Page 45 of The Thirteenth Count

Fern blinked, tears pricking her eyes. “You… you think so?”

Cassius held her eyes. “I know so.”

He hesitated. For a second, he looked like he wanted to say more. To step closer, but the moment hung suspended, fragile as the dust rose.

“Ice your hand,” he said finally, stepping back. The mask slid back into place, but it didn’t fit quite as tightly as before. “We resume in an hour. And Fern?”

She paused at the door.

“Don’t let him make you a hammer,” he said. “The rose was better.”

The wind shifted in week three, coming down from the Thornspine with a bite that rattled the windowpanes and sent drafts whistling through stone corridors like lost spirits. Fern lay in the dark, listening to the Keep breathe.

It was distinct from the wind. A deeper, low-frequency hum vibrated the bed frame. Thrum-thump. Thrum-thump. A heartbeat of stone and iron.

But as she stared at the blue velvet canopy, black in the shadows, the Keep became a beast around her, slowly digesting her.

She held her hand up, staring at the faint silhouette of her fingers.

Precision, Cassius had demanded. Control the flow.

She focused on the blood in her veins. It was a trick she had been practicing in secret, ever since the day she formed the rose. She didn’t use the resonance crystal—that felt too loud, too bright. Instead, she just tried to feel it. The rush of warmth. The pulse.

It felt… agitated.

Restless.

She sat up, throwing off the heavy quilt. The air in the room was frigid. Sprout was a small, warm lump at the foot of the bed, his head tucked under his wing. Fern envied him. He could sleep through anything as long as he had a full belly and a warm spot.

Fern, however, was wide awake.

Questions were keeping her up. The numbers in the ledger. The Economy of Pain. The way Cassius looked so tired, his face drawn and pale, yet his eyes burned with a terrifying resolve. And the door. The locked door in the entry hall that mocked her every time she passed it.

Don’t go down there, Willem had said.

But lying here, waiting for the dawn that—according to the stories—never truly came to this cursed valley, “down” was the only direction that mattered.

Fern slipped out of bed. The stone floor was ice against her bare feet. She pulled on her boots—sturdy, work leather from home—and threw a heavy cloak over her nightgown. It wasn’t the grey wool proper dress, but she wasn’t planning on attending a tea party.

She moved to the sitting room. The fire had died down to embers, casting a faint, fading glow on the furniture. She moved to the wall near the hearth.

Willem had shown her the trick in the corridor, but he had mentioned the veins ran everywhere. If the Keep was a machine, then every room had to be connected.

She ran her fingers along the stone paneling next to the fireplace. Cool, rough mortar scraped against her skin. She pressed, prodded, searched for a groove.

Nothing.

“Come on,” she whispered. “You have to be here.”

She snapped her eyes shut and looked with her skin instead. She felt for the draft. The tell-tale breath of cold air that should be there.

There.

Low, near the baseboard, a tiny current of air that smelled of dust and rot.

Fern crouched, finding a slight imperfection in the stonework. She pressed.

Click.