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The Weaver’s final look haunted me. But not as much as Lily’s—that slow, knowing smile before she disappeared up the stairs.

She'd stripped bare in my study and walked out like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. The worst part—the part that unsettled me more than anything else—wasn’t that she had done it. It was that I wanted her to do it again. And that terrified me more than anything my father could do.

CHAPTER 23

LILY

The air was crisp, the kind that bit at your cheeks and carried the scent of woodsmoke and frostbitten earth. Afternoon sun filtered through the canopy, casting flickers of gold across the mossy path as Adeline and I walked in silence toward the ruins of the old bell tower.

I had insisted on going alone. Adeline had pressed harder.

“If you’re going to keep sneaking off like a woodland sprite, I might as well make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”

Fair enough.

Neither of us spoke for the first stretch. My thoughts were still tangled in the threads Ysella and Lorien had awakened—threads I’d never known belonged to me. Magic I’d never asked for now hummed at my fingertips, ancient and waiting.

Adeline, by contrast, moved like someone who belonged to these woods. I watched her from the corner of my eye. “How exactly do you help the Weavers?”

She exhaled, slow and steady. “Quietly. I get them supplies—food, medicine, maps. I pass along word when patrols head too close. Sometimes, that’s enough to keep them alive. Sometimes it’s not.”

My brow furrowed. “And no one suspects you?”

Her smile was sharp, laced with bitterness. “Men rarely suspect women of subversion. We’re supposed to be too delicate for treason.”

I snorted despite myself, then fell quiet again.

“You risk a lot,” I said after a while.

Adeline shrugged, but her jaw clenched. “I owed Nicolette. I couldn’t save her, but I can make sure others don’t vanish the way she did.”

Her gaze flicked to me. “What about you, Lily? What are you going to do with what you’ve learned?”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure. But ever since they untangled me, it’s like the world cracked open. Like I’ve been staring through a keyhole, and now I finally see the door.”

Adeline let out a low breath. “Saints. August is going to have my head.”

I grinned. “Then let’s not tell him.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.

The forest thinned. Waiting in the clearing were the Weavers.

Ysella stood at the center, tall and soft-eyed, her silver curls falling down her back like ribbons of starlight. But it was Syra who caught my gaze first.

She stood just beside her sister, arms crossed, expression unreadable. She had the same storm-gray eyes, the same silver in her braid—but where Ysella was moonlight, Syra was flint. Familiar now, but no less formidable.

“You’re late,” Syra said.

Adeline scoffed. “And you’re still terrifying. Look at us, unchanged.”

Syra gave her a look, but Ysella stepped forward before they could get into it.

“You came,” she said to me, hands clasped in front of her. “I’m glad.”

I nodded. “I said I would.”

“You brought her?” Syra arched a brow at Adeline.