North Drake
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Book 1: Chapter 15: Glass Between Us
🕑 Added 2025-06-18 14:18:17 +0000 UTCChapter 15:
Glass Between Us
The door closed behind her with a muted click. Not loud. Not final. Just… done.
Grace stood in the center of her room, the fire in the hearth burning low, casting long, lazy shadows across the floor. She didn’t move for a long moment. Her small hands hung loosely at her sides, fingertips still tingling.
I didn’t watch it happen, she thought, smiling faintly. I was there.
She inhaled.
The scent of polished wood, lilac oils, and parchment filled her lungs. Familiar comforts. But underneath it all… she could still smell the dungeon. Stone. Blood. Fear. It clung to her like perfume worn too long — not unpleasant, just... personal.
She stepped forward, unhurried, graceful.
"Corax."
The name wasn’t a request. It never had been. It was a weight dropped into the world, and the Veil answered.
The air darkened near the ceiling beam.
He didn’t materialize at first — not completely. The shadows folded in, then out, before gathering like coiling smoke into the faint outline of the spirit she had bound. His light flickered as he formed fully, hovering just above the bed’s canopy.
A quiet presence.
But wary.
She’s changed again, Corax thought, watching her in silence.
Not her body — though it carried itself differently now. Still a child. Still small. But the weight in the room had shifted.
It wasn’t her voice. It was what stood behind it.
“You didn’t follow me,” Grace said softly, walking past him, running her fingers along the edge of her writing desk.
“I didn’t need you tonight,” she continued. “I didn’t need to watch. I didn’t need to observe. I was there, Corax. I made him scream. Not as an observer… not through your eye.”
She turned; her smile dreamy. “But I felt it. Through me.”
Yes, you were there… and something else, Corax thought but didn’t speak.
He had felt it again in the dungeon, faint and cold, like the memory of a scream in a sealed room. A presence not from this world. Not even from behind the Veil where he dwelled. It pulsed behind her eyes when she whispered. Curled behind her smile like a second grin.
A watcher behind the watcher.
It never spoke.
But he had begun to suspect it was listening.
She stopped just a step away from him, her pale hands lifting slightly, as if to touch his orb.
He flinched before he could stop himself.
Corax pulsed dimly, unsettled.
For the first time since their binding, he had not been her window in the dungeon.
He had not been needed.
Not to see. Not to whisper. Not even to show her how to hurt.
Only to watch her do it.
“You enjoyed it,” he said, more to himself than her.
“I felt alive,” she whispered.
No. Not alive. Awakened, he corrected silently.
She walked to the window and leaned on the frame, staring out into the moonlight.
“I always thought the mirror was my stage. But it was just glass. Just reflection. You… you were my eye, Corax. My lens.”
She looked over her shoulder, pink catching faintly in the whites of her eyes.
“But tonight, I didn’t need you”
She walked toward him again, closer than usual, until her face was nearly lit by his faint glow.
“There’s something beautiful about fear, isn’t there?” she asked.
Corax didn’t answer.
Not out loud.
Because something inside her flickered as she spoke. A feeling he could not name. A hollow presence, curled just beneath her skin — like breath held too long in the lungs of the world.
He had never heard it speak.
Not once.
But he had felt it. Even through the Veil, its chill traced along his essence.
It watched when she did.
It smiled when she grinned.
And sometimes, in those moments — especially when she was alone — it looked out from behind her eyes like it belonged there.
“You saw him bleed,” he said slowly, “and you did not flinch.”
“I made him bleed.”She smiled.
“But that’s not why I called you.”
She walked to the bed and pulled back the covers with all the quiet ceremony of a queen undressing a chessboard.
“I called you,” she said, slipping beneath the sheets, “because you watched. Because you felt it, didn’t you?”
Her voice softened into silk. “I wasn’t alone down there.”
Corax dimmed again. A pulse of silence. She knows.
She doesn’t name it. She doesn’t ask questions.
Because she doesn’t want answers.
She wants confirmation.
“Yes,” he said finally, though the word cost him something.
Grace rolled onto her back and exhaled slowly; her eyes half-lidded beneath the carved canopy.
“It’s still with me. Even now.”
And it’s closer than before, Corax thought. Nearer to the surface. I can’t hear it. But I think... it can hear me.
He drifted backward toward the window, hovering between moonlight and shadow.
And he didn’t close his gaze.
Not even for a second.
Because the girl who summoned him at one year old wasn’t sleeping anymore.
And whatever curled behind her soul might soon decide it didn’t need her either.
Corax, born of this world and shaped by the Veil, had watched kings fall, mages break, and spirits unravel in silence. But tonight, for the first time in his endless drifting memory, he felt something that did not belong in the realm of spirits or mortals: fear. Not of Grace’s growing power or her unnatural composure, but of what lingered just behind it. He had always known the Veil was not the limit. There were layers to existence, secrets buried beneath both flesh and spirit, deeper than magic, older than gods. Beyond the mortal world and the Veil that cloaked it, there was something else. The In-Between. A place untouched by structure or rule, where things drifted not as thought, but as intent. Grace had never spoken of it. She had no need to. Because now, he felt it in her. Coiled behind her soul like a second presence, patient and silent. Watching. It had come with her into this world—of that he was certain—and whatever it was, it had not come alone.
