Page 61 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

“Not unless they use a spyglass, and have reason to search in this direction.”

We reach a secluded clearing, with dappled sunlight breaking through branches overhead.

I turn to face Ellie, studying the new confidence in her posture—so different from the woman I first met in the tower.

Once she’s dismounted, I direct a couple of fighters to feed and water the horses, and lead her to a quiet spot away from the others.

“Do you want to talk about the dream, or practice with your familiar?”

She thinks for a second. “Practice. It will be more useful for me to be able to have some control over that than spending time discussing what a mysterious woman talking in riddles might mean.” Her practical approach comes with a half-smile that carries the hint of a challenge.

I have to fight against the smile wanting to break free. Instead, I nod, and point at the ground.

“Sit.”

She drops to sit cross-legged on the ground, looking up at me. “What do you want me to do?”

“First, call your familiar out, but keep it close.”

She concentrates, a small furrow appearing between her eyes, and the mist stalker forms beside her. Her eyes pop open.

“Good.” I lower myself to the ground opposite her. “Now, the key is not just seeing your familiar, but seeing through it. You need to feel the connection between you. Not as two separate things, but as one current. One consciousness in two forms.”

I call my raven. The shadow unfurls along my forearm, gathering form until it perches on my outstretched hand, curling over skin without pressure. Its head tilts. Waiting.

“I’ve noticed it doesn’t always appear the same way. Sometimes it forms on your hand, or bursts out of your chest, or emerges from your body fully formed. Why is that?”

I laugh quietly. “Sometimes it forms from immediate need. Danger will bring it out more abruptly than sitting here quietly, where I can allow it to form slowly. Sometimes it’s performative.”

“To get a reaction?”

“Something like that.” I pause, but she doesn’t say anything else. “Ready?”

I wait for her nod, then let my breath still.

The shift isn’t physical. I don’t move. I don’t close my eyes. But something loosens inside my mind. Separates. Like a door between thoughts opening just wide enough to pass through.

I lean into the bond, not with force but focus. My familiar doesn’t resist. It never does.

The world reshapes around me. The air moves differently.

Shadows stretch longer. I can feel the breeze beneath wings I don’t physically possess.

The distance between branches, the tilt of light across stone.

I can still feel my body sitting across from Ellie.

I can still see her, but it’s secondary. A background vision.

“Start with your awareness. Not with your eyes, but your sense of where your familiar is. Don’t focus on what it looks like, but how it feels in the space between you.”

She watches me.

“Then shift your attention into that feeling. Like leaning forward in your mind, but without moving. You’re not pulling it closer to you, you’re reaching into it. Let the connection draw you sideways.”

I exhale slowly. The raven lifts from my arm, wings catching the air with a sound too soft to echo.

“You won’t feel your body disappear. You’ll still be here, but there will be a distance between your mind and your body.”

The raven circles above us, and I see Ellie through it—the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head.

“What you see might feel too sharp, too fast. Let it come. Don’t try to match it. Just watch.”

I blink once, through the raven’s eyes. The connection hums in the back of my mind.

“It’s not about forcing, it’s about not resisting. The boundary between you isn’t truly there. It’s a construct of separate forms. Not separate essences. Try now. Don’t imagine the creature. Imagine being inside it. Feel how the world moves from where it sits.”

She turns her head to look at the mist stalker. It stands motionless beside her, watching her in return.

Her breathing slows. For several minutes, nothing seems to happen. I resist the urge to guide her further, to reach across the space between us and touch her. To show rather than tell. Some lessons must be learned through solitary discovery. Some connections can only form in silence.

Then a subtle shift occurs. I feel it before I see it. A ripple in the air between them, like heat rising from stone. The tension melts from her shoulders. Her breathing synchronizes with the creature’s. Her fingers unfurl on her lap, palms turned upward.

Her eyes change, taking on a silver quality that matches the mist stalker’s, the silver expanding until it fills the whites completely. The change is mesmerizing, and I watch, transfixed, as the connection forms between them.

My chest tightens. Pride, yes, but something more complex flows through it. Recognition. The woman who freed me from the tower is becoming something that hasn’t been seen in Meridian since the last purge. I’m witnessing the birth of a new Veinblood in real time.

“I think …” Her voice is quiet, distant. “It’s there. I can feel it.”

“Don’t chase it. Let it meet you.”

“It’s like … like a current under my skin. Right before lightning strikes.”

“That’s because of the kind of power you wield. It feels different for all of us. For Earthveins, it would feel like sand, Tideveins, water.”

“I can see myself,” she whispers. “And the clearing.”

Her hands relax on her lap as she surrenders to the experience.

She holds the link for longer than I expected for her first try, but eventually the connection breaks. She gasps, blinks, and focuses on me.

“That was incredible. Different from Glassfall Gap.”

“With practice, you’ll be able to send the familiar out, and see what it sees.” I hand her a waterskin. “Now hydrate and eat something.”

When it’s time to move out, we mount our horses and leave the clearing behind. The path narrows, forcing us to ride single file. From my position behind Ellie, I note how she sits straighter in the saddle than before, more confident despite her limited experience.

The silver in her hair catches sunlight, sending out tiny sparks which fall around her like rain.

Almost as if she’s shedding parts of herself with each step forward, leaving behind the woman who stumbled through a tower door, dehydrated and terrified, and becoming someone Meridian has been waiting for.

I find myself thinking of the dream, and the woman who warned of something happening at Blackstone Ridge. Of the name Elowen, and its connection to Ellie. The way it felt in my mouth, as though I’ve said it before. As though it belongs in the same breath as my own name.

Questions without answers yet. Mysteries to be unraveled after we deal with the immediate situation.

I touch the ring on my finger, feeling its response to my power, whole again after so long. But something has changed in the resonance, a new note vibrating through the connection. Something that feels like her. Whatever binds us is beyond any magic I’ve known before.

But for now, my focus has to stay on Blackstone Ridge and the confrontation awaiting us there. On Sereven, who believes he’s destroyed me. And the Authority, who will soon learn the cost of their failure to put me down.

Some debts can only be paid in blood, and my payment is long overdue.