are working,” Syra muttered. “He would not know you if he stared straight at you. Now move before we attract notice.”

Her hand closed around my arm, pulling me forward. Toward the bookshop. Away from August.

The connection screamed. Every instinct I had was telling me to turn around, to search, to find him.

But Syra’s grip was iron, and Adeline was already opening the bookshop door.

“Inside,” Syra hissed. “Now.”

I let them pull me into the shop, my heart hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs. The door closed behind us with a soft chime.

And the connection began to fade, stretching thin like a wire pulled between two hands.

He’d been right there. I just knew it. Close enough that I could have seen whether his eyes were still his or if the corruption had eaten them hollow. Could have known if he was still my August.

“Breathe,” Adeline said quietly.

“Good morning, ladies.” A voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. The shopkeeper—middle-aged, thin, with a pinched expression that suggested he had been born disapproving of things—inclined his head just enough to satisfy propriety. “May I assist you? Or are you merely browsing?”

The dismissiveness lay not in the words but in the way he delivered them, as though he already knew the answer.