Her hand stays in the water.
“They have been dormant for two hundred years. The deep magic in them stayed, but it would not answer. They haverefused every scholar in Thessivane who has tried to wake them.”
She lifts her hand from the water. The deep magic glows between her fingers, luminous and alive.
“They woke for you. Not for vampire blood. Not for Fae blood. For the bond itself. The combined signature. They have been waiting for something they could recognize, and they found it in you.”
She turns her hand. The light clings to her fingers a moment longer before settling.
“They want me to tell you they have been waiting a long time.”
Seraphina stands.
“I need to study this,” she says. “Before we leave.”
She walks out.
The chamber goes quiet. The springs hum. The gold pulses steady in the walls.
Celeste’s hand finds mine. We don’t speak. We walk back together through the Lithenmere’s passages to our chamber, and the gold tracks us the entire way.
The Lithenmere brightens.
The walls bloom gold around us, dense and slow. The Lithenmere's version of morning.
Celeste stirs against my chest. Her thumb traces along my collarbone before her eyes open. Then she lifts her head and her gaze finds mine.
“Let's go home,” she says. “I want my own bed and I want to see whether Marcellus has murdered Julian yet.”
“Julian will outlast him out of sheer spite.”
“Probably.”
She pushes herself up. Stretches. Her hair is tangled, and the mark glows faintly through her shirt. I want her enough, that for a fraction of a second, I consider the cost of being late to the Veil crossing.
I set it aside.
We dress without talking. She watches me pull on my coat. I watch her braid her hair.
The memory stone waits on the table where I left it last night. I tuck it into the inside pocket of my coat. Celeste's eyes follow the movement.
"What's that?"
"Something Lanthar gave me before the springs. A memory stone. It carries the truth of why he left, and he's asked me to hold it until Mira's ready to see it."
She crosses to me and lays her palm over the place where it rests against my chest. The mark beats once beneath her hand.
“And you're going to be the one deciding when that is?”
"He didn't give me much choice in the matter."
"Are you going to tell her you have it?"
"Not yet. She has enough to carry on the way back."
Seraphina and Mira are in the corridor when we step out of the chamber.
Mira's mouth lifts at the corner when she sees me.
