Long Meg and Her Daughters stone circle, Cumbria
Mist rose from the road in ribbons thick enough to eat the trees. Wickham's battered Land Rover's wipers thumped back and forth in stubborn defiance, streaking more than clearing. Technically, it was a vehicle. Functionally, it was a mobile archive of everything Wickham refused to deal with.
Grey hunched into her jacket and muttered something about cursed weather.
Wickham grinned like he'd summoned it personally. "Darling, if you want sun, you'll have to go to the Seelie. They're very into optics." He swerved around a curve with the casual disregard of someone who either knew the road or didn't care if he didn't. "Besides, this is classic ghost weather. Brooding. Soggy. Drenched in regret. Like an ex at a wedding."
Grey shot him a look. "You are the ex at the wedding."
"Exactly! And I'm bringing snacks."
The field Harrower's report had been sparse. A flickering light through the trees. A voice calling a name that no one remembered. Old standing stones, crooked with time, and a shrine half-eaten by earth.
They parked in a clearing that wasn't on any map. Mist seeped into the folds of Grey's clothes as they walked, soaking the cuffs of her trousers and curling cold fingers around her neck. The woods felt ancient—not just old, but buried in years. Every stone was moss-choked. Every tree leaned like it was listening.
"I don't like it," Wickham said brightly, poking a root with his boot. "Which means we're in exactly the right place."
There was no ghost. No voice, no scream, no shiver of spectral rage. Just a ring of carved stones—blackened with age and half-sunken—and, at the center, a cracked altar overgrown with ivy. Grey half expected that Unseelie bloodhound to step out of the trees, his boots squelching through the moss, but he was nowhere to be found. A flicker of something—irritation, she told herself—twinged beneath her ribs, sharp and unwelcome.
But beneath the altar, buried shallow in the soil, they found something older than the Harrowers themselves.
A loom. Half-buried. Half-asleep. Twisted with rusted threads and spools that gleamed faintly in places, as if touched by starlight. Grey knelt. Reached out. Fingers hovered, uncertain.
"Careful," Wickham warned, not unkindly.
But Grey touched the loom.
And it breathed.
Not literally. Not with lungs. But with purpose. With recognition. The air pulsed around them—threads stirring as if from centuries of slumber, invisible filaments brushing skin and soul alike. Grey's breath hitched.
"I don't—" She swallowed. "I don't know what I just did."
Wickham crouched beside her, mouth slightly open, some of the shine knocked out of his usual mischief.
"Well, darling," he said finally. "I think we just found your inheritance."
He rose and brushed off his coat. "Threadborn," he muttered, almost reverently. "Hell of a title. Hope you're ready for it."
They drove back in silence, for once. The rain had started—not loud, not driving—just gentle and constant, like the sky had been holding its breath and finally let it go.
Grey leaned her head against the window, watching the hedgerows blur past. Wickham was unusually quiet, for which she was vaguely grateful.
Threadborn.
The word still clung to her skin like the threads that had risen around the shrine—unseen, but undeniable.
She'd heard it before, once, buried in the back pages of an old Harrower codex:
A Threadborn is not chosen. They are remembered. Born where fates fracture. Marked by the loom where threads once snapped and rewove themselves wrong. They carry what was forgotten. They repair what cannot be forgiven.
At the time, she'd thought it was a poetic metaphor. A myth for the spiritually inclined. Now, with the ghost-thread still brushing the edges of her senses, it felt terrifyingly literal.
She crossed her arms tightly and stared harder at the road. "I don't want to be remembered," she muttered under her breath.
Wickham glanced over but didn't comment. For once, his silence felt like understanding.
When they reached the Sanctuary, the glamour shimmered to let them through, leaves shifting to reveal the familiar rise of spires and watchful yew trees.
And he was there. Waiting.
Standing just outside the main gate, half-drenched. Rain soaking his long hair, clinging to his neck and shoulders in wet ribbons. He hadn't bothered with a glamour to fend off the rain. His coat hung from one shoulder, and his boots were caked in road mud. He looked like he hadn't slept.
For a moment she was completely entranced.
Then, without warning, the Land Rover's ancient (and heretofore, definitely very much non-functional) radio crackled to life and started blaring Maroon 5 at max volume, as if possessed.
