Chapter 12
AUGUST
The Iron Spire loomed against the evening sky, a blade thrust into Oxford's heart. I'd never questioned its presence. Never wondered if the shadow it cast was protection or threat.
Not until Lily Whitmore.
The guards at the entrance nodded me through. I climbed the familiar stone steps, boots echoing in the corridor, each footfall a countdown to a conversation I'd been avoiding for weeks.
I found him in his study, as I'd known I would. Elias Hawthorne sat behind a desk that had seen countless interrogations. Surrounded by maps chronicling his life’s work. Red pins for confirmed threats. Black for suspected. White for eliminated.
So many white pins now.
He looked up as I entered, unsurprised. “August. I wondered when you'd come.”
“Father.” I closed the door behind me, noting the way his gaze swept over me—assessing, cataloguing. “We need to talk.”
“About Miss Sterling, I presume. She paid me a visit this afternoon. Had some concerns about your household arrangements.”
Of course she had. I should have handled Constance before she could run to my father with her suspicions and wounded pride.
“Then you know I'm housing Miss Wolfe and her cousin temporarily. While renovations—”
“I know what you told Miss Sterling.” His tone was mild, but I heard the steel beneath. “What I'd like to know is the truth.”
“The truth is that Adeline's home is being remodeled, and I offered them accommodation. I have more than enough room. It's perfectly proper.”
“And perfectly convenient that this cousin appeared just as you were meant to formalize your arrangement with Constance.” His eyes narrowed. “Don't insult my intelligence, August. I've made a career of seeing through deception.”
I held his gaze, choosing my words with care. “I'm ending things with Constance. I should have done it weeks ago, but I was avoiding the conversation.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew you'd be disappointed.” The admission came easier than expected. “You've made it clear you think a match with the Sterlings would be advantageous. Solid family, good connections.”
“And yet you're refusing.”
“I cannot marry her, Father.” The words tumbled out. “She's. . . she's perfectly pleasant. Perfectly appropriate. And perfectly dull. I'd rather spend my life alone than trapped in a marriage of convenience to a woman who bores me to tears.”
Silence fell, heavy and judgmental. My father studied me with the same precision he might use to evaluate a blade's sharpness—testing for flaws, for weaknesses that could prove fatal.
“You've never cared about being bored before,” he said finally.
“Perhaps I should have.”
“Or it’s this woman. This Miss Whitmore.
“She’s Adeline's cousin. Nothing more.”
“Or perhaps she's a distraction. Another woman pulling you away from your duty, making you question what you know to be true.”
“That's not—”
“You've changed, August.” He stood, moving around the desk with deliberate slowness. “The hesitation. The sudden unwillingness to accept an advantageous match. That's how it begins. Attachments. Doubt. Weakness.”
“I'm not weakened.”
“Aren't you?” He stopped in front of me. “I let your mother soften me. Make me merciful when I should have been vigilant.” His voice turned bitter. “And when the time came to protect her, I wasn't strong enough.”
“Father, that's not what's happening here.”
The silence that followed was Arctic. He rounded me slowly, gaze never leaving mine. The controlled precision of a predator circling prey.
“Your mother,” he said quietly, “questioned things too. Asked uncomfortable questions. Doubted the simple truths that keep us safe.” His hand moved to his chest, over his heart. “And it killed her.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
“She loved you.”
“And I loved her. That's precisely the problem.” Grief twisted his features into something barely human. “Love makes you weak. Makes you believe one person deserves your protection more than the mission deserves your dedication.”
He drew a slow breath, the kind that sounded like it hurt. “When the Weavers came for her, I hesitated. Thought I could save her. It wasn't enough.” His eyes met mine, hollow with twenty-two years of loss. “And she died for it.”
“I know what you lost,” I said quietly. “But Father—”
“Do you?” His voice cracked. “Do you understand what it means to watch the person you love destroyed because you weren't strong enough to protect them? To know that if you'd been harder, colder, more willing to see threats instead of possibilities, they'd still be alive?”
“It wasn't your fault.”
“It was my mercy that killed her!” The words exploded out of him, raw and terrible. “I knew she was curious about Weaver magic. I saw the company she kept. And I told myself it was harmless.”
He stopped abruptly, breathing hard. For just a moment, his mask slipped. Something raw and unguarded crossed his face before he locked it away again.
