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But the world had bent, if only for a breath.

And that was enough to make me believe—next time, it might not snap.

CHAPTER 28

LILY

Weaver lessons ended at noon. I should have gone straight back to August's house.

I made a detour instead.

I knew the dates, the names, the battles lost and won. I had written essays about the tipping points of revolutions, about how civilizations turned on their own, about the subtle shifts that unraveled empires.

But standing in the middle of it? Living it? Nothing had prepared me for that.

The market was crowded, noisy, full of life. Even under the weight of oppression, people still came here to trade, to gossip, to steal small moments of normalcy. It was the kind of place history books glossed over. The quiet in-between. The space where real people lived before they became footnotes in a war they never asked for.

I wove through the stalls, pulling my hood lower. Adeline had warned me not to linger. A faint sting answered the thought. Threads brushed my wrists like skittish horsehair, urging me on or away, I couldn’t tell.

Still, I stayed. I needed to see this. To understand. Because history didn’t happen in grand speeches or battles. It happened here, in places like this.

It wasn’t long before the crowd shifted.

Conversations died mid-sentence. Vendors suddenly found urgent business elsewhere. Parents pulled their children close, faces going carefully blank.

I knew that fear. Had seen it the first day August walked me through the streets. The way people learned to make themselves invisible when danger came.

I turned toward the disturbance.

Two men in dark coats cut through the market like wolves through sheep. Witch hunters. Between them, they dragged a woman—thin, young, her face red and tear-streaked.

Mira.

My stomach dropped.

She was barely twenty. One of the younger Weavers I'd met. Smart. Careful. Always the first to check the perimeter, to warn others when patrols came too close. And now she was being dragged through the market in broad daylight, her wrists bound in iron that gleamed dully in the afternoon sun.

“Keep moving,” one of the hunters barked as Mira stumbled. He yanked her forward hard enough to make her cry out.

The market had gone silent. Everyone watching. No one intervening.

Mira's eyes swept the crowd, desperate, searching for—what? Help? Sympathy? A friendly face in a sea of carefully neutral expressions? Her gaze found mine. Recognition flashed across her face. Then fear—stark and immediate.

Don't, her expression screamed. Don't give yourself away. Don't help me. Just look away.

But I couldn't. Because I knew what came next. Knew where they were taking her. Knew that by tonight, Mira would be unraveled—erased from existence as if she'd never been born.

My hands curled into fists. My breath turned sharp, shallow. Magic flickered at my fingertips, the golden threads of the world shifting just beyond my reach. If I acted now, I could⁠—

“I’ll take her.” The words cut through the chaos like a blade.

My breath caught.

I turned sharply, and there he was. August.

He moved through the crowd with the kind of authority that didn’t need to be announced. The other Witch Hunters stepped back instinctively as he approached, their grips loosening ever so slightly on Mira.

She stilled, her chest heaving.