Chapter 1: Midnight Collision
The music from the ballroom was a dull, golden throb against her back, a rhythm she was desperately fleeing. Annelise—Lucy to herself in these secret moments—hit the dew-slick grass with a soft thud, her breathing sharp in the chilled air. The full moon hung like a polished coin in a velvet sky, its light pooling on the pages of the spellbook clutched desperately to her chest. The storm her cards had whispered of was a bruise-purple smudge on the horizon, chewing the stars. She had to move.
She took a running start at the ivy-clad garden wall, silk slippers slipping on the damp stone, but the simple levitation charm she muttered gave her just enough lift. She vaulted over the top, a flurry of frilly pink skirts and strawberry-blonde hair coming unpinned—
And collided with a solid, unyielding wall of a man.
The impact knocked the air from her lungs in a soft oof. They went down in a tangle of limbs, crashing through the brittle branches of a Queen’s Sorrow rose bush. Thorns snagged and pulled at her dress, her hair. A strong, warm hand clamped around her waist, another bracing the small of her back, breaking their fall into a chaotic, fragrant heap.
She found herself nose-to-nose with him, her body splayed across his. Moonlight caught the sharp angle of his jaw, the dark, intelligent eyes that were wide with shock, not fear. The scent of him—sandaloak and ozone, something clean and foreign—cut through the jasmine and damp earth.
For a beat, there was only the sound of their mingled, ragged breathing and the distant chime of the clock tower marking midnight.
He was the Gogashō diplomat. The Tonshi. She’d seen him earlier, a silent, watchful figure in elegant robes amidst the gaudy silks of the court. Up close, he was younger than she’d thought, and the intensity in his gaze was a live wire.
“You are… Duke Heart’s daughter,” he stated, his voice low and remarkably even considering a debutante had just fallen from the sky onto him.
Lucy pushed herself up, her hands flat against the solid warmth of his chest. Her hair, finally freed, spilled over one shoulder in a cascade, brushing his chin. She saw his breath hitch, just a tiny catch in the rhythm. His eyes tracked the movement, dark and unreadable.
“And you’re with the Eastern delegation,” she breathed, the words tumbling out. “You shouldn’t… I mean, you should probably… get off. I mean, I should get off. Of you.”
“A sound suggestion,” he murmured, but he made no move to dislodge her, his hands still a firm bracket on her hips.
Right. Move. She shifted her weight to roll away, a necessary rocking motion that made his breath catch again, sharper this time. The heat of him seeped through their clothes. Then she was free, sitting back in the crushed grass, her skirts flowing around her like a spilled blush wine. The spellbook lay face-down nearby, pages ruffling in the quickening breeze.
“I am so, so sorry,” she said, brushing a stray thorn from her sleeve. “I didn’t mean to crash-land on you. Normally, nobody is out here at this hour.”
He sat up slowly, wincing as he plucked a thorn from the sleeve of his own, now-damaged robe. He examined it for a second before letting it fall. “My usual midnight walks are less… eventful.” His eyes flickered from her face to the book and back. “Are you alright?”
“Fine. Just my pride. And my hair.” She attempted to tuck a loose strand back, failing utterly. “You?”
“A few new perforations. Nothing fatal.” His lips quirked, the barest suggestion of a smile. It transformed his face, making him look less like a statue and more like a person. A dangerously attractive person. “Might I ask what urgent business requires such a dramatic exit over a wall?”
The wind picked up, rustling the pages of her book. A gust stronger than the rest flipped it open to a specific, well-worn page: a complex sigil for a summoning bond, illuminated in silvery ink that glimmered in the moonlight. Lucy scrambled to close it, but it was too late.
His gaze had settled on the page, then lifted to her face, one dark eyebrow arched. “A familiar,” he said, the word not a question. “You seek a familiar bond. On a full moon, before a storm. That is… ambitious.”
Her chin lifted. “The moon’s power is at its peak. The incoming storm just means I have to work faster.”
“It also means the energies will be chaotic. Volatile.” He stood in one fluid motion, then offered her a hand. His fingers were long, elegant. A practitioner’s hands. “The Moon Fields are just beyond that copse, are they not?”
She stared at his hand, then up at him. Wariness prickled up her spine. “How do you know that?”
