Page 2 of The Threads Between

“Again?”

“Again.”

She didn't push. She never did anymore. But she stepped aside like she wanted to say more and had decided, once again, that it wasn't worth the argument.

The cellar was mine. Stone-walled, low-ceilinged, lit by a single oil lamp that threw my shadow long and warped against the far wall. I came down here every morning, the way a penitent goes to prayer—not because it helped, but because stopping felt like surrender.

I pulled off my gloves and spread my hands.

August's magic moved through me—gold and wrong, burning at the edges where it met my own. I'd carried it since Oxford. Since the night his corrupted power swept through the city and left me standing in the ruins with his threads branded into my bones.

I reached.

Not outward—through. Past the cellar walls, past stone and city and the thin skin of the world, into the place where the Unraveled went. The void. The dark where threads dissolved and people stopped being people and became something less—frayed, scattered, waiting.

They were there, faintly. The way you feel a draft under a door, the knowledge that something exists on the other side without being able to see it. No other Weaver could reach them. No other Weaver carried a Threadbreaker's magic branded into her bones. If August was going to be saved, it would be me or no one.

I pushed harder. The magic flared, heat blooming behind my ribs, and for one trembling second the dark thinned. Then nothing. The connection snapped like an overstretched thread, and I was back in the cellar, breathing hard, hands shaking, the lamp flickering from a draft that didn't exist.

I pressed my palms flat against the stone wall and waited for my heartbeat to slow.

Three months ago, I'd been a historian. A time-traveler. A woman caught between centuries, trying to survive. I'd worn borrowed dresses and memorized Victorian manners and pretended I belonged here because the alternative was madness. And now, three months of reaching. Three months of almost.

I climbed the stairs.

Mrs. Hartwick waited at the top, a single envelope in her weathered hand. She was a small woman, built close to the ground, and she held the letter the way she held everything—with both hands, like she was afraid the world might snatch it back. She smiled softly, but her eyes carried something heavier. Pity, maybe, or worry.

“Came early,” she said, pressing the letter into my palm. “From Manchester, by the look of the postmark.”

Manchester. My chest tightened. Mira and Garrick.

My thumb broke the wax seal—Mira's seal, pressed with the edge of a coin—and I unfolded the paper right there in the foyer.

Lily,

We found her. A Weaver named Beatrice Sharpe, originally from Oxford before she fled north in ’75. She's older than Ysella was, and twice as careful. Took us a week just to convince her we weren't Hunters.

She knew August's mother. Not well, but enough. More importantly, she specializes in binding magic—specifically, magical artifacts and curses woven into objects. She says what Elias did to the pendant is advanced work, but not impossible to counter. She'll need to see it in person, examine the specific threads, but she believes there's a way to sever the pendant's hold without killing August in the process.

We're bringing her to London. Should arrive within the week.

There's more we need to discuss in person. Things she told us about Threadbreakers that I don't want to put in writing. But Lily—there's hope. Real hope.

Mira

I read it once, then again, the words blurring at the edges.

Beatrice. Binding magic. A way to sever the pendant's hold without killing August.

Hope.

I'd forgotten what that word could do. How it could crack you open and put you back together in the same breath. I'd been living on stubborn refusal—waking each morning with his magic burning in my chest, training in the cellar until my hands shook, staring out windows at a city that kept moving while I stood still.

But this was different. This wasn't refusal. This was possibility.

My throat tightened. I pressed the letter against my chest, and for the first time in a while, I let myself believe we might actually be able to do this.

A door opened upstairs. Footsteps.