Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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Istepped just inside the castle’s main entrance and halted. A subtle wrongness tightened the air, and I immediately stiffened. After a moment, I assured myself there were no tears in the Veil, but my instincts warned me to remain on guard.
My gaze flew to Selene, who sat near the hearth, half turned toward the fireplace opening. A small work light rested on the floor beside her, its beam cutting across soot-dark stone and the pale grit she’d brushed free from the mortar line.
She wore her auburn hair pulled back and had her sleeves rolled up. The sight of her settled me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. Even so, an internal warning flared, urging caution, reminding me not to become distracted by her presence.
My gaze drifted to her tools that lay on a canvas cloth, and I took stock of her measuring tape, chalk, and a notebook with pages already filled. She looked as if she belonged there, and my gut told me she wasn’t the source of the disturbance.
She was lost in her work and hadn’t seemed to notice my entrance, so I allowed myself a moment to study her. A wayward strand of hair teased her cheek. The way it had that fateful night in the grove.
Regret kicked deep inside. Regret that I couldn’t let her know her dream had been real. Regret that I couldn’t approach her now and tuck that strand back once again before burying my nose in her hair.
The scent of her, the way her nearness affected me, haunted me day and night. I might have forgotten her after seeing her once in the pub.
But she’d entered my moonlight, and she should have been mine. “A stór.” My treasure. I’d breathed the word softly, but it was enough to catch her attention.
Selene glanced over her shoulder with a quick smile. “Good morning.”
I dipped my head and greeted her in a level voice as I strode forward. “Morning.”
She moistened her lower lip as though I made her nervous. “I’ve been assessing the fireplace. You’ll be happy to hear the stonework is in better condition than I expected, though there is a crack along the inner lintel. But it should be no problem to fix.”
“Good to hear.”
The way her lips curved and the passion for her work that showed in her expression brightened the darkness brewing inside me. My thoughts returned to that night when, for a few unforgettable moments, I’d possessed that mouth. The taste of her still lingered inside me.
It lingered, and it reopened promises long buried.
Selene turned back toward the hearth and then paused. Her shoulders rose slightly, and she rubbed her hands briskly down her upper arms as she glanced about. “Did it get cooler in here?”
She turned to the middle of the hall and frowned. “Or is it just me?”
That she’d sensed something too concerned me.
I followed her gaze, fearing what I would find.
Gods be damned. Above the center of the circular inlay, the air had split. I knew it.
The tear wasn’t wide. It was only a hairline slit in reality, no thicker than a blade’s edge, one that stretched upward from the floor like a flaw in glass.
Light bent around it, refusing to fall cleanly across the stone.
A thin silver thread shimmered in the gap, taut and vibrating, as though something on the other side had taken hold of it and pulled.
A pocket tear. Small and hungry, but not dangerous. At least not yet.
I forced my posture to remain relaxed despite my increased pulse as I moved forward, placing myself between her and it. I met her gaze and shrugged, all while searching for a plan to eliminate the threat without alerting her to the danger. “Cold air must have followed me inside.”
She accepted my declaration with a small nod, though her brow remained furrowed as she returned her attention to the hearth.
Normally, I would have responded to the breach immediately.
A minor tear could grow exponentially within minutes under the right conditions if the Veil was already strained, if something nearby responded to the disturbance with curiosity or worse, or if the air pressure in the hall continued to drop. The calculus was not complicated.
But Selene was present.
If the tear widened in front of her, there would be no explaining what she might see, no retreat into architectural logic, no clean, professional distance between what she obviously sensed and what it actually was.
I needed her out of the hall. Now.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could expel my contrived reason for her to exit the room, she tilted her head, a thoughtful look on her face.
Her gaze drifted toward the center of the floor again.
Not to the slit itself, which was overhead.
But toward the round inlay, where the displaced air gathered and where the quality of light had changed and grown darker.
She might have noticed the change in light and temperature, but she could not see the tear. I was nearly certain of that.
But she sensed it, and the distinction was becoming less reassuring by the moment.