“I am a diplomat. It is my job to know the lay of the land.” He didn’t retract his hand. “And I am a Tonshi. It is my nature to sense a latent ley line. That field is a convergence point. Powerful. Not entirely safe for a young woman alone at night, Duke’s daughter or not.”
Lucy ignored his hand and pushed herself up, brushing grass from her skirts. “I can handle myself.”
“Your vaulting technique suggests otherwise.” That ghost of a smile again. “But your determinationi is clear. I will not stop you.” He bent and picked up her spellbook, offering it to her. “But the storm is moving faster than you think. You have perhaps twenty minutes of clear sky.”
She took the book, their fingers brushing. A static spark jumped between them, not quite magical, not quite ordinary. She hugged the book to her chest again, a makeshift shield. “Why are you being helpful?”
For a long moment, he looked at her—the wild hair, the defiant eyes, the silly, thorn-torn pink dress over a will of iron. The moonlight seemed to silver his profile.
“Because,” he said, turning to gaze toward the dark line of trees that led to the fields, “I, too, know what it is to seek something more than what is expected of you in a glittering ballroom.” He glanced back at her. “Twenty minutes, Lady Lucy. Do not linger past the first thunderclap. The energies will twist.”
He gave a slight, formal bow, a diplomat once more, and began to walk back toward the palace, a shadow blending into other shadows.
Lucy stood frozen for three heartbeats, staring after him. Then the wind whipped her hair across her face, carrying the first cold, damp kiss of the approaching rain.
She hitched her skirts and ran, the crushed grass whispering secrets under her feet, the moon her only witness. She didn’ look back, but the imprint of his hands on her hips, the scent of ozone and sandaloak, and the unsettling sense that he saw far more than her ruined updo, ran with her.
She didn’t look back, but the imprint of his hands on her hips, the scent of ozone and sandaloak, and the unsettling sense that he saw far more than her ruined updo, ran with her.
The Moon Fields opened before her, a bowl of silvered grass shimmering under the furious eye of the moon. The air was electric, thick with the promise of the storm. She could feel the ley line the diplomat had mentioned—a deep, resonant hum in the earth that vibrated up through the soles of her slippers. Perfect. And terrifying.
No time for fear. She dropped to her knees in the center of the field, the damp seeping instantly through the thin silk of her dress. She fumbled the book open to the worn page, the complex sigil glowing as if in answer to the moonlight. From a small pocket sewn into her skirt, she withdrew a stub of chalk, a vial of rainwater collected at the new moon, and a single, perfect black feather.
Her hands shook, but her voice was steady as she began to trace the sigil onto the flat, moss-covered stone before her, chanting the Old Words. The wind answered, whipping her hair around her face like a mad thing. The first fat drops of rain began to fall, sizzling where they hit the chalk lines.
The power was immediate. It didn’t build; it erupted. The ley line surged up through her, a torrent of raw, wild energy. She gasped, her back arching. This wasn’t the gentle, sympathetic magic of charms and barriers she was used to. This was elemental. It felt like drinking lightning.
She pushed the feather into the center of the sigil, speaking the final, binding phrase.
The world tore.
Not a clean tear, but a jagged, wrenching rip in the fabric of the night. The stable silver light of the moon fractured into a thousand swirling colors. The ground didn’t shake—it writhed. Roots snapped. Grass flattened in a violent spiral outward from her stone. The storm, which had been a distant threat, was suddenly there, howling in the bowl of the field, concentrated on her.
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. The chaotic storm energy had twisted the ritual, yanking its intent sideways. She wasn’t opening a door for a familiar to walk through. She was hauling something across a vast, unwilling distance.
A form coalesced from the kaleidoscope of light and shadow—not a beast, not a spirit, but a man, tall and dark and violently disoriented. He materialized not with a pop, but with a sickening thud of displaced air, landing on one knee in the crushed grass, head bowed.
The connection slammed into her psyche like a physical blow—a bond, fierce and unyielding, threading itself through her soul and anchoring to his. It was done. The ritual was complete.
The energy snapped, leaving a vacuum of silence broken only by the hiss of the rain and her own ragged breathing.
The man looked up.
Kenji Tanaka.
His elegant robes were disheveled, his dark hair tousled. But his eyes were pure, unfiltered shock. He looked from his own hands, clenched in the grass, to the glowing, now-fading sigil, and finally to her, kneeling there in her torn pink dress, chalk on her fingers, magic hanging between them like smoke.
