Page 101

Garrick let the silence hold for a moment, then lightened his tone. “Also, your shirt is still buttoned wrong. Just so you know.”

I looked down. He was right.

“I assumed you were making a fashion statement,” he continued. “The 'I've been thoroughly ravished' look.”

“Shut up.”

“That's what best friends are for.”

I fixed the buttons. Garrick grinned. Mira sighed from across the room with the weariness of someone who had heard too much.

By evening, the farmhouse could not hold everyone.

Weavers spilled into the yard, the barn, the ancient forest alcove where our bond had been forged. Fires were lit. Food was shared. Conversations hummed in overlapping currents, women who had not seen each other in decades, women meeting for the first time, women discovering they were not alone in ways they had never dared to hope.

Beth called us to order as darkness fell.

We gathered in Diana's main room, the core group who had survived the opera house and the warehouse, plus the leaders of the newly arrived contingents. Perhaps thirty people crowded around the maps, with more listening from the doorways.

“We have numbers,” Beth began. “More than we have had in a generation. The question now is how to use them.”

“We strike first,” said the woman who had arrived that morning, Esther, who led a network that stretched from the London docks to the textile mills of Manchester. “Elias is weakened. His weapon has turned. If we wait, he rebuilds.”

“Agreed,” Beatrice said. “But we must strike smart. A frontal assault gives him time to prepare. We need to divide his forces, confuse his response.”

Eyes turned to me.

I stepped forward, studying the map. Oxford spread before me in ink and paper, streets I had walked, buildings I had entered, a city where my father's influence ran deep.

“The Iron Spire is here.” I traced the location. “Large, but never designed for defense. Multiple entrances.”

“Hunter positions?” Beth asked.

“Men on the roof. Good sightlines. Scouts in the surrounding streets. He won't want to be surprised again.” I paused, thinking. “But his men are trained to hunt isolated targets. Small groups. Women running alone. They've never faced organized resistance.”

“Because there hasn't been organized resistance,” Esther said grimly. “Until now.”

“What about Elias himself?” Lily asked. “Where will he be?”

I considered my father. The way he moved through the world. The patterns I had observed across fifteen years of standing at his side.

“Center,” I said. “Always center. He positions himself where he can see everything and direct everything. He trusts his men to hold the perimeter, but the decisions come from him.”

“So we need to get to the center,” Beth said.

“Yes. But if we attack head-on, he'll retreat. Fall back to secondary positions. The Hawthorne estate, perhaps. He has resources. Allies. We could spend weeks chasing him through half of England.”

“Then we don't let him retreat,” Beatrice said quietly.

A plan began to take shape. Teams would approach from multiple directions. Weavers with defensive abilities would shield those with offensive power. Mira and the other healers would position themselves at strategic points, ready to respond. The strongest among them, Beatrice, Beth, Esther, and others I did not yet know, would form the core of the assault.

And at the center of it all would be Lily and me. The Void Caller and the Threadbreaker. The Measurer and the Cutter.

Together, we could do what neither could do alone. She could restore what he unraveled. I could break through defenses that had stood for generations. And through the bond, we could coordinate in ways no ordinary allies could match.

“Tomorrow we prepare, and on Saturday morning at dawn, we strike,” Beth said finally. “Everyone knows their positions?”

Nods around the room. Grim faces. Determined eyes.