Cold slid through the slit, not like winter air but like something that had never been warmed by the sun. Shallow waves of it fell on the stones and drifted across the hall. The pressure in the room increased by degrees.
The torch brackets along the walls creaked softly as the metal contracted. Dust that had been drifting in the morning light shifted direction, drew toward the tear, and stalled there, suspended, as though the space itself had taken an interest.
Selene sucked in a quick breath. “That isn’t from outside,” she said, quieter now. “It’s coming from in here.”
I tensed, mentally calculating the steps it would take to seal the opening. “It’s nothing to worry about. If you’ve a chill, there’s an electric teapot in the kitchen that’s connected to the generator. Go make yourself a cup.”
She waved away my comment. “No, there’s definitely something wrong. The pressure isn’t sitting evenly around the inlay. I’m uncertain why, but something needs to be corrected.”
When Selene stood, a string of mental curses rolled through my mind, and I held my hand out, prepared to draw my sword.
What happened next was entirely unexpected.
The tear reacted to her presence.
The silver thread quivered, the slit widening a fraction as though it had sensed her and leaned toward it. The cold deepened. The air thickened and held. A tone rang in my ears, high and thin, like metal stretched past the point it was meant to bear.
My stomach tightened, and I moved closer. I didn’t fear the tear itself. I’d sealed worse than this before, in worse conditions, alone and in the dark. But if I failed to contain it quickly enough, I’d be forced to act with her standing only three feet away.
She crossed the hall with measured, unhurried steps, not afraid because she still believed she was reading a building. I stepped into her path, blocking her. “Really, you just need some tea.”
Instead of following orders, she smiled and stepped around me. “Let me fix this first.”
Selene stopped near the outer ring of the inlay, crouched, and ran her fingers along a seam between two stones. The cold surged, and the tone sharpened past comfort, thin enough to cut.
Moonlight gathered at my fingers without my bidding, pale and coiled, the reflex older than thought. I would seal, cut, and contain.
I was less than two feet from her when the tear widened a fraction more. The heaviness surged, compressing the hall in a sudden, violent pulse.
For one sharp instant, the darkness behind the silver thread shifted, as though something on the other side had turned its attention toward this point in the Veil and found it worth examining.
“Selene,” I said in a low voice, the warning in it as clear as I could make it without explaining what I was cautioning her against.
She didn’t look up. In fact, she ignored me entirely as I hovered over her, placing myself between her and the tear. She kept her attention fixed on the floor, murmuring softly as she examined the inlay. “This stone’s misaligned. It’s subtle, but it’s wrong.”
Wrong was exactly the word.
The moonlight at my hands quivered, ready to erupt. I could seal it. I could force the tear closed in seconds, and the hall would settle, and it would be done.
But she would see. “Why don’t you—”
“Hush.”
Her word hit me sharply, a verbal slap as she reached to her hip and produced a short, flat pry bar from the loop at her belt. Her actions carried the calm, purposeful ease of someone performing the most ordinary correction in the world.
I repeatedly switched my gaze from her to the breach and back again, watching for any sign of increased aggression. Perhaps if I allowed the determined woman to do whatever she was intent on, then she’d leave the room.
She slid the pry bar into the seam and applied steady, even pressure. The misaligned stone lifted with a soft scrape. She rotated it just a fraction and replaced it.
I stared wide-eyed as the filament did not recoil when the tear began to close. It curved toward her first. As if drawn to her.
The gleaming sword erupted from my fingertips. The moment I swung, the gash between realms snapped shut before my blade touched it.
The disturbance collapsed inward, swallowed by the stone beneath her hand, and my blade faded.
That…was not possible.
And yet—
The result of her actions stole my ability to move or speak. The Veil had not resisted her touch. It had accepted it.
The stretched-metal tone cut off mid-note and left a hollow silence in its wake, the cold stopping as cleanly as a door closing. The air rushed back in to fill the space, loosening as it went. Dust fell in slow, drifting spirals and resumed its harmless dance in the morning light.
Selene exhaled. “That’s so much better,” she said, almost to herself. She rubbed her hands together once and then, startled at my proximity, released a soft gasp of surprise. “I didn’t realize you were right there.”