Chapter 107. Millie Was Only the Door, and the Man Who Needed to Fall Was Me

Chapter 107: 107. Millie Was Only the Door, and the Man Who Needed to Fall Was Me

"Rank delays," Elysandra said. "It does not defend..."

"A strong woman can hold out for hours, where a weak one would fall in a minute... But in the end, the pull is the same..."

"It is only the bond that breaks it."

She turned her head, and her gaze moved to Velora.

"And now... you, too."

Velora said nothing. She lifted her chin a fraction, very slightly, and a faint, dusky pink rose in her cheeks.

’WHAT THE FUCK DID SHE KNOW THAT I BAGGED VELORA?!’ I was shocked knowing that this... unicornkin can somehow know.

Did she watch all of this...?! Or maybe she has some kind of foresight powers?!

Damn... this is getting weird.

I noticed immediately that Magnara looked at the ceiling. And Sylvara bit her lip.

"There is a thread," Elysandra said.

She lifted her left hand and held it in front of her, with the palm turned toward me. It was empty.

But she moved her fingers, as if plucking at something in the air, and for a moment I thought that I could see it, a thin, bright line, as delicate as a cobweb, stretching out from her fingertips and vanishing into the distance.

"A Covenant Thread... It joins the Beastmate to every woman who has chosen him."

"You cannot see it, and you cannot cut it... But you may feel it." She smiled faintly. "I imagine that you have."

I thought about three heartbeats in the cold morning, my own, and a warm, steady one just down the hall, and one very far away.

"Yeah," I said, hoarsely. "I think I have..."

"Through it, you may feel one another’s danger... And, with leave freely given, you may share one another’s strength."

"Does it..." I swallowed. "Does it reach Millie?"

She looked at me for a long time. Her eyes were very kind.

"It does," she said. "She is not gone, Leon... She is waiting for you."

I closed my eyes. I felt something tight inside my chest give way, just a little, like a knot loosening.

I breathed in. And then I breathed out... slowly...

"There is a danger," Elysandra said, more quietly. "And I will not hide it from you."

I opened my eyes.

"If the Beastmate dies," she said, "every thread snaps... All at once."

"And every woman bound to him is as open as she was before." Her voice dropped. "Every stolen yes comes flooding back..."

"Every chain that was refused. And every hook that was turned aside."

The room had gone very quiet.

"That," Elysandra said, "is what Cassian truly wants."

I stared at her.

I’d thought, all this time, that he wanted Millie. I believed that she was the prize, the last Lunhare, and the girl who could wake the moon.

But I’d been wrong.

I’d been looking at the wrong thing. Millie had been a lure, a door he’d needed opened.

What he actually needed, to finish the thing he’d been building for twenty years, was the one man who made all of them immune.

He wanted me... fucking dead.

"Oh," I said, in a small voice. "That’s, uh... That’s not great."

Velora’s hand had closed on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything.

Elsbeth had taken a step closer.

I cleared my throat.

"Okay," I said. "So, I had a theory... About Cassian."

"I thought he was like a... a natural counter for beastwomen."

"Like a lock built for the exact key." I looked up. "That’s wrong, isn’t it?"

"It is," Elysandra said, and her face went grim. "He is no counter... He is a copy."

"The Hollow Man," Elysandra said. "A man who looked at the First Bargain and understood a part of it, and not all."

"He understood the yes... The power of a given word."

"But he did not understand the open hand... He thought a yes could be extracted, like a tooth."

"So he built his own bargain out of glass and chains and coaxing, and he bound the spirits with a counterfeit."

"A stolen yes," I said slowly, "against a free one."

"That is the whole of it."

I let out a long, shaky breath. A great weight seemed to ease off me, just slightly.

The way she said it, so simply, made it sound almost possible.

"He is a very powerful man," Elysandra said. "But he has no true root..."

"He is a cut flower... He will fade in time if the stem is not held." She smiled, very thinly. "We merely have to be the ones to hold it."

Magnara let out a short, harsh laugh.

She took a small silver bell from a table.

It was a plain little thing, no larger than my fist, with a handle of pale wood and a clapper of dull glass.

It had been sitting in a velvet tray beside the chair of Valecourt, and I’d taken it for an ornament. She lifted it by the handle and held it up between us.

"This is the Veil Bell," she said. "It sounds in the presence of any coercion."

"Even the faint, buried kind... It is very old, and very reliable."

"What does it do, exactly?" I asked.

"It listens."

She turned to Elsbeth first. She raised the bell and held it still, in front of the tall, dark-haired woman.

The glass clapper hung motionless.

But nothing happened.

"Evershade," Elysandra murmured. "Silent."

She turned to Velora. She raised the bell, and I swear that Velora braced herself, standing very straight, with her eyes fixed on the far wall.

The bell didn’t move. And it didn’t make a sound.

Velora’s ears went scarlet. I could see the color climbing up her neck.

She turned her face deliberately away from me, towards the nearest window, with the air of someone attempting to dissolve into the stonework.

Everybody in the room, I realized, understood perfectly well what that silence meant.

I coughed.

"Nightclaw," Elysandra said, in a perfectly calm voice, "silent."

Sylvara stepped forward when she was beckoned. Elysandra lifted the bell, and a thin, clear chime floated out, as soft as rain on a roof.

"Moonveil," she said. "Faint."

Sylvara closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out.

Magnara came last.

She walked up with her shoulders squared and her arms at her sides, a mountain of a woman in dented armor, with a scarred face and a pair of massive curved horns.

Elysandra lifted the bell.

It rang.

It wasn’t a gentle sound... It was loud, clear, and bright, a long peal that echoed through the hall and made the glass of the dome hum.

Magnara flinched. She stood there for a moment like a statue, with her jaw clenched and her amber eyes wide, listening to the sound die away.

"Redhorn," said Elysandra, quietly. "Strongly."

Nobody spoke.

The note trembled in the air.

I took a step forward without thinking. It was an instinct, nothing more.

I’d seen her face change, and I’d moved. I stopped about a yard away.

"It is nothing," Magnara said, in a flat, dead voice.

"O-okay."

"I am a sovereign’s daughter... I have held out against worse."

"I know."

"I do not need your pity."

"It’s not pity," I said. "I just wanted to stand here."

She looked at me for a long moment. I’d never seen her look so tired.

Then, slowly, she turned her head and stared out through the high windows at the sky.

"Very well," she said.

I stayed where I was. And I didn’t try to press.

Thankfully... She didn’t send me away.

"Rank delays," Elysandra said, setting the bell down. "It does not shield."

"Sylvara and Magnara are still open to him... You will have to guard them closely."

"Can I ask something?" I said.

"Of course."

I’d been thinking about it ever since she’d said the word thread. A cold, small, unsteady hope had been curled up in my chest.

I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to say it.

"Could you try it on Millie?"

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Elysandra nodded. She picked up the bell again and carried it across the floor to one of the tall windows.

It faced west. I followed, with the others behind me, and we stood in a ragged line in front of the glass.

There, in the pale blue afternoon sky, hung the second moon. It was faint in the daylight, a small, calm, chalky disc, low over the distant mountains.

It looked as close as a coin held at arm’s length.

Elysandra lifted the bell toward it.

The clapper didn’t move. It hung there, perfectly still, and no sound came from it at all.

"She is held by the covenant," Elysandra said softly. "No hollow thing may reach her where she lies."

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. It came out of me in a long, shuddering rush, and I put my hand over my mouth, and my eyes stung.

’Thank God,’ I thought. ’Thank God, thank God.’

It was Elysandra who broke the silence.

"And I know," she said, "that you are not of this world."