Page 120 of The Threads Between

“No.” Beth's voice was firm. “We need to hold the Spire and free any prisoners. A small team moves faster, gets there before Elias can call in reinforcements.” She looked at August. “Go. Finish it.”

Esther nodded once. Sharp. “End him,” she said. “For all of us.”

Other voices echoed the sentiment. Not cheers. Acceptance. Hard-won, reluctant, but real.

I looked around the hall, at the Weavers who had fought so brilliantly, at the hunters who had fallen, at the victory we had won only to discover it wasn't the victory that mattered.

Garrick was already moving toward us, wiping blood from his knife on a fallen hunter's coat. Mira close behind, her eyes finding Garrick's and holding. Beatrice, pale but steady, Marigold at her side.

The core group, ready to follow August into whatever came next.

August's awareness brushed against mine. Just the steady flame of him, burning beside me in the dark.

We had won the battle.

Now we had to win the war.

And Elias Hawthorne was waiting for us in the home where he had lost everything, ready, I suspected, to make sure we lost everything too.

CHAPTER 32

AUGUST

The Spire's stables held enough horses for an army. My father had always believed in being prepared. Dozens of mounts, well-fed and well-trained, waiting in their stalls for hunters who would never ride them again. I saddled a bay gelding that had probably carried men to hunt women like the ones now claiming him as spoils of war.

“We ride fast,” I said, checking the girth. “Twenty minutes if we push, maybe less.”

Lily was already mounted when I looked up, her face pale but determined in the torchlight. Garrick appeared beside me, blood from a cut above his eye drying in a dark streak he hadn't bothered to wipe clean. Behind him, the sound of Mira tightening a girth strap with more force than necessary, and Beatrice murmuring something to her horse that might have been an apology for what was coming.

Marigold sat astride a dappled mare. She looked too small for this, too young. But she met my eyes without flinching, and the steel beneath the softness needed no naming.

And then Ruth appeared at the stable doors.

“I'm coming.”

It was not a question. The young Seer's face was set, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on something none of us could see.

“You should stay with Beth,” Beatrice said. “Your illusions⁠—“

“I'm coming.” Ruth's voice cracked on the second word, but she didn't waver. “I have to.”

Something in the way she said it made my chest tighten. She wasn't asking because she wanted to. She was coming because she had seen something. Because she believed she needed to be there for whatever happened next.

Lily met my eyes across the stable. Her unease bled into me, the same chill that had followed her since Ruth first looked at her and fled.

“Fine,” I said. “Mount up.”

Ruth moved to a horse without another word. Her hands were shaking as she gathered the reins.

The others were mounting up when Garrick and Mira fell behind the group.

She was saying something to him, her golden threads knitting the cut above his eye. He caught her wrist.

“Mira.”

Whatever he said next, I didn't hear. But her face changed. The fight went out of her.

She kissed him. Or he kissed her. Her hands were in his hair and his arms were around her waist and they were pressed together like the world was ending and this was all they had left.