Chapter 46
LILY
The gates creaked open like a warning. Adeline’s estate loomed at the end of the drive, regal and unbothered by the rot spreading through the city. It looked untouched—immaculate even—but I could feel the tension in the air.
Mira walked silently beside me, her cloak drawn tight against her shoulders.
The threads of fate around her pulsed steadily—the familiar rhythm of a Mender maintaining her emotional equilibrium.
On her other side, Thessaly moved with quiet grace, her pale braids looped intricately atop her head.
Where Mira's threads hummed with gentle constancy, Thessaly's sparked and danced—a Seer reading currents of possibility in the air, searching for signs of immediate danger.
I tried not to look too closely at the threads.
Each glimpse reminded me how different I was from them.
Where they saw neat patterns to mend or futures to glimpse, I saw, severed ends that called to me.
Empty spaces where something should have been.
The weight of what I might be able to restore—and what it might cost me—pressed against my chest like a stone.
Focus on today, I told myself. One crisis at a time.
We reached the steps, and the door opened before we could knock.
Adeline stood in the doorway, not a hair out of place. Her dark eyes swept over me, then the Weavers, then back again—calculating, composed. Yet there was something different in her gaze. Relief, perhaps. Or fear of what we represented: the moment she'd have to choose a side publicly.
“I was beginning to think you’d never return,” she said, stepping aside with the practiced grace of a woman accustomed to receiving callers. Even in crisis, her breeding showed.
The inside of the house was polished wood, gold-framed portraits, and the faint scent of roses. But beneath the elegance, tension simmered like a crack in fine porcelain. I'd seen enough disaster documentaries to recognize the calm before everything collapsed.
She led us to the drawing room, where the light spilled through tall windows onto the polished floor. The china tea set was already laid out, as if she’d known we were coming.
“We need to talk,” I said, not bothering to sit.
“Indeed. The town fairly hums with speculation.” Adeline moved to pour tea despite my refusal to sit. “There are reports of Weavers in the streets—healing the sick, mending broken things. Word travels with remarkable speed for such. . . delicate matters.”
“That is precisely our intention,” Mira said softly, accepting the offered cup. “The more they witness us offering aid, the more difficult it becomes to credit Elias's accusations.”
Adeline gave her a measured look, but her attention flicked quickly back to me. “You’ve stirred the hornet’s nest, Lily. Surely you comprehend this?”
“I did not come here to preserve the status quo.”
“No,” she said, almost wistfully. “That much is abundantly clear.”
The mantel clock ticked like a heartbeat behind the silence. I found myself counting the seconds—a nervous habit from my old life when I'd present research to skeptical professors. Some instincts transcended time periods.
“Elias has learned of August's. . . recent actions.”
My heart stuttered. “He killed a hunter protecting us.”
Her expression sharpened. “Elias no longer merely harbors suspicions. He is preparing something decisive.”
My breath caught. Around me, the fate threads in the room trembled—Mira's with alarm, Thessaly's with grim confirmation. “Another unraveling?”
Adeline nodded once. “A private gathering at the Spire. He terms it a cleansing. Only his most devoted adherents received invitations.”
Mira set down her teacup with the soft clink of china against china. “Then we cannot delay further.”
“We extract Ysella before he transforms her into a public spectacle,” I said, my modern sensibilities recoiling at the thought of what Victorian “cleansings” might entail. “We demonstrate to the city what he truly represents.”
Adeline moved to the fireplace, her back to us. “There exists a tunnel beneath the greenhouse. Father employed it during his. . . hunting expeditions. It provides access to the lower levels of the Spire and ends in the courtyard.”
I blinked. Even after months in this time, I was still surprised by how much deadly infrastructure lay hidden beneath polite society. “You would provide us with entry?”
Adeline watched from the window, one hand resting on the embroidered back of her chair, the other clutching a teacup she had not touched. Her expression had gone distant—cool, unreadable—but I could see the war in her eyes.
She turned back around. “Of course I will. I maintained silence for far too long. I refuse to witness another Weaver perish because I declined to stand openly beside them.” Her gaze found mine, sharp and certain. “I have chosen my allegiance out loud.”
She studied me then, something bitter crossing her face. “I have spent a lifetime in careful pretense. And you—you stride into our town as though truth never caused anyone suffering.”
