Page 103 of The Threads Between

They cleared a space in the barn. Hay bales pushed to the edges. Morning light slanting through gaps in the wooden walls. The smell of horses and dust and old grain. Not the most dignified training ground, but private, away from the dozens of Weavers still arriving, still preparing, still watching August with expressions that ranged from wary to curious to openly hostile.

He needed space to fail without an audience.

Before we began, Beatrice turned to August with the measured patience of a teacher who had done this a thousand times, though never, I suspected, with a student quite like him.

“You must understand the difference between what you are and what your father is,” she said. “Your father is not a Threadbreaker. What he does was not born in him. It was woven into him by your mother's magic. He dissolves. He unmakes entirely. The threads he destroys go into the void, scattered, lost.”

She looked at me. “Unless a Void Caller can reach in and pull them back.”

“But you,” she said, turning to August, “you sever cleanly. A thread cut by a Threadbreaker leaves both sides intact. You do not dissolve. You release.”

August's attention sharpened through the bond. I felt the word land in him differently than any description of his power ever had. Release.

“All magic has a cost,” Beatrice continued. “For most Weavers, the cost is simply energy. We tire, we rest, we recover. For Void Callers, the cost runs deeper. Without proper channeling, the magic burns through the caller's own life force.”

Through the bond, August's fear spiked, fierce and protective.

“That is why the focusing stone matters.” She gestured toward August's chest pocket, where the hourglass pendant rested. “It channels magic more efficiently. For a Void Caller, it keeps the magic from consuming her.”

August reached into his pocket. Drew out the pendant, the hourglass catching light, the metal warm from resting against his body.

“Take it,” he said, holding it out to me. “If you need it⁠—“

“No.” I shook my head. “It's yours. In this time, it was meant for you.”

“Lily—“

“We share it,” I said firmly. “That's how it works. I slipped through time without my own connection to a focusing stone. Yours is the one I'm bound to now. Through you.”

His reluctance bled into me. His fear for me. But also his understanding. The pendant had been his mother's, and before that, another powerful Weaver's. It carried generations of power. It was not something to be handed over. It was something that chose for itself.

“We share it,” he repeated slowly. “But if you ever need it more than I do⁠—“

“Then we will figure that out together.”

He held my gaze for a long moment, then slipped the pendant back into his pocket. Not around his neck, not yet. But close. Present.

“And the cost for Threadbreakers?” he asked, turning back to Beatrice.

“We do not know,” she admitted. “There have been so few. The records suggest it is exhausting but not inherently dangerous to the wielder. You sever. You do not give of yourself the way a Void Caller does.”

“Enough theory,” Beatrice said finally. “Let us see what you can do.”

She produced a length of golden thread from the Weave. It had been knotted.

“Start small,” she said. “This knot cannot be untied by ordinary means. A Weaver could unbind it, but it would take time and careful work.” She looked at August. “You should be able to sever it.”

He stared at the thread as though it were a coiled snake.

“How?”

“I cannot tell you that.” Beatrice's voice was not unkind. “Weaving is instinct shaped by practice. Threadbreaking . . . we have no tradition for. No teachers. You must find your own way.”

August approached the thread slowly. I watched him study it, the way I had seen him study terrain before a hunt, cataloguing angles and weaknesses.

“I can see it,” he said quietly. “The magic holding the knot together. But it is not like what you describe, threads to be woven. It looks more like . . . ” He paused, searching for words. “Seams. Places where things have been joined that could be separated.”

His perception bled into mine, and for a dizzying moment I saw what he saw. The thread was not simply a thread. It was a thousand tiny connections, fiber to fiber, magic to fiber, binding to binding. And between each connection, barely visible, the places where they could be undone.