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“I fail to understand,” he murmured, “why Caelith ever troubled himself with you at all.”

Maia kept her face smooth. In her head, she answered: because he saw what you cannot.

“You humans are remarkably fragile,” he went on. “So easily mistaken for something more.”

Julen’s door creaked open behind her.

“Maia?” Julen said, voice unsteady as he leaned on the frame. “You’re here.”

She turned, relief flooding her expression. She crossed the distance quickly, placing a hand at his waist, rising onto her toes to press a brief, careful kiss to his mouth.

“I needed to see you,” she said softly. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

Julen blinked, then recovered admirably, lifting a hand to her cheek. “You should have come sooner.”

The Umbralyn watched them in silence, eyes narrowed. At last, he exhaled, faintly irritated.

“Very well,” he said. “See that you return to your quarters before dawn.” He looked at Maia for a moment longer. “Do not mistake leniency for blindness, Miss Colwyn.”

Then he turned and disappeared down the corridor, his footsteps soundless against the stone. Maia did not breathe out until Julen closed the door behind them.

“Well, that was convincing.” He paused. “Unless you intend to complicate my life further, I assume that was an act?”

“Of course it was,” she replied, smiling slightly. “I needed to speak with you urgently. It’s about Caelith.”

Julen sighed. “One is permitted a fantasy.”

“There’s something I forgot,” she said. “Or rather, something I didn’t understand.”

He listened as she described it: the stone, its warmth, the way the shard had pulsed when she came near it. The way Caelith had been guarded around it.

“He said it was calling to you?” Julen asked.

Maia nodded. “I thought it was metaphor. Or superstition. You know how Caelith speaks sometimes.”

Julen’s expression had gone intent. “Memory stones aren’t myth,” he said slowly. “They are very much outlawed. For humans, especially.”

Maia blinked. “Outlawed?”

“Because they don’t just store memory,” Julen continued. “They preserve resonance. Emotion. Context. Things we shouldn’t see.”

“That sounds like memory,” Maia answered.

“It is, but it’s not the way you’d write it down. You don’t read it. You feel it.” He paused. “You can keep anything in one. Corruption. Things better left buried.”

Something in her chest went very still.

“If it’s linked to him,” Julen said carefully, “it might not tell you where he is. That’s not what it’s for. More, where he was.”

“Where he was might tell us what he’s doing,” Maia replied. “Or what he was preparing for.”

Julen nodded. “Or what he couldn’t say out loud.”

Silence stretched between them, realisation settling in.

“So,” Julen said with a sigh, “you’re proposing we breach the Umbralyn quarters, then.”

Maia swallowed. “Yes.”