She found the cedar tree with the broken branch, felt the gap in the wards recognize her signature, and stepped through. The ward sealed behind her with a soft pulse of pressure that felt almost like the house exhaling in relief.
Her legs were shaking, and her heart wouldn’t stop pounding, probably just as much from the adrenaline that kept zinging along her nerves than because of the exertion. So she stood in the overgrown yard with the grocery bags clutched against her chest and breathed — in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way she’d taught dozens of anxious patients to breathe in her clinic back home — until her heartbeat slowed enough that she could think clearly.
Then she went inside to find Malachi.
He was in the study, and he obviously could tell something was wrong before she said a single word. She saw it in the way he straightened in the leather chair, his attention sharpening as she came through the door.
“The Gibsons stopped me on the way back,” she said. She set the grocery bags on his desk without any ceremony, not caring that one of them was sitting on top of what was probably a very important piece of paper. “There were three of them, two women and a man. They’ve been watching the house, and they know someone’s been doing heavy warding here.”
His expression changed. He didn’t look exactly surprised, but the handsome, angular features tightened. She recognized the shift as the way he processed bad news he’d been expecting to hit at some point or another. “Did they identify you?”
“No,” she replied at once. “They don’t know who I am or what my gift is. I didn’t use anything except basic stuff, just popping a lock and causing a spark. But they know someone is living here, and they know the warding on the property isn’t normal.” She paused so she could catch her breath, then added, “They also made it pretty clear that we’re operating in their territory without permission, and they’re not happy about it.”
Malachi was quiet for a moment, his dark eyes unreadable. Then he said, “Describe them.”
She did as he requested, trying to relate every detail she could remember — the tall, dark-haired woman who’d led the conversation, the stockier woman with the silver streak, the man who’d hung back as backup. Malachi listened without interrupting, which told her the information was useful rather than redundant.
“The woman with the dark hair may be Catherine Gibson,” he said once she was finished. “The prima’s eldest daughter…and also the clan’s prima-in-waiting. If she’s running scouting operations personally, then the Gibsons are taking this more seriously than I’d hoped.”
Roslyn nodded. “They seemed pretty damn serious to me.”
“They will escalate.” His voice was measured, but she could still hear the calculation running beneath it, the constant evaluation of threat levels that seemed to occupy about half of his conscious mind. “Catherine’s involvement means the prima has authorized direct contact, which is the step before direct confrontation. The Gibsons are methodical. They’ll try diplomacy once, and when diplomacy fails — because I have nothing to offer them that would satisfy their territorial claim — then they’ll move to enforcement.”
Roslyn leaned against the edge of the desk. Her pulse had finally returned to something approaching normal, but the adrenaline had left behind a residue of anger that was building rather than fading. It wasn’t exactly anger at the Gibsons, although she wasn’t thrilled about being cornered in the street like a trespasser. The anger was broader than that and felt aimed at the entire situation. Not just the house and the wards and the collection, but also the isolation, the three weeks she’d spent trapped in a life that wasn’t hers, healing a man who needed her but also infuriated her, all while the world outside closed in from multiple directions.
“We can’t stay here,” she said flatly.
The words hung in the study’s quiet air like a sort of heavy fog. It was something neither of them had said aloud since the night he’d told her about Victoria Van Horn and her clan’s careful probing of the property’s wards. Roslyn had thought it, of course; she’d been thinking it ever since the Gibson scouts first appeared at the perimeter in the early days. However, speaking the thought out loud seemed to give it a weight it hadn’t contained before.
For a moment, Malachi was silent. He didn’t deflect, and he didn’t retreat into one of his elaborate explanations of why the current situation was suboptimal but manageable. Instead, he looked at her with an expression she’d never seen on him before, one that was strangely vulnerable, and he said simply, “I know.”
Roslyn allowed herself a second or two to absorb that brief acknowledgment, then went on, “Victoria’s coming from the east, and the Gibsons are already right here. Your wards are draining you faster than I can put you back together, and I just got chased through the streets by three witches who think we’re squatters.” She pulled in a breath. “We need a plan that’s something more than ‘stay in this house and hope for the best.’”
His expression remained very still. “I’m aware.”
Part of her was almost annoyed with him for looking so calm. But she knew she needed to respond the same way. “So, what are our options?”
He didn’t answer immediately. She watched him turn the question over in his mind, examining it the way he’d examine an artifact — from every angle, with patience but not sentiment — and she saw the moment when he reached the answer he didn’t want to give. It showed in the slight droop of his shoulders, a barely perceptible loosening that she recognized because she’d spent three weeks studying the way his body held its tension.
“I don’t have one,” he said. “The collection can’t be moved without resources I don’t currently possess. Abandoning it isn’t an option — the artifacts will discharge if their containment fails, and they will harm people. Running means leaving everything I’ve spent my adult life protecting to be claimed by Victoria or destroyed by neglect, or worse, activated by a group of Gibson witches who don’t know what they’re doing.” He looked down at his hands, which rested on the arms of the chair, and she noticed a tremor that was visible even while he was at rest. “I’ve spent three weeks attempting to solve this equation, and I still don’t have an answer.”
She could see how the admission cost him in the set of his jaw and the careful steadiness of his voice. This wasn’t the Collector delivering a lecture about containment protocols or the philosophy of artifact management. This was Malachi Van Horn, sitting in the ruins of the only life he’d ever managed to build, telling her that he didn’t know what to do.
She should have been frightened by that. In a way, she was — it wasn’t reassuring to hear the most brilliant and stubborn person she’d ever met admit that he was out of ideas. But something else surfaced alongside the fear, something that felt closer to resolve than anything she could properly name. She recognized it as the same instinct that had made her want to supplement her healing gift with the knowledge that modern medicine could provide. It was the refusal to accept a bad outcome simply because the situation was bad, nothing more and nothing less.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”
He looked up at her. The lamplight flickered in his dark eyes, and for a moment, the walls he’d rebuilt between them — the formality, the week of polite avoidance — seemed very thin.
“You should go home, Roslyn.”
She’d known he would say that to her. Eventually, underneath all the strategy and calculation, he would circle back to the impulse to protect her by removing her. It was the same impulse that had driven him to spend the past week destroying himself on the ward repairs rather than admit he needed her for more than her magic.
“Maybe I should,” she said, with a very small lift of her shoulders. “But I’m not going to.”
The study was deadly quiet. Through the walls, she could hear the murmur of the ocean, and somewhere in the house, one of the artifacts hummed in its containment, a low vibration she’d gotten so used to that she only noticed it during silences like this one. The grocery bags sat on the desk between them — eggs, vegetables, toothpaste, ibuprofen, those silly shirts she’d bought. It was all the small, practical evidence of a life being lived in a place that was never meant to be lived in.
Malachi held her gaze for a moment, and then he nodded once. In that moment, she understood that the nod wasn’t agreement so much as acknowledgment. She’d made her decision, and for once, he was choosing not to argue with it.
