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“Try,” Beatrice said.
August lifted his hand, but hesitated.
His fear pressed into my chest—the fear of discovering that his power was only good for breaking things. That the corruption had not twisted him so much as revealed what he truly was.
I stepped closer and pressed my hand flat between his shoulder blades. Through the bond, the knot of tension beneath my palm became my own, tight enough to ache, and then the warmth of my touch unwinding it one degree at a time.
“You are not your father's weapon,” I said softly. “You are not what the corruption made you. You are August Hawthorne, and whatever your power does, it belongs to you.”
He turned his head and met my eyes. Through the bond, something unclenched in him, not the fear leaving but the decision to act despite it. To let me stand beside him while he tried.
He turned back to the knotted thread and lifted his hand again.
He reached. His awareness stretched toward the knot, the seams, the places where the binding could be undone. The bond pulled me along with him.
A sharp crack split the air.
The thread fell apart.
Not just the knot but the entire length of it. Magic scattered across the crate, across the floor, drifting like dandelion seeds. Where there had been a singular strand, there was now only fragments.
August stared at the destruction. His hand trembled.
“Too much,” he said hoarsely. “I only meant to break the knot.”
“First attempts often are,” Beatrice said calmly. She was already producing another thread. “Again.”
By midmorning, he could sever the knot without destroying the thread.
By noon, he could target specific sections of the binding, cutting here but not there, leaving certain connections intact while dissolving others.
I watched him work with growing wonder. His face was pale with concentration, sweat beading at his temples, but each attempt showed more control than the last. The wild destruction of that first try was giving way to something careful.
“Enough with threads,” Beatrice said finally, setting aside the latest practice piece. “Let us try something more complex.”
She produced a small wooden box, intricately carved, and set it on the crate. Even from across the barn, the ward pulsed around it, a defensive weave meant to prevent opening.
“Inside is a letter,” Beatrice said. “Break the ward without damaging what it protects.”
August approached the box. His perception shifted again, the ward revealing itself as a web of interconnected threads, some anchored to the wood, others floating free, all designed to resist intrusion.
“The ward is bound to the box itself,” he murmured, more to himself than to us. “If I simply cut through it, the backlash would damage the wood. And possibly the contents.”
“So what do you do?” Beatrice asked.
He was quiet for a long moment. I watched his eyes move, tracking something I could not see clearly, even through the bond.
“There,” he said finally. “The anchor point. Where the ward connects to the physical object. If I sever that connection specifically, not the ward itself but its grip on the wood, it should release without backlash.”
“Should?”
“Will.” He said it with more certainty this time. He was finding his footing. “It will release.”
He lifted his hand.
This time the sensation was different. Not a sharp crack but a soft whisper, like a new thread sliding through a tapestry. The ward flickered gold, then faded.
The box lid popped open on its own.
