Page 117 of The Threads Between

“I mean it.” His voice was rough. “My father will try to separate us. He'll try to use you against me, or me against you. Whatever happens, we stay together.”

“Together,” I agreed. “Always.”

He kissed me. Not soft, not gentle—desperate. Like he was trying to pour everything into this one moment in case there weren't any more moments after.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine.

“Whatever happens in there,” he said, “know that loving you is the only good thing I have ever done. I needed you to know that. Before . . . ”

My throat tightened. “You are the best man I know. You are good, August, and I love you for it.”

I kissed him again, softer this time. A promise instead of a goodbye.

“Tell me again after,” I said. “When we've won. When your father is finished and the Weavers are free and we have all those ordinary mornings you promised me.”

His smile bled through. Small. Fragile. Real.

“Deal.”

We returned to the group. Garrick was waiting, his face grim but steady. Beatrice. The small team that would slip through the servant entrance while the others made war.

Beth caught August's eye across the shadows. Raised an eyebrow. Ready?

August nodded.

Beth turned to face the Iron Spire, drew a breath, and raised her hand.

The world held its breath.

And then she dropped it.

The night split open.

Golden light erupted at the main doors, a wall of shimmering magic that turned the darkness into day. The crack of gunfire from the roof, sparks where bullets struck wards and died. The sentries were shouting, voices raw with panic, and beneath it all came a sound I had never heard before.

Women. Screaming. But not in fear. This was the sound of cages breaking open. Of women who had buried daughters and sisters and mothers finally being allowed to grieve in the only language men like Elias understood—violence.

The sound raised something in my own chest. Something ancient and female and furious.

And I screamed with them.

Ruth stood at the edge of the assault, and the air around her shattered. Phantom Weavers split from real ones like reflections in a broken mirror, dozens becoming hundreds, an army becoming a flood. The hunters fired into the mass and hit nothing. Bullets passed through illusions. Men screamed contradictory orders. Beautiful, terrible chaos.

“Now.” August's hand closed around mine, and we ran.

The servant entrance was a narrow door half-hidden behind a buttress, the kind of passage that important men never noticed because important men never had to carry their own coal. Iron bolts. A heavy chain.

August's awareness reached toward the lock, finding the seams. I was with him, seeing what he saw—the underlying structure, the connections that held metal to metal.

He unpicked them.

The chain slithered to the ground. The bolts slid back with a whisper. The door swung open on silent hinges, and we plunged into darkness.

The interior of the Iron Spire smelled like old stone and gun oil.

Narrow corridors. Unexpected stairs. The distant thunder of fighting somewhere above us. August led us through the maze with the certainty of a man who had walked these passages a thousand times, though never like this. Never as the invader rather than the son.

We encountered hunters at the base of a spiral staircase.