Goldie hopped to her feet, cloaklet swishing. “Well, I have to get back to work. But tomorrow—” she held up her new bracelet with a grin, “I’ll be digging in the archives. And I cannot wait.”
“Enjoy,” Tamsin said, leaning in to brush air kisses against both of Goldie’s cheeks. “We’ll speak soon, Herald.”
“Call me if something explodes,” Goldie quipped.
“Only if it’s dramatic enough for theBellwether Bulletin,” Tamsin replied with a wink.
Goldie swept out, heels echoing down the polished corridor like punctuation marks.
Her phone buzzed.
Jonah Pell
Did you survive the tambourines?
Goldie grinned and tapped out a quick message.Guess who’s officially got Archive access. What research would you like me to pull, Mr. Pell?
The dots blinked for a beat, then his reply popped up.I’ll think about it. Something thrilling, I promise.
She snorted softly, tucking the phone away. Cute and research-focused. Exactly the kind of distraction she loved best.
Chapter
Seven
The hallway on the fourth floor of Greymarket Towers was dim and golden, lit by sconces that always flickered like they couldn’t decide whether to commit to gaslight or give up entirely. Goldie had just paused to unlock her apartment door, keys jingling softly, when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She turned. A figure stood several feet away, coat impeccable, posture straight as ever.
His face was sharply symmetrical, almost too much so. His skin carried the smooth, silvery texture of birch bark, underlaid by a faint shimmer of green. His hair was a dark, vine-like mop that seemed to drink in the light instead of reflecting it.
The Thornfather’s Assistant.
The Thornfather had woken unexpectedly last fall, sending a ripple through the building like a root wrenching under the foundation. The Assistant arrived three days later. No one remembered him moving in, but by the end of the week he was a fixture, unsettling as a draft you could never find the source of.
No one quite knew what or who he was, only that he served the Thornfather with ritual precision. Though he kept mostlyto himself and the atrium, he was occasionally seen slipping through Greymarket’s halls at strange hours, or striding out of a bookstore downtown with a scroll tucked under one arm.
The first time Goldie had met him, she’d tried her usual charm, cooing a brilliant (in her opinion) line about how he looked like he’d just stepped out of a gothic botanical catalog. He hadn’t so much as blinked. Just stared at her with leaf-shadow-green eyes in a way that made her feel like he’d seen through her glitter and down to bone… and found her lacking.
For someone who’d built a life dazzling brightly enough to keep the dark at bay, that had shaken her. More than she liked to admit.
“Looking for someone?” she asked, forcing lightness into her voice, a polite sparkle to hide the tightening in her chest.
The Assistant tilted his head slightly. “Merely passing through,” he said, his voice low and smooth, but the words seemed to rustle, as though a whole forest had whispered them in unison.
Goldie gave a brittle laugh and waved a hand with more flourish than necessary. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”
He didn’t smile, but something in the set of his shoulders shifted, like a plant orienting toward unseen light. The sconces down the hallway dimmed in unison, as if leaning in to listen.
“You smell of sun and change,” the Assistant murmured.
The words crawled down her spine, snagging in the spaces between her ribs. Somewhere behind the plaster of the walls, a pipe let out a single hollow knock, like Greymarket had seconded the thought. Her heart kicked into a faster rhythm, but she only arched a brow.
“Keeping tabs on me?” she asked, voice sweet and edged. “How flattering. I didn’t know you cared.”
His gaze didn’t soften. If anything, it sharpened, pupils gone deep green-black, their edges bleeding outward into his irises like ink in water. “I see what must be seen.”
The lightbulb above her door buzzed and steadied as he spoke, haloing him in faint gold.
