Chapter 21
LILY
The wind banged the door shut behind me. I doubled over, lungs burning, heartbeat rattling like a fist on iron. Lorien was still out there—bound, helpless—and I had run.
Coward.
I sucked in a sharp breath, forcing the word down.
There had been nothing I could do. Even if I had powers to stop someone from being unraveled, like Ysella said, I didn’t know how to do it.
If I had stayed, I would have been next.
I would have been unraveled before I ever had the chance to understand what I was.
I barely had time to gather my thoughts before I realized I wasn’t alone.
A sleeve whispered in the drawing room. Adeline.
She stood there, arms crossed, leaning against the doorway with a look that was far too perceptive for my liking. Her sharp brown eyes took me in, really took me in. The tangled mess of my hair, the dirt and leaves on my skirts, the wild look in my eyes that I couldn’t quite shake.
I must’ve looked like hell.
But she wasn’t just looking.
She was reading me.
“What in God’s name happened to you?” she asked, her voice clipped.
I swallowed hard, my thoughts scrambling for an excuse, something that wouldn’t land me at the Unraveller’s feet. I can’t say I was in the woods. I can’t say I saw—
“I—” I cleared my throat, forcing steel into it. “I went for a walk.”
Adeline’s brow lifted in quiet skepticism. “Through a damn storm?”
I blinked, and for the first time, I noticed the faint patter of rain against the windows, the damp chill clinging to my skin. Halfway here a fine mist of rain had started. I didn’t give it a second thought. I’d been too busy running for my life to notice.
I clenched my jaw. “Didn’t realize I needed permission.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “Where were you, Lily?”
My pulse stuttered.
There was no teasing, no sarcastic edge. Just suspicion. And I had the sinking feeling that if I didn’t play this right, she’d see straight through me.
I forced myself to stand taller, to school my expression into something resembling indifference. But my hands were shaking. My breathing was still uneven. And Adeline saw it all.
She stepped forward, her shoes clicking against the floor. “You went for a walk?” she repeated.
I lifted my chin. “Yes.”
She hummed, eyeing the damp hem of my skirts, the wild tangle of my hair. Her hand shot forward, clamping around my wrist before I could flinch away.
“Hold still.”
She turned my arm, inspecting the fabric. Then rubbed two fingers across the sleeve. When she lifted them, mud and rainwater mottled her skin.
“Through the streets, was it?” she murmured. “Must’ve been quite the scenic route, given the state you’re in.”
My mouth went dry.
She took another step, forcing me to hold my ground. “You weren’t just out for a stroll.”
I crossed my arms tightly over my chest, as if that could keep my secrets from spilling out. “Why do you care?”
Adeline tilted her head. “Because I know exactly where you were.”
The floor tilted beneath me.
No.
She couldn’t. She was just guessing, trying to shake me. That had to be it.
But then she said—
“You were with the Weavers.”
The words struck like lightning, straight through my ribs. I couldn’t mask the way my body stiffened. And Adeline didn’t miss it.
A slow, knowing smirk pulled at the edges of her lips. “Ah,” she murmured. “There it is.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar.”
I flinched.
Adeline’s voice wasn’t cruel, wasn’t mocking. It was certain.
She took another step, and I had nowhere to go. “You can keep lying if you want. You can keep pretending you have no idea what’s going on. But that won’t change the truth.” Her brown eyes gleamed. “I see the way you're coming apart, Lily.”
I exhaled shakily. “If you’re so sure, then why haven’t you told August?”
A flicker of something passed over her face. Something unreadable.
Then, she said the one thing I wasn’t expecting.
“Because I don’t want to.”
The words didn't make sense. I stared at her. “What?”
Adeline sighed, running a hand across her forehead, suddenly looking exhausted. “Heavens, you are dreadfully slow.” Then, meeting my gaze dead-on, she said, “I have no wish for you to be discovered.”
Silence.
Cold, heavy, impossible silence.
I opened my mouth—then closed it again, because what the hell was I supposed to say to that?
Adeline—the sharp-eyed woman who had been pressing me from the moment we met—was a sympathizer?
My head spun.
“You're lying,” I whispered.
Her eyes flashed. “Am I?”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You—” I swallowed, my thoughts tumbling over each other, trying to catch up. “Why would you?”
“Because,” she cut in, “the world is seldom as black and white as August imagines.” She stepped back, granting me space, though her words still pressed close. “And I fear you are soon to learn that lesson the hard way.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Didn’t know who she really was or if I could trust her.
Adeline exhaled through her nose, then, without another word, grabbed my wrist and pulled me up the stairs and down the hall.
I tensed. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer. Not until we stepped into a small washroom. She shut the door behind us, twisted the handle until I heard the lock click, then strode to the basin and turned the faucet. The rush of water filled the silence between us.
“Sit.”
I hesitated, then lowered myself onto the wooden stool beside the tub, watching her closely as she reached for a small bottle of soap. The scent of lavender and something faintly herbal filled the air.
She poured the soap under the running stream, watching the water foam and cloud. Her hands shook.