I straightened, meeting her gaze. In my time, we'd called it “privilege”—the ability to speak truth because you had less to lose. But here, now, I was learning that truth always carried a price. “It does cause suffering. But silence causes more.”
A long pause passed between us.
Finally, Adeline stepped forward and pressed a folded piece of parchment into my hand. “These are names. Quiet sympathizers. Some occupy positions within Elias's councils. Others serve in the chapel, the schools, the courts. They will not act openly—not yet—but they are listening now.”
Her eyes flicked to Mira, then Thessaly. “Do not permit yourselves to be killed for the sake of proving a point. Please be smart.”
“Let’s give the town something to talk about—something they cannot ignore. We’ll meet August at dusk, rally the remaining Weavers, and at first light. . . we liberate Ysella and the other Weavers.”
Mira shed her hood first, stepping into the open square as though she belonged there.
The morning light caught the edge of her linen cloak, shimmering faintly with threads of gold that pulsed like breath.
A baker glanced up from sweeping his stoop.
A girl carrying water slowed mid-step. Eyes lingered, curious rather than fearful.
Whatever magic we did here we needed to be quick.
It would only be a matter of time before the Hunters learned we were here.
Thessaly’s eyes clouded, silver glimmers flickering like candlelight on water.
She pressed her palm to the cobblestones, and the air seemed to ripple.
For a breathless instant, the townsfolk saw not us—but themselves.
A mother glimpsed her husband staggering home tonight with news of wages cut; a young apprentice saw the lash that would meet him for stealing coal to keep his sister warm; an old woman saw her empty cupboard tomorrow, her bread already claimed by Elias’s tax men.
Gasps and cries broke the hush as the visions faded, leaving them shaken, staring at one another with the stunned recognition of shared suffering.
A woman clutched her neighbor's arm. A man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, refusing to meet anyone's gaze.
Thessaly broke through the silence, low and unwavering: “This is not sorcery. This is the truth of your own lives. And Elias would rather you blame us than him.”
Here we go, I thought, feeling the threads of the moment crystallizing into something significant.
Mira turned toward a man limping down the alley, his hand pressed to bloodied cloth wrapped around his thigh. Without invitation, she approached. “Might I be of assistance, sir?”
He hesitated—as any sensible Victorian would when approached by a strange woman—but pain overcame propriety. He nodded.
Her palms hovered over the wound, and light unfurled from her skin like mist catching sunlight. The man's eyes widened as the bleeding slowed, then stopped. Flesh knit back together beneath her touch.
“Good Lord, what manner of person are you?”
“We are not what they have told you,” Mira said quietly, rising with practiced grace. “We never were.”
The square grew still. People emerged from doorways, corners, alcoves—not fleeing, not shouting alarm, but watching. Whispering. The threads of public opinion were shifting, and I could feel it in the air like electricity before a storm.
Witch. Healer. Weaver. Miracle.
The words rippled through the crowd in the way only gossip could travel in a city where information was currency.
Adeline stepped forward with the authority of a woman accustomed to being obeyed. “What you witness is not heresy,” she declared, her breeding evident in every syllable. “It is truth—stripped bare of fear.”
Heads turned. In Victorian society, when a woman of Adeline's standing spoke publicly, people listened.
“She healed that gentleman before your very eyes,” Adeline continued, lifting her chin with aristocratic authority. “No blood spilled. No curses whispered. Merely mercy, and a manner of magic we ought never to have been instructed to fear.”
A seamstress on the corner drew her child closer—protection, not panic. A priest's apprentice stood frozen beneath the chapel's eaves, his worldview clearly shifting. No one moved to stop us or summon the Hunters.
Progress.
Thessaly handed the man a strip of clean linen. “Tell others,” she said. “Let them see with their own eyes what the Unraveler sought to bury.”
We continued moving.
By the time the sun reached its peak, we’d passed through the marketplace, the outskirts of the industrial district, and the edge of the university.
A trail of murmurs followed behind us like smoke—tales of hands that mended what was broken, of Weavers who healed instead of harmed, of a society lady who walked beside them without fear.
Adeline never once looked back, her spine straight with the kind of resolve that only came from finally choosing truth over comfort.