Harrower's Hall, Sanctuary
Grey sat cross-legged in her usual armchair, mug of something herbal and vaguely bitter between her hands. The sleeves of her jumper swallowed her fingers, and her dark hair, still damp from the rain earlier, clung to her neck, curling softly.
Wickham sprawled like a contented cat on the carpet, thumbing through a deck of cards he swore weren't enchanted—though they kept trying to reorganise themselves when he wasn't looking. "If these start spelling out ominous warnings, I'm charging them rent," he muttered.
Maerlowe was in his usual spot, beneath the tall arched window, silver-rimmed spectacles perched low on his nose, his silhouette inked in firelight.
"Everything is a warning, where you're concerned. I half expect your tea leaves to form the word 'duck.'"
Alaric simply leaned against the far wall, arms folded, his expression unreadable save for the stormclouds in his eyes.
The library glowed with the kind of warmth only old places remembered. Outside, the wind rattled the hedgerows and scattered leaves across the courtyard. Inside, the conversation circled something that had been unspoken too long.
"The courtiers we learned about," Grey said, breaking the silence, her voice soft but steady. "They're positioning for something bigger. That informant—what she said about me—'threads not even the Seelie King controls.' What does that mean?"
She didn't expect an answer that would sit comfortably. Maybe not one she'd like.
Maerlowe looked up at last, his eyes shadowed beneath the firelight. "It means you don't belong to any of them," he said simply. "Not to the Seelie or Unseelie. Not even to the old orders."
He closed the book he'd been paging through and set it down with reverent care. "Threaded fates are the lifeblood of Fae magic. They shape the world, nudge mortals into the stories Fae prefer. But you—" he gestured vaguely, as though she were both object and mystery "—you're born outside of that lattice. A wild stitch in a tightly woven loom."
"So I'm a snag in their perfect little tapestry," Grey muttered, lips curling around a humourless smile. "How charming."
At least I'm consistent, she thought. If I can't fit in anywhere, I might as well unravel with style.
Maerlowe didn't return the smile. "It makes you unpredictable. And power, child, fears what it cannot forecast."
"That makes me a threat," Grey murmured.
"Or a weapon," Alaric said quietly, and though his tone was even, there was a flicker of something bitter beneath it—like he knew too well what that cost.
Grey looked at him then, a touch of hurt flickering through her eyes before it vanished beneath sarcasm. "Lovely. Always dreamed of being one of those."
Maerlowe stood—slowly, like someone weighed down not by years, but by knowing too much—and approached the dias at the heart of the room. On it lay the Harrower's Book of Telling, heavy and breathing softly with old magic.
As he approached, the Book opened itself. Ink spilled across the parchment like veins, forming and reforming words that pulsed faintly with some inner rhythm. Prophecy and memory merged in every curve of script.
"The Threadmother," Grey whispered. "What does it say about her?"
She didn't know why her voice dropped when she said it—only that it felt like asking about a ghost in a chapel. Like the air might bend wrong if she wasn't careful.
Maerlowe adjusted his spectacles, the fire catching in the lenses. "There are fragments—stories of her weaving fate itself, of threads that chose their bearer. Some say she created the first soulwells. Others claim she is a soulwell—sentient, alive, cradling memory in the marrow of the world."
Grey leaned forward. "Was she sealed?" Her heart beat faster, and she wasn't sure if it was dread or hope that edged her voice. Some part of her already knew the answer—stories didn't speak of the Threadmother in the present tense—but still, she asked, needing to hear it aloud, needing it to be real enough to name.
Maerlowe hesitated. His voice lowered. "Yes. The older tales diverge—some say by her own hand, others by the Seelie King."
Alaric stirred by the hearth but said nothing. His gaze had turned inward, fixed on some flicker in the fire no one else could see. One arm braced against the mantle, the other curled loosely across his ribs, as though holding something in. The set of his shoulders—tense, then looser—betrayed a conflict he wouldn't voice. His jaw clenched once, then eased. Even still, his silence echoed louder than words.