Adeline’s jaw moved, then stilled. For a long heartbeat she said nothing—just turned a slim silver ring round and round her thumb, as if she needed the repetition to keep her from breaking.
“Her name was Nicolette.”
I stilled. “Who?”
Adeline’s knuckles whitened against the porcelain.
She kept her gaze fixed away from me. “She was my dearest friend. We grew up side by side, her house but a short walk from mine. In those days we wove crowns of wildflowers and declared ourselves queens of a kingdom no one else could see. When we were older, we made promises. Promises that we would always guard one another.”
Something about the way she said it made my stomach twist.
Adeline swallowed. “I always knew she was different. That she could do things other people couldn’t.
She came from a line of Weavers. Her mother before her, and her grandmother before that.
But she trusted me with it.” Finally, she met my gaze.
“And I swore I would never tell a soul. Not my father. Not my brother. No one.”
A lump formed in my throat.
Adeline turned back to the tub, running her hand beneath the stream of water as though testing the temperature. But I could see it in her posture now—the tension, the grief coiled tight in her limbs.
“They found out.”
A single, cold statement.
I didn’t dare breathe.
“First, it was her mother.” Adeline’s voice was even, too even, like she had told this story to herself a thousand times before.
“They kept a keen eye on Nicolette after that, knowing weaving magic ran in families. She tried to hide it. I tried to help her. But the minute her powers showed themselves—” She inhaled sharply. “They took her.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
“And I did nothing to stop them.”
Something sharp cracked in her voice, just for a moment, before she forced herself back into that carefully controlled mask.
“I was a coward,” she said. “I was afraid of what they would do to me. Of what they would do to my family if I stood in their way. I let them unravel her.”
A pit opened in my stomach.
Adeline pressed her lips together, her gaze distant. “I have lived with that choice every day since.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Because I had just done the exact same thing.
Lorien, who'd helped unlock my threads just hours ago. Who'd shoved me into the underbrush and told me to hide. Who'd turned to run and hadn't been fast enough.
And I had done nothing.
I'd told myself it was survival. That staying would have only meant two Weavers captured instead of one. That I didn't even know how to use my power yet, so what good would throwing myself into the open have done?
But those were just prettier words for the same thing Adeline was confessing to.
Cowardice.
“I ran,” I whispered, the admission tearing out of me before I could stop it. “Today. In the woods. They captured someone—a Weaver—and I just. . . I ran.”
Adeline's eyes snapped to mine, sharp and assessing.
“Her name was Lorien. She helped me. Untangled my threads. And when they came—when they bound her in iron and dragged her away—I hid. I watched it happen and did nothing after they told me I had powers that could help them.”
The tears came then, hot and shameful, spilling down my cheeks. “I told myself there was nothing I could do. That I'd be next if I stayed. But that's what you told yourself too, wasn't it? And you've carried it ever since.”
Adeline was quiet for a long moment, her hand still beneath the running water. Then softly, “Yes.”
She turned off the faucet, the sudden silence heavy between us.
“The difference,” she said, “is that you're still new to this.
You didn't know what you were until recently.
You don't know how to use your power. You had every reason to hide.” Her jaw tightened.
“I knew exactly what I was doing when I let them take Nicolette. I knew, and I chose my own safety over hers anyway.”
“Does that make it better?” I asked bitterly. “That I didn't know what I was doing?”
“No.” Adeline met my gaze directly. “But it means you still have time to make a different choice. To be braver than I was.” Her expression hardened with something that might have been determination. “You're not too late, Lily. Not yet.”
I wanted to believe her. Wanted to think that running today didn't doom me to carrying the same guilt Adeline carried for Nicolette.
But Lorien was still out there. Still bound. Still waiting for whatever came next.
And I had done nothing to stop it.
“I don't know how to be brave,” I whispered.
Adeline's expression softened, just slightly. “None of us do. Not until we have to be. But I swore to myself after that day that I would help Weavers stay safe,” she said quieter now. “Because Nicolette and her mother were never a harm to anyone. And now, I keep that promise.”
I’d always seen her as a scalpel—cold, clinical, sharp enough to cut. But now. . . now she looked like a wound that had never healed.
I had been questioning whether or not I could trust her.
But now—
Now I knew she was the only person in this house I could trust.
I opened my mouth, about to say something—
The front door slammed open.
Boots against the floor.
August.
Adeline straightened instantly, her entire demeanor shifting back into something sharp, unreadable. “Get in the bath,” she ordered.
“What—”
“Now.” Her gaze burned into mine. “You look like hell. If you don’t want him asking questions, you’ll do what I say.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw, but she was right.
So without another word, I stripped off my clothes and slid into the tub. Sinking into the warm water just as August’s footsteps echoed down the hall.
Bare skin met the heat with a hiss; murky streaks spiraled off my legs, clouding the water in seconds.
“Hair up, he notices everything.”
Adeline squared her shoulders, turned on her heel, and unlocked the door. Whatever came next, I wouldn't face it alone.