Page 63 of The Thirteenth Count

“No.”

“And because if it failed…” She stopped. A chill worked through her.

Cassius simply waited for her to continue.

Fern looked up at him. “The Withering.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Go on.”

“You said it was spreading,” she whispered. “If the valley is paying blood into something called shroud repulsion, and the Withering worsens when the strain worsens…” Her voice thinned as she took in the library again—the stone, the shelves, the quiet elegance stretched over all that hidden machinery. “Then this place is not just feeding power.”

“No,” said Cassius.

“It’s…” The word caught. “It’s holding something back.”

Cassius gave one slow nod. “Yes.”

For a second, she couldn’t make the pieces sit still in her head—the ledgers, the vats, the hidden machinery running beneath polished floors and velvet curtains.

“So that’s what all this is for,” she said, her voice sounding wrong to her own ears. “You bleed the valley to hold something back, then build a court on top of it.”

Cassius didn’t deny it.

She shoved back from the table and slammed her palm against it. “That isn’t protection.”

“No,” he said softly. “It isn’t.”

That stopped her anger for all of half a second.

“Then it should be torn out,” Fern snapped. “Every pipe, every chamber, every rotten thing beneath this mountain⁠—”

“And Ashford Cross dies first.”

Fern huffed a laugh. “This place is a house. Don’t be absurd.”

“It won’t stop there, Fern.” He remained where he was, nothing in his voice but certainty. “Ashford Cross goes first. The upper tiers follow. Then the rest of the valley.”

“By the Mother, Cassius, you cannot mean that. It’s stone!”

“No,” he said. “It’s an anchor.”

Her shoulders stiffened. “What does that even mean?”

“It’s the central point through which the Blood Seal is maintained.”

That pulled her up short. “Blood seal?”

He looked out the window at the gloom. “The valley is not meant to look like this. Without the Seal, it wouldn’t.”

Fern’s fingers curled against the back of the chair. “Then the Withering…”

“Go on.”

“It isn’t the thing itself.” She looked out the window, at the same unchanging gloom beyond the glass. “It’s what happens when the strain worsens. When something starts slipping through.”

“Close,” he said.

“Close?” Fern repeated. “Either I’m right or I’m not.”