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I straighten my spine and hold her gaze. I refuse to look away, refuse to shrink. Whatever instincts I have, I know cowering would be worse.

“What is happening?” I refuse to lower my voice.

“She’s questioning your presence.” Sacha doesn’t look at me. “Why a stranger would appear at the exact moment of my return. It’s natural suspicion. Nothing more.”

The elder man, the one who first greeted Sacha, interjects. His tone is low, even, and whatever he says seems to calm the immediate storm. The woman’s mouth thins, but she doesn’t press further, and slowly the conversation returns to the maps and parchments spread across the table.

I breathe, but it’s shallow, unsteady.

As they speak, the lightstones set into the walls flicker, just once. No one else seems to notice, their attention focused completely on Sacha and whatever he’s telling them.

Only me.

But I feel it. The tension rising beneath the surface, a pressure building not just around the room, but inside me.

The memory of my dream goes through my mind again. The raven. The shadowed figure. The words I can’t forget.

Shadowverin. Vashna et kavir.

The pressure spikes.

Pain threads through my fingertips, an ache that travels up my arms and burrows into my chest. Something deep in my body pulses in response to it. A tingling, electric and alien. For a single breath, silver light flickers over my fingers, down my palm, chasing the shape of my veins.

A lightstone above me flares, then shatters. Crystalline fragments rain down onto the floor, still glowing faintly as they fall, before fading to dull rock.

Every person at the table jerks backward. Shock crosses their faces, and all eyes turn to me.

The suspicious woman is on her feet in an instant, hand moving to the knife at her belt. But she doesn’t draw it. There’s something else in her eyes now.

Recognition.

“Navirak selurin?”Her voice cuts through the stunned silence. She looks directly at me.

Sacha’s hand slams down on the table. “Meshak!”

The woman shakes her head, and stalks around until she’s in front of me. “Navirak selurin?” She repeats the words slowly.

The rest of the lightstones in the room pulse.

“Ellie.” Sacha’s voice is soft. “Are you alright?”

I have no answer for him. I don’t know what just happened, or why, or how. I only know that something is happening that I don’tunderstand. And from the expressions on the people surrounding Sacha, I’m not the only one who finds that terrifying.

Chapter Twenty-Four

SACHA

“To flee does not mean to forget. Some memories run beside us.”

Love Songs of the Mountain Provinces

The shatteredlightstone scatters across the floor, fragments skidding across the stone. Every Veinwarden in the room surges to their feet as one. Metal scrapes against leather, and the sharp scent of disturbed dust and cold steel rises in the suddenly charged air. Faces harden. Shock giving way too quickly to suspicion, and suspicion to naked hostility. All of it directed at Ellie.

Only Lisandra remains seated, expression unreadable, and her gaze fixed on the girl who now stands out in ways she can’t control.

“What did she do?” Lorath demands, her voice carrying more accusation than question.

“Lower your weapons.” The command leaves my mouth with a force I haven’t summoned in decades, yet it settles on my tongue like it never left. Shadows stir at my fingers, a reminder of who stands among them. “She is not a threat to you.”