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My stomach dropped. He was here. Of course he was here—this was what he did. This was who he was.

But seeing him in that clearing, watching him give orders to bind a Weaver in iron, was different from knowing it abstractly. Different from hearing him talk about his duty over brandy in his study.

This was real. Lorien was real. And August had just helped capture her. The man who'd tended my wounds with shaking hands. The man who'd asked if I was worth remembering. The man who'd looked at me last night like I was something precious.

And I couldn't reconcile the two.

I moved carefully through the underbrush. Each step measured. Each breath shallow. The dry leaves beneath me threatened to give me away, but I couldn’t risk stopping. I had to see—had to know what happened to the Weavers when they were taken.

The clearing opened ahead, but I couldn’t get any closer. If I did, I’d be seen. And if I was caught now, August wouldn’t hesitate. He would turn me in without a second thought, and I would be unraveled before I could convince him otherwise.

So I stayed where I was, heart pounding in my throat, hidden in the tangled bramble just beyond the tree line.

Then, a rider approached.

A man, somewhere in his fifties, dismounted a massive black horse, his boots sinking slightly into the damp earth. His presence alone made the air shift, as if the very forest recoiled from him. My mouth went dry. Every instinct screamed at me to run—but I couldn’t look away.

The Unraveler.

I knew him instantly from the vision. Elias. The man who'd burst through that door twenty-seven years ago, who'd been struck by wild magic and corrupted into something that consumed the very thing his wife had died trying to protect.

I studied him, committing every detail to memory.

He looked the same. Older, yes—the dark hair now streaked with gray, the sharp angular features lined with decades that had weathered him but not softened him. The bone structure was identical. The way he carried himself with precise, controlled purpose. But his eyes—the most magnificent green I had ever seen—should have been arresting. Instead, they were dull. Empty.

Like the magic had taken something from him, too.

A chill ran down my spine. This was the man who unraveled Weavers—who stole their threads from the fabric of existence. And as I watched him approach Lorien, the reality of it settled over me like a weight I couldn’t shake.

This wasn’t just a fight.

This was extermination.

And I was standing on the wrong side of the line.

I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t bear to watch what was about to happen to Lorien.

My body moved before my mind could catch up. Branches tore at my sleeves, whipping against my skin, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

Tears blurred my vision, hot and wild and endless. I couldn’t breathe—I didn’t know if it was the sprint or the panic or the truth finally cracking open inside me.

These women weren’t evil.

I wasn’t evil.

And yet, the world saw us as something to be erased.

I didn't stop running until the trees gave way to buildings, until the forest floor became cobblestones beneath my feet. My lungs burned, my legs screamed, but I pushed harder, sprinting through Oxford's streets as the weight of everything pressed down on me. My heart pounded in time with the accusations that had been drilled into me since I arrived—Weavers were dangerous, unnatural, a threat.

Lies.

I didn’t stop running until I reached August’s home, bursting through the door with shaking hands and a fractured mind. My breath came in ragged gasps, my body trembling from exhaustion—and from the sick, lurching certainty that nothing I believed could protect me now.

Behind me, the front door remained open, letting in the cool autumn air. And somewhere in the distance, in a clearing I'd never find again, Lorien's threads were being pulled from the world one by one. Because I knew the truth now: survival meant choosing sides. And I’d just run straight back into the home of the very thing I was supposed to fear.

The enemy.

The man I was falling for.