POV: Mara
“Linen to Archives,” Silvie says. “Don’t drop it. Don’t flirt with anyone who smells like dust.”
“I never flirt,” I say automatically.
“You flirt with air,” Pia mutters, rolling her eyes as she lifts her half of the stack. “If the wind sighs nicely, you blush.”
I scowl at her, but my ears feel warm. “I’m focused,” I insist.
“Uh-huh,” she replies. “Focused on the wrong things, but yes. Very focused.”
We carry the stack between us. The corridor is cool, the kind of cool that feels old rather than cold, like the stone has been keeping secrets longer than any of us have been alive. The walls curve in places, built in generations no one remembers, patched in others by hands that left their marks unevenly. A carved lantern niche holds a flickering glass globe. Its light pulses faintly with the rhythm of the citadel’s tide engines, and the low hum rolls under my feet.
The floor shifts—old stone, then older. Smoother. More polished, not from cleaning, but from centuries of footsteps. My skin prickles. I tell myself it’s the draft. It isn’t.
“Left,” the clerk calls ahead. “Mind the step.”
We turn. And then it’s there.
The Moon Vein lies in the floor like a pale thread woven into darker fabric. I’ve walked past it a hundred times—maybe more. Most days it feels like a part of the architecture, the way old cities have odd quirks nobody explains anymore. Today, though, it feels like it’s looking back.
My fingertips tingle. Like I touched a coin left too long in the sun. I grip the sheet tighter, the linen warm from my hands, my palms slick with sweat.
“Hold,” Aster whispers.
“I am,” I think back. “Be quiet.”
Ahead of us, the clerk clears his throat like he thinks it will make him sound official. It doesn’t. On the right wall, dusty banners hang—threadbare crests that once mattered, now just shadows of meaning. A depiction of the first Tide Chamber is carved into the stone: three figures standing around a circle of light. Their faces were chiseled away long ago, on purpose or by accident. Hard to tell.
We reach the line.
The linen edge brushes my wrist as Pia adjusts her grip. The Vein hums—tiny, a mosquito buzz under the bone. Not loud enough to make anyone gasp, but loud enough that I feel it hit the inside of my ribs. The lights overhead flicker once—barely. A heartbeat’s blink. For a second I think maybe I imagined it.
My grip slips. The top sheet slides out of my hands and lands on the floor with a soft sigh, like it wanted to bow to the Vein.
“Sorry,” I blurt, blinking hard. My heart tries to beat its way out of my chest.
“It’s fine,” Pia says. “No one died. Except the sheet’s pride.”
I kneel, reaching for the linen. My fingers tremble. Another hand reaches too.
His.
Cael.
We both stop a hair before contact. Not touching, but close enough that the space between our hands feels like it’s holding a breath of its own.
His breath catches. Mine too.
The Vein glows the tiniest bit brighter. A blink. A gold petal blooming and vanishing all in one breath.
I look up.
Cael is right there, close enough that I see the faint, permanent stress line by his mouth, the kind that comes from years of swallowing what he’d rather shout. Rain left his hair slightly curled at the ends. His cloak is draped over one arm, as though he hurried here and forgot he was carrying half of it.
He looks at the Vein, then at me. His eyes—storm-dark, rimmed with worry—widen almost imperceptibly. He heard it. He felt it. I know he did.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I dropped cloth,” I say. “Not a baby.”
His mouth almost smiles. Just the suggestion of it. “Still,” he says softly. “You looked… dizzy.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, because I’m shaking and I don’t know why and I can’t name it here.
He bends with me, and for a moment we move like one person, hands dipping at the same angle. We pick up the sheet together. Our fingers don’t touch this time. I hate that I miss it. I hate that I want it. I hate how obvious my pulse feels under my skin.
The clerk fumbles a clipboard and tries to look casual. He looks like someone pretending to be a tree in a school play—too stiff, too eager to be unnoticed. I clock him anyway. The Regent’s plan smells like her—sharp, neat, full of fear she hides better than most.
Pia leans into me as we walk on. “Did the lights just flirt with you?” she whispers.
“Shut up,” I whisper back, but my lips twitch upward despite myself.
As we cross into the next hall, the Vein fades behind us, returning to its quiet, obedient glow. The air feels heavier now, as though it knows we’ve carried something out with us whether we meant to or not.
The archivist doors loom ahead—tall, carved with swirling tide patterns and a cracked moon emblem. Dust filters down from the high beams. A scribe hurries past with a stack of scrolls and nearly trips over his own feet. Typical.
When we turn the final corner, I pause. I shouldn’t. I do anyway.
I stop and press my hand over my chest. My heart is still racing, beating in some rhythm I don’t recognize. Aster presses back from the inside like a warm palm spreading across my ribs.
“Hello,” she murmurs, soft and awed.
“Don’t,” I tell her. “Not yet.”
Her voice twines with mine, low and thoughtful. “But soon.”
I walk on, pretending my knees aren’t trying to negotiate with gravity, pretending nothing happened.
But the Vein is still humming somewhere behind us.
And I feel like it followed me.