"I don't mind spending every day, out on your corner in the pouring rain..."
She briefly considered spontaneous combustion. Not hers—Wickham's. Grey thumped the dashboard with her satchel repeatedly, glaring at him viciously.
Alaric was standing in the rain like a gothic daydream with intimacy issues, and the universe decided she needed a soundtrack. Fantastic.
"What the hell..." She starting banging her fist desperately against the dashboard when the radio wouldn't shut up, glaring at Wickham. "You are such a menace!" She swore Alaric could hear the song.
"She wiiiiiiiillll be looooooved…"
Her soul left her body.
Wickham didn't even glance over. "Well," he said, far too pleased, "the Land Rover ships it."
He grinned like the Cheshire cat and waggled his eyebrows at her before glancing Alaric's way. "You know, darling," he said with theatrical innocence, "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were hoping for this little reunion. Should I step aside, or go fetch some popcorn?"
"Get lost, Wick!"
Wickham cackled once and then whistled low, eyes darting between them. "Well, someone's had a week," he said cheerfully, hopping out and slamming the door shut, addressing Alaric. "Darling, you look like a painting in a tragic museum. What happened—run out of poetry and vengeance?"
Alaric didn't answer. He didn't look at Wickham.
He just looked at Grey.
Just stood there in the rain, eyes unreadable, mouth set. Grey stepped closer.
"You're back." She was trying to not be please about that. Really, she was.
Alaric's voice was quiet. "I didn't know where else to go."
There was no accusation in it. No expectation. Just truth, laid bare. He seemed so… lost.
Wickham, for once, seemed to sense the gravity. He rolled his eyes, theatrically annoyed, and muttered, "Fine. I'll just be over here. With the umbrella. Not watching. At all."
He wandered toward the Sanctuary door, still whistling She Will Be Loved off-key.
Grey reached out, almost uncertain, then caught Alaric's sleeve. It was wet and cold and real.
The habitual taunt that seemed to surface any time she was near him died on her lips when she saw it—the hollowness in the Fae's gaze, like something vital had slipped through the cracks and hadn't come back. Grief clung to him, not loud or weeping, but coiled tight behind his ribs like a wound stitched shut too fast.
Grey's hand faltered, caught in the space between instinct and caution. She didn't pull away—not fully—but she didn't move closer either. The tension buzzed just beneath her skin, a quiet war between yearning to comfort him and the fear of being wrong. Her breath caught, the uncertainty sharp and stinging. Was this hesitation a kindness, or a wound waiting to be made? The threads around them felt taut, pulled by something unspoken—and she wasn't sure if reaching further would unravel her or him.
Am I allowed? she thought, throat tight. Do I get to ask what's hurting you?
Alaric saw the hesitation. And mistook it. Of course he did.
A flicker passed over his face—blink and it would be gone—a crack that ran deeper than weariness. Something older. Something like abandonment dressed in memory.
But when he spoke, his voice was honeyed iron, as always.
"Careful, pet," he almost sneered, one dark brow lifting with practiced ease. "You'll give a man hope."
Grey blinked, caught off guard. "That's not— I didn't mean—"
Alaric's smile curled, sharp as ever, even as it trembled at the edges. "No need to explain. I've lived long enough to know a pause means don't come closer."
He stepped back, just slightly. Just enough to pretend it was on purpose.
Grey's heart squeezed, guilt and confusion tangling fast. "Wait, that's not what I—"
But he had already turned his face to the rain, letting the water blur the tightness in his jaw.
Wickham, half-sheltered beneath the eaves, crossed his arms and muttered under his breath. "By the old stones... they're both walking ballads. Pining like it's a bloody career path."
He glanced skyward. "At this rate, I'll die of secondhand yearning before the Fae get me."
Wickham cupped his hands around his mouth, voice echoing off the Sanctuary walls:
"Oi! Prince Charming! Come inside before you catch something human, and no darling, I don't mean a lovely warm lass, I mean like a bloody cold. Honestly, do either of you plan to speak in full sentences before the rain turns you into tragic lawn ornaments? I can fetch a violin if you'd like to complete the tableau!"