“You,” he breathed, the word almost lost to the wind.
Before she could stammer an apology, a explanation, a prayer, something small and dark dropped from the whirling sky above him. It landed with a soft, deft scramble onto his shoulder, clinging to the rich fabric of his robe.
It was a bat. But not like any bat in her father’s forests. Its fur was the deep blue of a midnight sea, its wings like cracked obsidian. It folded them with a leathery whisper, tiny claws gripping tight. Its eyes were two chips of luminous amber, and they fixed on Annelise with an intelligence that was deeply unsettling.
Kenji reached up, a gesture of pure habit, and the creature nuzzled his finger. He didn’t look at it. He kept his gaze locked on hers, the shock hardening into something else—a dawning, horrified comprehension.
“Exxon Léi,” he said, his voice low and tight, naming the creature.
The bat chittered softly, a sound like dry stones rubbing together.
Annelise could only stare, the bond between them a cold, hard knot in her stomach. She had succeeded. She had performed a summoning ritual of immense power.
And she had summoned a man. A Tonshi diplomat. And his bat.
The first real crack of thunder shook the field, and the rain began in earnest.
The first real crack of thunder shook the field, and the rain began in earnest. It was a cold, drenching downpour that plastered her hair to her skull and her dress to her body in seconds, washing the chalk sigil into a blur of meaningless grey smears.
He didn’t move. She didn’t move. The bond between them was a visceral thing, a taut wire humming in the center of her chest, tied to a corresponding point just behind his sternum. She could feel the echo of his heartbeat—too fast, adrenalized—pulsing against her own. It was invasive. Intimate in a way that made her skin crawl and flush at the same time.
The little bat on his shoulder shook its wings, sending a fine spray of rain from its blue-black fur. It blinked its amber eyes at her.
Kenji Tanaka—the Kenji Tanaka, Tonshi delegate, high-level mage—slowly rose to his feet. He moved with a wary, liquid grace, as if the world might fracture again if he made a sudden move. Rain streamed down the sharp planes of his face. His gaze was fixed on her, wide and incredulous.
“You,” he repeated, his voice barely carrying over the drumming rain. Then he said it. The words were flat, stripped of all diplomatic polish, pure stunned statement. “How… unusually reckless. How unusual a witch summons a Tonshi.”
“I didn’t mean to!” The protest burst from her, too loud, too shrill. She scrambled to her feet, her legs trembling. “It was supposed to be a familiar. A spirit companion. A… a cat, maybe. Or a fox. Something with fur and paws.” She gestured wildly at him, then at the bat. “Not a… a person! And his… his pet!”
“Kazé is not a pet,” Kenji said automatically, his hand coming up to stroke the bat’s head with a feather-light touch. The creature preened. “He is an Exxon Léi. A wind-familiar. And I am not… I was in my chambers. I was reading. There was a pull.” He touched his own chest, exactly where she felt the bond. “A terrible, wrong pull. And then I was… here.”
He took a step toward her. She took an instinctive step back, her heel squelching in the mud. The bond twisted, a sharp, psychic recoil that made them both wince.
“Don’t,” she breathed.
“I cannot help it. The tether has a physical radius. About twenty paces, I would guess, before the strain becomes… acute.” His eyes were narrowed now, analyzing, calculating through the shock. “You used a universal summoning sigil. Powerful, but non-specific. You poured pure, untempered power into a ley line confluence during a geomagnetic storm. You created a sympathetic vacuum. And I, it seems, was the sympathetic object.”
“That’s impossible. Sympathetic binding requires a focus item. A possession. A piece of hair.” Her mind, rattled as it was, was still a scholar’s mind. It clung to the logic of the tomes.
He held up his free hand. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a single, long strand of strawberry-blonde hair. It must have caught on his robe when they’d tumbled into the roses. “You left a possession. On my person. Less than an hour ago.”
Her stomach dropped. The coincidence was too perfect, too cruel. The universe had played a vicious joke.
“Oh,” was all she could manage.
“Oh,” he echoed, the word dry as dead leaves.
Another peal of thunder, closer this time. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the field in a snapshot of stark white: two figures standing paralyzed in the mud, linked by an invisible chain.
“We cannot stay here,” he said, the practical diplomat reasserting himself. “This bond is raw. Unshielded. In my country, such a thing would be considered… profoundly private.”
