Page 24 of Sereis
"Can you prove it?"
"If I can examine their forge, their tools, yes." His finger traced routes on the crystal map, and I realized they showed the Frost Veil from angles impossible in three dimensions. "They'll have templates, residual magic, something that connects them to the blades’ creation. And, most importantly, I need to find out who commissioned the blades. It's more crucial now than ever that you remain unseen, little one."
The sudden shift back to concern for my safety made me blink. "Why?"
"Because if they see you here, they’ll know I have a weakness. Something to feed back to whoever employs them." He rolled up the crystal maps with sharp, efficient movements. "You must stay in these chambers. No wandering, no exploring, no testing your new abilities. Promise me."
The command in his voice made my body want to agree instantly, but I forced myself to think past the compulsion. "For three days?"
"For as long as it takes." He was already moving toward the door, mind clearly elsewhere, strategizing. "I have preparations to make. The traders will expect standard protocols—inspection of goods, taxation agreements, the usual bureaucracy that keeps them from looking too closely at what I'm really doing."
"Sereis—" I started, wanting to tell him about what I'd seen at the feast, about the connections I was starting to piece together.
But he was already gone, stepping through the wall like it was mist, leaving me alone with the weight of secrets I wasn't sure how to share. The books on the shelf had started moving again, reorganizing themselves into titles about patience, about waiting, about the virtues of silence.
Three days of isolation stretched before me like an eternity. Three days while he prepared for traders who might have helped frame him for attempted assassination.
Threedaysofsolitudetaught me that luxury could be its own kind of prison, especially when the bars were made of cloud-silk and the walls responded to your every unconscious wish. Sereis had barely materialized in my chambers since the traders' approach was confirmed—a ghostly presence who appeared only to ensure I'd eaten, to press a distracted kiss to my forehead, to remind me of the rules before vanishing back into whatever defensive preparations consumed him.
I understood, intellectually, why he'd buried himself in strategy. The traders represented our best chance at proving his innocence. But understanding didn't make the isolation easier to bear. If anything, my enhanced senses made the loneliness sharper, each empty hour stretching like spun glass.
The responsive magic had seemed like a miracle at first.
I'd discovered it by accident that first morning, reaching for a sculpture of a rose carved from deep blue ice that sat on the mantelpiece. The moment my fingers made contact, the ice softened, becoming warm and pliant as summer petals. I could feel its willingness to change, to become whatever I needed. When I thought of my mother's garden, the rose shifted into a perfect replica of the damask varieties she'd grown, complete with thorns that wouldn't quite pierce my transformed skin.
The books were even more responsive. I only had to think of a story—any story—and it would manifest on the shelves. My childhood favorite about the girl who befriended a dragon? There it was, bound in scales that shimmered with remembered wonder. The economic texts I'd studied at school? They appeared in perfect order, though the numbers inside had been replaced with equations describing magical energy flow.
At first, I'd been delighted. I spent hours testing the limits, watching furniture reshape itself to my comfort, seeing art on the walls shift to match my moods. When I thought of warmth, fires sparked to life in the crystalline fireplace. When I craved sweetness, candied violets materialized on delicate plates that sang when touched.
But by the second day, the perfection had become oppressive.
Nothing here was real in the way that mattered. The rose wasn't my mother's rose—it was a perfect copy that lacked the aphid damage, the slightly crooked stem from when our cat had sat on it as a bud. The books knew all the words but none of the coffee stains from late-night study sessions, none of the margin notes in my father's cramped hand.
Everything I touched became what I wanted it to be, which meant nothing was truly itself.
By the third day, I craved resistance. Craved something that would push back, refuse to yield, exist independent of my desires. Even my own body had become too cooperative—I walked through walls without thinking now, my feet finding dimensional folds as easily as stairs. The frost patterns on my skin shifted to match my emotions, broadcasting every feeling in silver-blue light I couldn't control.
I found myself at the observation window more from restlessness than intent, pressing my palms flat against the crystal-clear glass. Outside, the Frost Veil stretched in all directions—beautiful, terrible, utterly foreign despite three daysof residency. I could see ice formations that grew in spirals that hurt to follow, clouds that moved backward through time, snow that fell upward in certain spots where gravity had been negotiated into something more aesthetically pleasing.
"I wish I could see something real," I whispered to the glass, not expecting response.
But the window, like everything else here, was responsive.
The view shifted. Not suddenly—more like watching ice melt in reverse, the Frost Veil's alien landscape dissolving into something else entirely. My breath caught as familiar architecture materialized: the servants' quarters at Caelus's Drift-Cloud Monastery.
I knew those walls. Had spent three years memorizing every crack in the mortar, every water stain on the ceiling, every splinter in the wooden floors that would catch bare feet if you weren't careful. The window showed me the common room where we'd gathered after sixteen-hour shifts, sharing bread and gossip and the kind of desperate humor that kept despair at arm's length.
It was meal time, apparently. I could see the servants lined up for their portions—thin soup and hard bread, the same meal we'd had every night except feast days when we got the nobles' scraps.
Then I saw him.
Tam looked like death walking. His face, always thin, had gone gaunt in the week since my escape. His distinctive silver ear-cuff was gone—probably taken as punishment or sold for who knew what necessity. But it was his expression that gutted me, that careful blankness I recognized from my own mirror, the look of someone who'd learned that showing emotion only gave tormentors more ammunition.
Caelus materialized behind him, moving through space like electricity through water. His hand landed on Tam's shoulder,and I watched my friend flinch before forcing himself still. The dragon lord was speaking, and though I couldn't hear the words, I could read the mockery in his gestures, the way he kept touching Tam—shoulder, hair, face—with possessive little taps.
Tam's eyes stayed fixed on nothing, that thousand-yard stare I'd perfected myself. But I could see his hands shaking where he'd clasped them behind his back, see the muscle jumping in his jaw from how hard he was clenching his teeth.
Caelus grabbed Tam's face suddenly, forcing his chin up, and I saw my friend's lips move. "Yes, Master." The shape was unmistakable, burned into my muscle memory from years of repetition. Then Caelus shoved him away, hard enough that Tam stumbled into the wall, and walked off laughing.
