She sets the boot down and looks up, catches me watching. She doesn’t look away. Neither do I. Then she moves back against the headboard and pulls her knees up.
I cross to the bed and sit beside her.
She leans into my side. Her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and pull her closer.
“You stepped forward,” I say. “At the stone.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
She’s quiet. Her fingers trace a slow line down my forearm, over the linen wrapped around the cut.
“Because you were about to bleed for something that affects both of us,” she says. “And I wasn’t going to watch that from behind you.”
I press my mouth to her temple. Her fingers thread through mine.
Chapter
Five
Julian meets us at the gate. “Something came through the wards.” He pauses. “Not an attack.”
I’ve been awake for almost twenty-four hours, my boots still have dried mud from Iron Claw territory on them, and the phrase ‘not an attack’ is doing the bare minimum of work I need it to do.
“Show me,” Maximus says.
We follow Julian through the compound at a pace that confirms the place isn’t actively on fire. Past the security wing, past the east garden where two of Marcellus’s teams are running a sweep, into the main courtyard where the training stones sit, and the old fountain has never once worked in the entire time I’ve lived here.
The letters are seared into the gray brick like a brand on flesh, clean-edged and exact, the surface darkened in a ring around the script like it brought its own heat. They windoutward from a clear center, looping wide enough to span half the courtyard, pressed deep.
The hum comes up through the soles of my boots.
I crouch at the edge of the spiral and feel the warmth radiating. It smells like char and something under it, like the air after lightning.
Maximus is still beside me.
Mira is sitting at the center of the spiral.
"She's been there three hours," Julian says.
"What does it say?" I ask.
"Don't know. The script doesn't match anything we have on file."
"Did the wards hold?" Maximus asks.
"They held. Whatever did this came up through the ground, not over the wards."
Maximus's eyes track across the spiral. "Walk me through it."
"Three hours ago, the script burned itself into the brick. No warning. Just here, all at once. Mira walked out and sat down. Hasn't moved since."
Mira’s palms are open on the warm brick. Back straight. Face angled slightly down.
Her eyes are red-rimmed and dry.
I don't speak. Don't reach for her. I crouch at the spiral's edge and watch her. The brick is warm under my boots. After a moment Maximus moves behind me, close enough that the familiar cold is at my back.