“In my country, it would be considered a scandal that could get me disowned,” she shot back, the fear sharpening her tongue. “We have to undo it. Now. Reverse the ritual.”
“It is not a knot to be untied. It is a hook sunk into the soul. To remove it carelessly would cause damage to us both.” He took another step forward. She held her ground this time, the tension in the bond ratcheting up to a dizzying pressure behind her eyes. He was close enough now that she could see the rain caught in his eyelashes. “We must get to shelter. Stabilize. Then we can discuss how to mitigate this… situation.”
“Mitigate?” A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. “I’ve magically shackled myself to a foreign diplomat! My father will kill me. Or worse, marry me off to some sycophantic viscount by the week’s end!”
A faint, grim smile touched his lips. “A fate worse than death, clearly. Come. The walled garden. There is a folly, a small stone alcove. It is closer than the palace.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He simply turned and began to walk, knowing she had no choice but to follow. The moment he moved beyond ten paces, a sickening, tugging ache bloomed in her core, a warning. She stumbled after him, the mud sucking at her slippers.
They moved in a miserable, silent procession through the lashing rain, the bat tucked now inside the front of his robe, only its small, watchful head peeking out. She hugged her ruined spellbook to her chest, the ink bleeding, the pages ruined.
The folly was a small, domed structure of pale stone, nestled in a hidden corner of the walled garden. It was dry, blessedly dry, and smelled of cold earth and damp moss. Kenji stopped just inside, and she staggered in after him, collapsing onto a stone bench, shivering uncontrollably.
He stood a few feet away, facing the archway, watching the silver curtain of rain. The physical space between them hummed with the forced proximity of the bond. He spoke without looking at her.
“What is your name? Your true name. Not ‘Lady Annelise.’ The name you were thinking when you cast.”
She was so cold, so stunned, that she told the truth. “Lucy. I… I call myself Lucy, in my head.”
“Lucy.” He tested the word. “A simpler name. It suits the woman who vaults garden walls.” He finally turned. His dark eyes were unreadable pools in the dim light. “You understand what this is, Lucy? This bond? It is not mastery. It is a bridge. You will feel what I feel. Not thoughts, not images. But spikes of emotion. Strong sensations. They will leak across. And I… will feel yours. We must control our emotional registers. For both our sakes.”
As if on cue, a wave of his residual shock—cold, metallic, and profound—washed over her. She gasped. At the same moment, a burst of her own sheer, panicked embarrassment flooded back across the bridge, and she saw him stiffen, his jaw clenching.
“Like that,” he said, his voice tight. “We must learn to dampen it. Or we will drown each other.”
She buried her face in her hands. “This is a nightmare.”
“Yes.” The simple agreement held no comfort. “But it is our nightmare. And we are awake in it.”
Outside, the storm raged. Inside the folly, the only sound was their uneven breathing and the distant howl of the wind. The bond sat between them, a third presence, alive and thrumming with potential disaster. She looked at him—this stranger, this prisoner of her own reckless magic—and knew one thing with absolute clarity.
Her old life, the one of balls and boring viscounts and quietly stifled dreams, was over. It had ended the moment she’d crashed into him in the rose bush. Whatever came next would be infinitely more complicated, more dangerous, and more utterly, terrifyingly real.
He looked at her, rain still tracing paths down his temple. “We must get you back before you are missed. And I must… reappear in my chambers. Without explanation.”
“How?” she whispered.
“Very carefully,” he said. The amber-eyed bat, Kazé, chirped once, as if in agreement.
The amber-eyed bat, Kazé, chirped once, as if in agreement.
“He’ll cover for me, I just need to get home,” Lucy said, the words a shaky breath. “I told my brother I was going out. He thinks I’m meeting a bookseller’s apprentice for a… risque poetry exchange. He’ll swear he was with me the whole evening if anyone asks. He owes me for the incident with the fire-poker and the Lord Chancellor’s wig.”
A strange, unexpected flicker of something—amusement? relief?—crossed the bond from Kenji. It was faint, like the scent of rain on stone after a drought. He nodded, a single sharp dip of his chin. “Then that is our first advantage. We need to move before the storm breaks. The bond’s physical pull is strongest when we’re emotional or stressed. You must be calm. Or at least pretend. I will do the same.”
