Page 145 of The Threads Between

I flinched.

The sound came again, shrill, insistent, utterly out of place after hours of nothing but turning pages and my own uneven breathing.

The telephone.

For a moment I only stared at it, disoriented. The machine sat on the small table by the sofa, black and gleaming, its cord coiled on itself. So ordinary. So modern. So impossible after weeks of gaslight and handwritten notes and messages carried by hand.

It rang again.

I pushed myself upright, limbs heavy, skirts tangling awkwardly around my legs as I crossed the room. I had not changed. Had not even thought to. I was still wearing the dress I had worn in Elowen's drawing room, still carrying the smell of smoke and magic and a century that no longer existed.

The ringing did not stop.

My hand hovered over the receiver. My heart pounded in my throat. Slowly, carefully, I lifted it to my ear.

"Hello?" My voice came out hoarse. Unused. The voice of someone who had been screaming or weeping or both.

A pause, the faint static hum of connection.

"Lily? Sweetheart, are you alright? I've been trying to call you on your mobile."

The world stopped.

I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles went white. The room tilted. The floor seemed to drop away beneath my feet.

"Mum?"

The word tore out of me before I could stop it, raw, broken, the sound of something that had been buried for years clawing its way back to the surface.

Another pause, confused this time, not alarmed.

"Yes . . . ? Lily, what's wrong? You said you weren't feeling well and might try to sleep, but I've been worried. You never sound like this unless you're sick."

Her voice was warm. Familiar. Alive.

Not a memory. Not a recording I had played too many times in the dark, trying to remember exactly how she had sounded. Not a voice trapped forever on the wrong side of loss, growing fainter with each passing year until I could barely recall it at all.

Alive.

My knees gave out. I slid down the wall, receiver clutched in both hands like it was the only solid thing left in the world. The cord stretched taut. I did not care.

"I—" No words formed. Only air. Only the terrible pressure of everything I wanted to say and could not possibly explain. I had watched her die. Had stood at a grave that apparently no longer existed. Had built my entire adult life around an absence that had just . . . vanished.

"Lily?" Her voice sharpened with concern, that particular note of worry that only mothers carried, honed over years of scraped knees and fevers and teenage heartbreak. "Are you alone? Do you want me to come over?"

A sob broke loose, violent and unstoppable. I pressed my fist to my mouth, trying to muffle it, trying not to frighten her, trying not to unravel completely on the other end of the line.

"I'm here," she said immediately, softer now. Steady. The voice she had used when I was small and woke screaming about dark wings beating at my window, when the world was too big and too dark and she was the only light I could find. "It's alright. Take your time."

Take your time. As if time had not just split open and rearranged itself around me. As if I had not just crossed a century to hear her voice again.

"I just—" My voice shook so badly I barely recognized it. "I had a nightmare."

It was the only explanation I could offer that did not sound like madness. And it was not entirely a lie. Everything that had happened was a nightmare, one I had woken from into a dream I did not dare believe was real.

"Oh, honey." The sympathy in her tone wrapped around me like home, the kind I had not known in years. "Those are the worst. Do you want me to come sit with you? Your father's at work, but I can be there in twenty minutes."

My father. Alive too.