"Callahan." I stride over to him, businesslike.
Callahan lifts his head.
I jerk a nod toward the back of the house. "Get to the cell. Grab weapons for everybody. We want to be armed."
Callahan nods, gets to his feet, jogs off like he's relieved to have something to do. I turn around to Lanz, and god but he looks the way I feel—hollowed out, desperate.
"We're going to get to her," I say. And hope I believe it myself. "She's still nearby."
Lanz nods. "She's farther but not much. I'd notice if she were taken that much farther away."
"You can feel it," I ask. "You're sure it's not just?—"
"No," Lanz interrupts. "It's—trust me, it's real. And it hurts, but I can..." He sucks his teeth. "Just, the faster we move, the better."
"No fucking kidding," Kai mutters from across the room. "What's your plan here, King?" He doesn't sound angry, just curious. Maybe skeptical. I press a hand to my forehead, trying to think.
Camelon House has been here forever. The ward must be old, probably built into the house, part of the bones. It's not a hex that wears off or a curse that can be undone. It's structural.
"Structural? The ward must be in the bones of the house," I say quietly, thinking aloud.
Kai stops pacing. "So?"
"So, if there's no house," I say slowly, "there's no ward."
Silence. They understand.
Callahan comes back, weapons rattling under his arm. "I just grabbed…” He shakes his head, dumps them onto one of the armchairs.
"Whatever.”
“It's fine," I say. “Everyone?—”
I barely have to gesture before we all grab a blade, myself included.
And then I look to the fireplace.
Everything here is wood, fabric—it's a tinderbox, really—and yet I want to be methodical, even now.
"King, are you..." Lanz starts. "Are you sure? I mean, everything we have is in here, and?—"
“And she’s out there,” Kai cuts in. “I say do it.”
Lanz’s eyes widen. He nods.
I cross the room slowly. Not because I'm hesitating—I'm not—but because I want to see it. All of it. One last time.
The leather chair by the window, cracked along the arms. The shelves of books with their crumbling spines—Malory, Augustine, Aquinas, heirloom copies untouched for years. The oil paintings, eyes long yellowed over with varnish.
I remember the first time I stood here.
Seventeen years old. The three of us just arrived—me, Kai, Lanz, laden down with our bags and our swords and the weight of nine hundred years of expectation pressing down on our shoulders. We walked up the path together, not speaking.
Kai said, "Charming. Very 'last known address.'"
Lanz laughed—actually laughed, which surprised me, because I hadn’t so much as seen him smile since his father died a few months earlier.
And I stood in this room, in front of this fireplace, and thought: this is where it begins. This is where we become what we're supposed to be.