And still, part of him hesitated. Part of him hoped. Because he remembered the infant who summoned him without words. The toddler who questioned the stars. The girl who smiled not just with cruelty, but sometimes… with awe. Maybe she was still in there, beneath the presence that rides her like a crown made of whispers. Maybe. If he acted now—if he warned the others, if he resisted the bond, he might slow her descent. Save her. Not the duchess. Not the noble girl. The soul that crossed the threshold. But even as the thought formed, it slipped like water through spectral fingers. He could no more abandon her than the moon could leave the sky. Not because of the binding. Not entirely. Because something in him was drawn to her, not to her power, but to the question she embodied. What if she is both the child… and the door? He hovered in the shadows and did not blink. Not out of fear. But because he could not bear to look away. Not now. Not yet.
--::--
The morning light streamed through the high windows of the dining room, filtered through pale gold curtains that danced with the breeze. The breakfast table was already set — lace linens, fresh-squeezed fruit nectar, delicate bread warmed by enchantment, and silver trays of crisped ham and forest berries arranged in crescents.
Grace sat at the center of it all, a vision of composure in pale ivory. Her curls were tied with a soft ribbon, her hands folded politely in her lap. She did not eat. Not yet. She was waiting.
Elyne Marren, seated to her right, was smiling as usual, the kind of practiced smile that hovered between affection and exhaustion. She poured Grace a second cup of jasmine tea without being asked, humming under her breath.
When the doors opened, both looked up.
Ronan of Ashford stood in the threshold; tall, cloaked in a formal gray coat, his expression pulled between effort and hesitation. He hadn’t worn armor; this wasn’t war. It was breakfast. A family visit. He hadn’t seen her in five years.
She was a baby last time.
Now she looked like a miniature of her mother.
He cleared his throat. “Good morning,” he said, a little too formally.
Elyne stood, curtsied with the crisp efficiency of a battle mage. “Lord Ronan,” she said warmly, “we’re honored.”
Grace did not rise. She tilted her head slightly, studying him with wide blue eyes.
Then: “Brother.”
Her voice was calm. Not distant. But careful.
Ronan’s tension eased just a little. He stepped forward, pulling out the chair across from her, glancing once at Elyne for silent permission. She nodded politely, then resumed her seat beside Grace, folding her napkin with slow precision.
“It’s… good to see you,” Ronan offered as he sat. “You’ve grown.”
Grace tilted her head again, faintly curious.
“So have you.”
He blinked. Then smiled. A little awkward. “I suppose I have.”
There was a brief, companionable silence.
Then Elyne, ever the graceful host, offered, “Would you like something, my Lord? We’ve fresh cream pastries and—”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Ronan said gently. His eyes stayed on Grace.
“You probably don’t remember me,” he said. “I visited once, when you were barely walking. You bit my finger.”
Grace’s mouth twitched, just slightly. “I don’t remember. But it sounds like something I’d do.”
Ronan laughed — a surprised, quiet sound.
“She’s sharper than I expected,” he said, glancing toward Elyne.
Elyne nodded proudly. “She always is.”
Grace, still expressionless, lifted her teacup.
“You came to see me,” she said, not asking.
Ronan hesitated, then nodded. “I did.”
“Why?”
The question landed flatly between them, not hostile, but clinical.
Ronan blinked. “You’re my sister,” he said. “And now… the only one I have left.”
Silence. Elyne shifted just slightly, her fingers pausing at the cup’s rim.
Grace lowered her gaze. “You didn’t write.”
“I didn’t know what to say,” he admitted.
“You were the only one who could have.”
There was no edge in her voice. No tremble. Just truth.
Ronan swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Grace nodded once, then looked back at him fully.
“It’s all right. We’re here now.”
That simple sentence had weight he didn’t understand.
He studied her more carefully. The calm posture. The perfect etiquette. The subtle distance in her eyes, like someone who stood two steps behind her own gaze.
She’s composed. Too composed.
“I was hoping we could talk more,” he said softly. “Not here. Somewhere quieter.”
Elyne straightened a bit. “Of course, my Lord. After breakfast, I’ll escort her wherever you wish.”
Grace blinked once.
“No need. We can walk to the south garden after tea.”
She looked at Elyne. “You’ll stay behind.”
Elyne hesitated. Just a second.
Then: “If that’s what you wish, my Lady.”
Ronan gave her a grateful smile. “Thank you, Elyne.”
She nodded, but didn’t smile back this time.
Grace stood; napkin folded with silent precision. Her tea cup clinked gently as she set it down. “Shall we go, brother?”
He rose with her, and for the first time, noticed how quiet the room had become.
Ronan followed her as she walked ahead, light on her feet, hands clasped behind her back like a little noblewoman who had already memorized the world. Her steps made no sound, yet each one echoed louder in his mind. He didn’t know why. She was polite. She was beautiful. She was… perfect. But something in the air around her felt wrong, like a string drawn too tight beneath a smile. And as the doors closed behind them, sealing off the warmth of breakfast and Elyne’s watchful presence, he realized something he hadn’t before.
She hadn’t asked a single question about him.
Not his travels. Not the betrothal. Not even their brothers.
She hadn’t looked at him like a sibling at all.
She had looked at him like a stranger.
And it saddened him…
