Page 70 of Kazimir

Lucia bent and kissed my temple before following Ryder toward the corridor. “Eat something when someone tells you to,” she ordered. “Preferably before you start glowing and alarming the staff.”

“I make no promises.”

“You will,” she said, and vanished in a sweep of braid and purpose.

That left Archon, Kazimir, and me in the chamber with the scrolls, the lamplight, and the feeling that something invisible had shifted and would not shift back.

Archon waited until the door shut behind the last of them. Then he looked at me with the solemn attention of a man handling a relic that might also bite.

“Devon,” he said, “do you remember anything at all about shielding among your kind? Not words. Instinct.”

I closed my eyes because that was the only way to search for things that didn’t like being found. For a moment all I felt was the room: stone, old magic, Kazimir at my side like a black pillar that had learned warmth for my sake. Then, lower, under memory’s splintered floorboards, something stirred.

“A folding,” I said slowly. “Not hiding. More like… turning the bright side inward. Like a bird tucking color under itself when hawks are near.”

Archon was very still. “Can you try?”

I opened my eyes. “Here?”

“Now,” Kazimir said, and his tone told me he liked the idea of me having one more weapon.

I nodded. Fear made a brief, ugly pass through my stomach. Then I set my palm flat on the table and did what I had just described. Not with my body. With something subtler. I reached for the place in me that always felt a little too open, a little too lit, and imagined folding the shining parts inward the way wings tucked close to the spine.

The sensation was immediate and strange. My skin prickled. The room grew quieter around the edges, as if some note I hadn’t known I was emitting had lowered.

Archon’s eyes widened a fraction. “Again,” he said softly.

I did. Deeper this time. The instinct sharpened with use. Fold, tilt, dim without extinguishing. The effort made me slightly dizzy.

Kazimir cursed under his breath in Russian.

“What?” I asked, eyes snapping to him.

“You changed.” He stepped closer, studying me with unnerving intensity. “The air around you…”

“Thinned,” Archon finished. “Very good.”

Relief hit me so hard I had to grip the edge of the table. “I can do it.”

“You can,” Archon agreed. “Not indefinitely, not yet. But enough to matter.”

I laughed once, shaky and unbelieving. “Well. I love discovering new survival skills at the bottom of a trauma spiral.”

Kazimir’s hand slid down my back. “Sit.”

I sat because my knees had started to feel negotiable.

Archon gathered the two scrolls and slid them back into their case. “I will remain in Philadelphia for now,” he said. “If Sariel makes a formal move, I want no delay in calling.” He looked at Kazimir then. “My enforcers are with me. This might not be official heavenly business, but I believe the Creator would want this handled. Quietly.”

Kazimir inclined his head. “My thanks.”

Archon’s gaze came back to me. It gentled. “You spoke with courage tonight. Do not mistake the shaking for weakness. It is merely the body’s objection to remembering.”

That almost undid me more than anything else had.

“Thank you,” I managed.

He rose. For one heartbeat, I thought he might touch my shoulder in comfort, but he did not. He seemed wise enough to know my skin had reached capacity for witness. Instead, he placed his hand over his chest and bowed his head a fraction.