“The magic that killed her is the same magic these Weavers wield,” he continued, regaining control. “And I will not—I cannot—watch it claim anyone else I love.”
“This has nothing to do with Weavers,” I said, frustration breaking through. “Or magic. This is about refusing to marry a woman I can barely tolerate.”
“It's about you changing.”
“I'm making a decision about my own life.” I moved closer, holding his gaze. “You want me focused on the mission? Fine. But marrying Constance Sterling would destroy me more completely than any Weaver ever could.”
“That's dramatic.”
“Is it?” Now it was my turn to let frustration sharpen my voice.
“You want to talk about distractions? About things that weaken resolve? Imagine coming home every night to someone who bores you. Who drains every ounce of energy you have just by existing in the same room. Who makes you want to spend every waking moment anywhere but where you are.”
I gestured sharply toward him, as though every expectation in the room was tied to him alone. “That's what marrying Constance would be. Not safety. Not stability. Slow suffocation disguised as respectability.”
“So, you'd rather be alone.”
“Then miserable, yes. And if that makes me weak in your eyes, so be it. But don't pretend this is about protecting me from Weaver influence. This is about you wanting me to follow the path you've laid out, regardless of whether it's the right one.”
Father's jaw tightened. “You think you know better than I do what's best for you?”
“I think I'm twenty-seven years old and capable of making my own decisions about who I marry.” I held his gaze. “And I think refusing to marry someone unsuitable is a sign of strength, not weakness.”
“Strength is sacrifice,” he said coldly. “Strength is—”
“Being so consumed by grief that you cannot see the difference between dissolving a marriage arrangement and a Weaver threat?”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Father's expression went carefully blank. The look he got when he was deciding whether to explode or retreat into a cold distance.
“Get out.”
“Father—”
“Get out, August. Before I say something we'll both regret.”
I left before he could say anything else. Before the anger simmering in my chest could spill over into words that would fracture what little remained of our relationship.
The corridor outside his study was colder than it should have been.
For a moment, I thought of Lily—that maddening mix of reason and defiance—and wondered when I’d started hearing her over him.
I pressed my palm against the stone wall, trying to steady my breathing, trying to process what had just happened.
My mother's pendant burned against my skin—no longer cold, but hot, as if it had absorbed all the rage and grief that filled that room.
I'd found it on the floor of the morning room. Five years old, not understanding why she wasn't there, why Father was shouting, why the air smelled like lightning and ash. Just a little boy picking up the pretty necklace his mother had always worn, holding it like somehow it could bring her back.
Father let me keep it. Maybe he couldn’t bear to look at it. Or maybe, even then, he knew I needed something of hers to hold on to.
The pendant seared against my skin. Duty, grief, anger. For the first time, I wasn’t sure which one I was fighting for.
“That sounded productive.”
I looked up to find Garrick leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral.
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know you're both being stubborn asses.” He pushed off the wall, moving closer. “Though for what it's worth, I think you're right about Constance. She'd make you miserable.”
“Tell that to my father.”
“Your father,” Garrick said carefully, “isn't exactly in a position to give rational relationship advice. The man hasn't moved past your mother’s death.”
“He thinks I'm compromised,” I said quietly. “That caring about anything besides the mission makes me weak.”
“Are you? Compromised?”
I thought about Lily. The way she'd looked at that arrested Weaver with genuine horror. Her grief when she spoke of her family. The intelligence in her eyes when she questioned everything I'd been taught to accept as truth.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But if questioning makes me compromised, then I've been compromised for a while now.”
Garrick was quiet for a moment. “Ashby's been reassigned. Your father agreed to postpone his. . . unraveling. Said we needed every hunter available for something coming up.”
Relief washed through me. “Good. That's. . . that's good.”
“Hopefully this buys him time permanently, if he's smart enough to stay useful.” Garrick studied me. “But August? Your father is watching you now. Really watching. Whatever you're doing with Red, whatever you're planning, be careful. He's looking for excuses to prove you're too far gone.”
“I'm not planning anything.”
“Yes, you are.” Garrick was equal parts amused and concerned. “You cannot tell me she’s not getting to you. She's beautiful, she's clever, she challenges you at every turn.”
“That doesn't mean much.”