Page 36 of The Threads Between

My magic slammed back into my chest with brutal force, and my heart lurched—once, painful and arrhythmic, trying to remember what it was supposed to do.

Another beat. Irregular. Wrong.

Another.

And then—finally, agonizingly—it found its rhythm again. Slow and unsteady. But beating.

Oxygen flooded back in, sharp and raw in my throat. I hadn't known I'd stopped breathing until the air came back and my body remembered what it needed.

I collapsed, hitting the floor hard enough that the impact registered somewhere distant and unimportant. My body shook violently, every muscle spasming in protest of what I’d just put it through.

The pendant’s cold had stopped just short of killing me. Just short of letting me escape.

It had held me right at the edge—let me feel death’s proximity, let me believe for one suspended moment that I’d succeeded—and then pulled me back.

Because I wasn’t allowed to die. Because even choosing oblivion wasn’t mine anymore.

I lay there on the floor, chest heaving, heart beating its painful, irregular rhythm, and something inside me broke that hadn’t broken before.

Not my body. Not even my mind. It was my hope—the last small piece of myself that had believed I could still do something, still choose something, still matter in some way beyond being Elias's weapon.

The door opened.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My body was still shaking, heart still struggling to find its proper rhythm. Every muscle felt wrung out and left to dry.

“August?”

Elias's voice was calm, clinical—like he'd found me reading instead of collapsed on the floor after trying to stop my own heart.

I turned my head slowly and saw him in the doorway, hand tight on the knob. His face had gone pale—just for a heartbeat, eyes wider than they should be—before his expression smoothed into that familiar clinical mask.

But I’d seen it. That flash of something raw before he locked it away.

“What are you doing on the floor?” His voice had regained its usual steadiness, but there was a tightness underneath it.

I could have lied. Should have lied. But the pendant had stripped away whatever self-preservation instinct might have told me to hide this, to pretend. And after what I’d just tried—what I’d just failed to do—I was too empty for deception.

“Attempting to kill myself, Father.”

Silence. Long enough that I heard the clock in the hallway ticking.

Elias stepped into the room and closed the door. The click was precise. Controlled. Everything about him was controlled except for the way his jaw had tightened.

“I see.” He moved to the window, and I noticed the careful deliberation of his next words. “The pendant stopped you, I assume?”

“Yes.” The word tasted like ash.

“Good.” He looked out at London’s fog-wrapped streets. “Can’t have you damaging yourself before tomorrow’s demonstration. Though I’ll admit, I’m curious what prompted this. You’ve been so compliant lately.”

The casualness of it—the way he spoke like we were discussing a minor inconvenience—should have shocked me. Would have, some time ago. Now it just settled over me like another layer of grey.

“Does it matter?” I asked quietly.

“I suppose not.” Elias’s reflection in the glass was perfectly composed, perfectly still. “Though if this is still about that provincial girl⁠—“

“Her name was Lily.” The words came out before I could stop them. Stronger than anything else I’d said. Clearer. Like speaking them burned through some of the numbness.

The reflection didn’t move. But his hand—resting on the windowsill—pressed down harder. Fingers spreading against the wood.