Page 157 of Zenith Court

Jonah saw the next surge before it arrived. He caught Caspian by the collar and pulled him off the ring as water crossed the walkway. Caspian twisted free the moment it passed and crawled for the last anchor, leaving diluted blood in both handprints.

The stamped caps over the twelve channel-mouths began to crack, first one at a time, then several together. Water threaded through the fractures but could not yet force them open.

The rite-guards’ chant lost its rhythm.

Caspian reached the fourth lead plate. A guard came across the ring before Jonah could intercept him. Kieran left the doorway, caught the man low, and both of them went down in the water. Kieran’s injured arm struck stone. Pain flashed through his line, but it stayed bright. He rolled clear and kicked the guard’s blade into a channel.

Caspian drove his fingers beneath the final plate and pulled.

The lead bent before it broke. When it did, the release seam opened all the way to the basin.

The twelve channel caps gave way. Stone plugs burst inward, and water carried chalky fragments of their stamped faces across the floor.

Pressure struck outward. Kieran flattened himself over the guard he had taken down. Jonah locked one arm around Caspian and the other around the walkway rail. Delphine turned her shoulder into the doorway and held. I gripped the basin with both hands while water climbed my chest and pulled at my feet.

The braid wrenched the First Chair forward across the rim. I caught her wrist before she went into the basin. Her reserve rushed through our joined hands, painfully cold and nearly spent, before the release pulled the current away.

Then the current tore free of our joined hands.

As the field came apart, it passed through me.

A woman on a road stopped with her hand at her collarbone. A feverish boy sat upright in a farmhouse bed. Farther away, beyond any place I could name, someone drew a startled breath as sensation returned to a part of them that had been silent for years. The impressions came and vanished too quickly for me to hold. I let each one go.

Shock, pain, relief—a burst of laughter that became a sob before it vanished. Each brushed the edge of awareness and fell away. I kept the current in the broken channels and followed none of them home.

Nearer, Delphine went still at the threshold. Something long muted stirred along the edge of her Mark. Her grip on the blade loosened. Then a guard moved, and it tightened again.

The field released them. Whatever opened next belonged to the people carrying it.

Behind Delphine, the battering ceased. The chant outside the doors broke apart. One voice continued alone, faltered, and went quiet.

The braid thinned to a thread and vanished beneath the surface.

The First Chair staggered when the water released her arms. Her knee struck the rim. She caught herself before she fell and stood dripping, hands open before her.

The water at her wrists lay flat. The stone beneath us did not move when she straightened.

She studied her fingers, turning one hand and then the other. The callus along her thumb caught the lamplight.

“You didn’t touch them,” she said.

“Not their Marks.”

Her mouth tightened. “I don’t think I could have stopped there.”

She did not look away after saying it.

Water dropped through the broken channel-mouths until the basin showed plain silver again. The last tremor faded from the ring.

The silence that followed held ordinary sounds: water draining, someone coughing in the corridor, Kieran dragging his blade out of reach of the guard on the floor. No pressure waited beneath them.

I looked across the water at her. “What is your name?”

She took a breath before answering. “Tormund.”

Then the cold reached my wrist.

Marble vanished first. One moment Caspian was there beneath my skin, cold and burnt sugar; the next, there was only the memory of where the line had been.