The frequency in the air changes. Just slightly.
Mira looks up.
"My mother is coming," she says.
Nine days she hasn't spoken. Three hours she hasn't moved. Now this.
I stay where I am. Close enough that she knows I'm here. Far enough that her stillness stays hers.
Maximus is behind me, his hand at the small of my back. Cool through my shirt.
Then he steps around me. He crosses to the edge of the spiral nearest Mira and lowers himself to one knee on the warm brick.
"Mira."
Her eyes lift to his.
"Whatever you need, you have. Elena will be ready in the medical wing if she needs it."
She doesn't speak again. But her shoulders soften, the smallest fraction.
He stays kneeling a beat longer. Then he rises and steps back to his place behind me. He pulls his comm.
"Marcellus. Hold the perimeter at full. Have Elena in the medical wing now, just in case. The moment the wards shift, you tell me."
He drops the comm into his pocket. His hand returns to the small of my back.
“I’ll stay with you," he says. Low. For me.
The minutes lengthen.
The vibration in the brick steadies, thickens. Less like a struck bell now. More like something calling through a door.
I watch the rise and fall of Mira's shoulders. The angle of her face toward script none of us can read.
Then the pull shifts west.
I feel it before I understand it. The compound's weight leaning, slowly, toward the tree line.
Mira stands. Her palms lift from the brick. The spiral keeps pulsing.
She doesn't look back.
Maximus and I follow her.
Mira walks fast. First time in nine days. Past the residential wing. The compound thins out on the west side. Buildings spaced wider, then no buildings, just oaks. The grass gets tallerhere. Nobody mows past the last building. Old foundation slabs surface in patches. Cracked where the roots came up through them.
Mira stops at the tree line. Sits down on the cold ground at the edge of one of the slabs.
I sit cross-legged a few feet from her. Close but not touching.
Compound sounds. Quieter than they should be. The ward hum I usually don't even register has gone strange. A pitch lower, a beat faster.
“My mother was dying," Mira says.
"I know."
"I could feel it. Even after she went through the Veil." Her throat works. "Three days in, the connection went quiet. Like a wire going slack." A pause. "It felt like the mountain. When she broke Konstantin's wards."
