Stenrik
The clock on the circulation desk, the cat-shaped one, shows five minutes until midnight. The air in the library feels heavy, still. Outside, the shadows press against the glass. They are quiet now. Waiting.
“You said there are three chances,” Rianne states. She stands near the reference desk, her arms crossed tight against her chest. “Tonight is the first.”
“Yes.” I have cleared a space in the center of the main reading room. The salt lines we poured hours ago are uneven, kicked askew by her cat, but they will hold for this. The Chronicle sits on a small table in the center of the circle. It looks like just a book.
“And we have to... what? Synchronize?” She keeps her distance. She watches me, not the book.
“That is the first stage. We must align our breathing, our focus. The magic requires resonance to form the initial connection.” I run through the steps in my mind. The texts are clear. Stage One: Synchronization. Stage Two: Truth. Stage Three: Choice. We will not get to two or three if one fails.
“And you know how to do this?”
“I know what the Chronicle demands.” I do not add that I have never performed the ritual. She does not need that information. Competence is required.
She takes a slow breath. “Okay. Fine. Let’s... synchronize.” She says the word like it tastes bad.
“We will stand opposite one another. Inside the circle.”
She looks at the salt lines, then steps over them. She does not uncross her arms. Her gaze flicks to the windows, to the quiet shapes, then back to me.
“What about Keith?” she asks.
“He is... monitoring.” Keith has taken his shadow self to the conference room. He claims he is “facilitating a remote observation.”
“Right.” She finally drops her arms, but her hands immediately shove into her pockets. “Okay. What now?”
“Place your hands on the Chronicle. Opposite mine.”
I place my palms flat on the cover. The leather is cold, but a current thrums beneath it. She hesitates. Her eyes fix on my hands, on the frost that traces the binding from my touch.
“It won’t hurt you,” I say.
“You keep saying that.” But she moves. She places her hands on the book. Her fingers are short, her nails unpainted. One knuckle is red, as if she’d punched something. She is warm. The heat from her skin meets the cold from mine, and the air over the book shimmers.
“Now,” I instruct. “Breathe with me. In.”
I draw a slow breath.
She tries. Her breath hitches. She lets it out in a rush and tries again.
“I’m trying. This is weird.”
“It is necessary. Again.”
We breathe. In. Out. I match my rhythm to her uneven one, attempting to guide her, to force the alignment. The magic requires it. After four breaths, the symbols on the book begin to glow, a faint silver.
“It’s working?” she whispers.
“It is beginning.” The Chronicle responds. That is the part I should find reassuring.
But the nature of its response is… unfamiliar.
The light is rising along the seam of the book in uneven pulses, not the steady arc described in the manuals. Her magic signature is fluctuating, not weak, not insufficient, just undisciplined. Erratic. Emotional.
Every previous synchronization I’ve witnessed followed the known pattern. Trained participants. Predictable tempo. One initiated through recitation, one through reinforcement. The Chronicle bound them, and the bond held. Even when brief, it was precise.
This is not precise.
She is breathing too fast. Her shoulders are tense. Her heartbeat is out of rhythm. This should not work.
And yet the light climbs.
She is not prepared. She has not studied. She does not know what her consent means.
And still, the Chronicle answers her.
That is not how it’s supposed to work.
I close my eyes for one breath. I match her exhale. I try to still the ancient instinct that says magic should only bloom in orderly fields.
I open my eyes. Her fingers are trembling on the book. But they are still there.
Stage One: Synchronization.
I begin the connection.
“Look at me. We must maintain contact. Through our hands, and... we must see each other.”
Her head snaps up. Her eyes meet mine. They are brown, flecked with gold, and completely, totally guarded. She looks at me like I am a problem to be solved. Or endured.
“Keep breathing,” I say.
The silver light from the book flows up our arms. It is cold. My magic. I feel it try to connect with her, to find her own nascent magical signature. I find... nothing. Just a wall. Human skepticism. Fear.
“Rianne.”
“I’m here. I’m breathing.” Her voice is tight.
The silver light flickers. It recoils from her, flows back down her arms, and retreats into the book. The glow dies.
I feel the barrier. Her refusal. It is not conscious, perhaps. But it is absolute. She does not trust me. She does not know me. She sees me as a monster, an ‘ice elf’. The ritual cannot proceed.
For a moment, brief and sharp, I feel it. Not the magical rejection. Something worse. The certainty that she will never see past what I am to who I might be. Henderson did. Once. A century and a half ago. I thought I had accepted I would not find that again.
The Chronicle’s cover, which had been cool, turns frigid. Ice shoots from my side of the book. It covers the leather, races across her hands.
She cries out. Not in pain. In shock.
The magic snaps.