“Pretend to be calm. While magically tethered to a man I tried to summon as a pet. Right.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, the air cold in her lungs. She focused on the practical: the ruined dress, the tangled hair, the mud. “I can’t go back through the main hall looking like a drowned gutter-rat who lost a fight with a hedge.”
Kenji’s eyes scanned her, the assessment purely logistical. He shrugged out of his outer robe, revealing a simpler, dark linen undershirt and trousers. The garment was long on him; on her, it would be a floor-length gown. “Put this on. It’s damp at the shoulders, but mostly clean. Better than… pink.” He said the color as if it were a mild obscenity.
She hesitated, then the absurdity of the situation overruled modesty. She turned her back, struggling out of the sodden, thorn-shredded silk. The cold air hit her skin, raising goosebumps. His robe was heavy, carrying his warmth and that distinct, spicy scent. She wrapped it around herself, rolling the sleeves up several times. It swallowed her whole.
“Your hair,” he said. From a small pouch at his own belt—conveniently dry inside his undershirt—he produced a simple cord of black silk. “Here.”
She gathered the wet mass of it, twisting it into a crude knot at the nape of her neck and securing it. The action felt normal, grounding. When she turned back, he was studying the rain’s pattern.
“The service gate near the kitchens,” he said. “The guards there are used to deliveries at odd hours. They are also, in my observation, easily distracted by a game of dice they run in the coal cellar after midnight. We will have a three-minute window.”
“How do you know all this?”
He finally looked at her, and that ghost of a smile returned. “I told you. It is my job to know the lay of the land. And the weaknesses in its walls. Can you run?”
“In this? Barely.” She held out the voluminous robe.
“Then we walk with purpose. And we do not look at each other. We are two strangers who got caught in the same downpour, seeking the same dry path back. Nothing more.” His tone was firm, a commander briefing a soldier. “The moment we are inside, you go to your brother. I will go to my chambers. We will… feel the distance, but we must endure it. We will meet tomorrow to discuss this. The east wing library. Noon. It is usually deserted.”
The plan was simple. It was all they had.
He stepped out into the rain, and she followed, the bond a low, insistent thrum. They didn’t touch. They walked several feet apart, a careful, negotiated distance that made the tether feel like a stretched elastic band, but not a wrenching hook. The cold rain was a blessing, masking the tension in her face.
The service gate was exactly as he’d described. One guard was visibly absent; the other was half-dozing on a stool under the scant eaves, his attention firmly fixed on the faint sounds of laughter and clinking coins drifting up from a grating in the cobblestones. Kenji walked past with a polite, silent nod. Lucy clutched the robe tighter and hurried after, her heart hammering against her ribs. She felt a sharp spike of Kenji’s focus, a needle-prick of concentration aimed at the guard, willing the man not to look up. The guard didn’t.
They were in.
The narrow corridor was dark, smelling of stale ale, wet wool, and yesterday’s soup. At the first intersection, a grand tapestry depicting some bloody battle, Kenji stopped. He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at the wall.
“Your path is left, then up the servants’ stair at the end. Mine is right. The strain will increase.”
She could already feel it, a dull ache building behind her navel, a sense of wrongness, like walking away from your own shadow. “How far apart can we… go?”
“We are about to find out.” His voice was tight. “Go. Now.”
She went. Each step was harder than the last. By the time she reached the cramped, twisting staircase, the ache had become a sharp, cramping pull. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a profound, psychic nausea. She gripped the rough stone wall for support, breathing through her mouth. She felt a corresponding wave of something from him—frustration, a stubborn will clamping down—and knew he was feeling it too, on his own journey through the palace’s labyrinthine halls.
She climbed. The pull became a throbbing, screaming tension. Black spots danced at the edge of her vision. She was halfway up the final flight to the family quarters when it felt like a hand reached into her chest and squeezed her heart. She gasped, stumbling, her knees buckling.
And then, as suddenly as it had crested, the pressure snapped.
Not gone, but… stabilized. It receded to a bearable, constant hum, a faint awareness of a tether that was now stretched to its maximum length. She could breathe. She sagged against the wall, slick with cold sweat.
He had reached his rooms. She could feel the shift—a contained space, a deliberate quieting of his presence. A door closing, both literal and metaphorical.
