Page 123 of The Threads Between

August's hand found mine. Gripped hard.

"Father."

Elias's gaze moved past August, past me, to the others gathered behind us. Garrick and Mira. Beatrice and Marigold. Ruth.

His smile widened.

"So many threads," he murmured. "So many pretty golden threads, all gathered in one place."

He raised his hand.

And the air began to scream.

It flew past me before I could process it, the Unraveling. Not directed at me or August, but at the others. At Garrick, whose threads were already beginning to fray at the edges. At Mira, whose gold was dimming. At Marigold, so young, so bright, already beginning to fray at the edges.

No.

I didn't think. I reached for the void, reached through the bond, through the pendant in August's pocket, and I pushed.

Not at the threads, but at absence itself. A wall of nothing that slammed into Garrick, Mira, Beatrice, Marigold, Ruth, lifting them off their feet and hurling them backward through the entrance hall, through the front door, out into the night.

Away from the Unraveling. Away from Elias. Away from what was about to happen.

Understanding hit us both at once. August reached for his power, not to attack, but to protect.

He severed.

The hinges. The frame. The mechanisms of the great oak front door. He cut every thread holding it together and then cut deeper, shearing the seams between wood and stone, metal and mortar, until there were no joins left to open, no connections left to exploit. The door didn't close. It ceased to be a door at all, becoming just another wall.

The sound of it rang through the hall and went silent.

They were safe. Sealed out. Unable to return.

From beyond the wall that had been a door came the sounds I had been dreading. Garrick first, his voice raw, ragged, tearing through the stone. "August! AUGUST!" Fists pounding against wood that wouldn't give, again and again. The sound of a man trying to beat down a wall with his bare hands.

Then Marigold. Younger. Higher. Cracking on my name. "Lily! Please—LILY!"

Beatrice's voice, chanting something low and urgent, trying to find seams in what August had done. But August was a Threadbreaker, and what he had unmade could not be remade from the outside.

And beneath it all, beneath the pounding and the screaming, silence from Ruth.

Because Ruth already knew how this ended.

Then cold steel kissed my throat.

"Did you think it would be that easy?"

Constance's voice was honey and venom, her breath warm against my ear. The knife pressed harder, not cutting, not yet, but promising. A blade's width from ending everything.

She had come from the shadows behind us. From a doorway we had paid no attention to. While we were focused on Elias, while I was pushing the others to safety, she had been waiting. Choosing her moment.

August spun toward us, his eyes blazing gold, his power already rising.

"Don't." Constance's voice cracked like a whip. The blade pressed tighter. The sting of it now, a thin line of heat where steel met skin. "One more step. One more thought toward that magic of yours, and I open her throat."

August froze.

His magic strained toward the blade and stopped. He could unpick steel from a distance. But not when it was already pressed to skin. Not when one wrong fragment, one shard falling the wrong way, could kill me faster than Constance ever could.