She pushed onward, her legs shaky. The hall outside her bedchamber was empty, silent except for the rumble of retreating thunder. She fumbled with the handle, slipped inside, and leaned against the solid oak, eyes closed.
“Cut it a bit fine, Luce.”
Her eyes flew open.
Her brother, Leo, lounged in the overstuffed armchair by her dead fireplace. He was a slighter, ginger version of her, with the same green eyes currently narrowed in theatrical disapproval. He held a book in his lap, but it was upside down.
“I was about to send out a search party,” he said, snapping the book shut. “Or, more accurately, I was about to start drafting a terribly moving eulogy for my sister, lost to the night and her own appalling judgment.” His gaze traveled from her face, down the immense, foreign robe, to her bare, muddy feet. His eyebrow inched higher. “I see the poetry reading was… vigorous.And multicultural. Is that silk? From the Eastern Confederation?”
“Leo.” Her voice was a croak. She peeled off the heavy robe, letting it pool on the floor. Her own ruined dress beneath was explanation enough.
All the mockery drained from his face. He was on his feet in an instant. “What happened? Are you hurt?” He was beside her, hands on her shoulders, turning her to check for injury. “Were you attacked? I’ll kill him. Who was it? That apprentice has a weak chin, I never trusted—”
“No! No, it’s not like that.” She batted his hands away. The bond gave a distant pulse, a ripple of Kenji’s own heightened state, like a pebble dropped in a faraway pond. She forced it down, smothered it. “I… the ritual went wrong. Very wrong.”
Leo listened, his expression shifting from concern to confusion to dawning, horrified fascination as she stammered out the essentials—the storm, the botched summoning, the unintended target, the bond.
“You bonded yourself,” he said slowly, “to the Tonshi delegate. The scary quiet one who makes the Privy Council look like they’ve swallowed bees whenever he enters a room.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s… currently in his apartments, feeling whatever you’re feeling?”
A flush of her embarrassment surged, and she instinctively threw up a mental wall. To her surprise, the gesture seemed to mute the connection slightly. “I think I’m learning to block it. A bit. But yes, essentially.”
Leo let out a long, low whistle. He walked back to the chair and sank into it. “Well. That’s a new one. Even for you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Father finds out, he’ll lock you in the north tower and throw the blueprint away.”
“I know.”
“And the Eastern Confederation… Lucy, this could be interpreted as an act of magical espionage. Or a deliberate insult. Or a…” He gestured vaguely, searching for the word. “A marital claim.”
The last word hung in the air, heavy and foul. The very thing she’d been trying to escape.
“It’s not a claim,” she whispered, cold seeping into her bones that had nothing to do with her wet clothes. “It’s a mistake. A catastrophic, astronomical mistake.”
“Mistakes start wars,” Leo said softly, all his usual levity gone. Then he shook himself, the practical older brother taking over.“Right. First, you get out of those wet things and into a bath before you catch lung fever. Second, we burn that dress. Third… you see him tomorrow?”
She nodded. “The east wing library. Noon.”
“Good. I’m coming with you.”
“Leo, you can’t.”
“To the door, not inside. But if this man decides to… I don’t know, dissolve you into mist and bottle you as a magical reagent, someone needs to raise the alarm.” He stood up, his mind made up. “Now, bath. I’ll have Martha bring up hot water. And for God’s sake, try to sleep. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He left, already scheming how to bribe the housemaid. Lucy stared at the puddle of Kenji’s robe on her floor. The events of the night felt both hyper-real and impossibly distant, like a story that had happened to someone else. But the hum in her chest, that faint, undeniable awareness of another consciousness anchored to hers, was relentlessly, terrifyingly present.
In his distant chambers, Kenji Tanaka would be staring at his own hands, or out his window at the clearing night sky, feeling the same alien presence. A bridge neither of them had asked for, built from her rebellion and his misfortune.
She walked to the window, pushing it open. The storm had passed. The moon, pristine and cold, shone down on the silvered gardens below. Somewhere down there, a rose bush was crushed. A sigil was washed away.
Everything had changed.
She touched the base of her throat, where the bond felt most anchored. Tomorrow, they would meet. Two strangers, shackled by magic, with a world of protocol, prejudice, and potential disaster between them. The bathwater would be hot, her bed would be soft, but sleep, she knew, was a long way off. The connection hummed, a silent, shared vigil in the dark.