"The Book suggests something darker," Maerlowe continued. "That he persuaded her. No blades. No battle. Just words, spun like silk. A prison woven from apparent kindness."
Alaric laughed softly, bitterly. "Caderyn only conquers when persuasion fails."
Grey's hands curled tighter around her mug. "And no one stopped him?"
Maerlowe's silence was a confession.
"No matter how long a life," he said at last, eyes unfocussed, on the past, "ten years or ten thousand, every creature clings to it. Fae most of all. We feared what he might do if we resisted. We feared fading. Being forgotten."
Across the room, Wickham blinked. Then narrowed his eyes.
Grey stared into her cup. "So he was allowed to make memory into a weapon. Story into a leash."
The words schoed in her chest like an accusation too old to find a target. It made something inside her go cold—because if stories could be bent into chains, how long until hers was too?
The fire popped in protest. Maerlowe closed the Book gently, as though it might break beneath the truth.
"Because we were afraid not to," he said, and the words fell with the weight of something long unspoken—shame dressed as wisdom, old guilt hiding behind rationality. It wasn't just an answer; it was an apology that had taken centuries to form.
The silence that followed felt like mourning. Even Alaric, ever the icon of poised detachment, didn't move. But the set of his shoulders told her more than words.
Later, in the hush of her room, Grey sat cross-legged beneath a worn quilt. Her fingers traced the edge of a worn patch where the stitching had frayed, thinking of threads and patterns and women sealed away because they were inconvenient to kings.
A soft knock disrupted the silence.
Alaric stood in the doorway, unbound hair drawn over his shoulder to hang loosely, eyes shadowed with something she couldn't read.
"Just checking you haven't unravelled yet, pet" he said, mouth tilted in a wry smile. "It was a lot tonight."
Grey blinked. "Define 'a lot,'" she said, trying—and failing—not to get distracted by the way his hair fell around his shoulders, or the way the dim light carved silver into the hollows of his collarbones. He looked like a painting half-forgotten in a cathedral.
She hated how her chest fluttered. Hated even more the ache that followed when he looked at her with something too tender to name.
It's just proximity, she told herself. Just adrenaline. Just... nonsense.
She folded her arms tighter around her knees, glaring into her teacup as if it were to blame for everything unsettled in her.
Get a grip, Wyrde. He's Fae. He's dangerous. He probably invented seduction.
Alaric's weight shifted at the edge of the rug—still standing, but only barely holding still. He glanced down at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
He stepped inside, lingering at the edge of the rug. "If you need anything... I'm not far."
She hesitated. "I know."
The moment stretched. He took her silence for retreat, and his smile flickered into something tight, rehearsed.
"Rest well, pet. Wouldn't want to lose your shine."
He was gone before she could answer—before she could decide whether to call him back or let him walk away. It left her staring at the empty doorway, lips parted in exasperation, heart tugging in a dozen directions at once. Every book, every warning she'd ever studied about Fae whispered don't trust them, and yet here she was—curled beneath her quilt, longing for one to stay. She didn't know what she wanted, and that, more than anything, made her furious with herself.
Grey stared at the closed door for a long time. Then lay back beneath the quilt, eyes open. Sleep came in fraying stitches.
She dreamed of silk. Of thunder. Of a lullaby sung in a voice impossibly old and impossibly kind, echoing across a field of white where threads hung like stars.
A woman of moonlight and rain turned toward her. And smiled.
In the morning, she would wake with tears drying on her cheeks and the scent of spun rain on her skin.
Outside, the wind whispered across the stones like a promise.
Alaric lingered outside her door longer than he should have.
He told himself she needed rest, not complications. That proximity was dangerous. That her softness, her spark, the flicker of confusion in her eyes—none of it was meant for him.
And yet.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the corridor wall, feeling the cool stone bite into his shoulders. What am I doing? he thought.
Every instinct, honed over centuries of survival, warned him away. She was mortal. She was unpredictable. She asked questions no one else dared ask, and cared in ways no one else dared care. He shouldn't feel drawn to that.
But he did.
The way she chewed her lip when she was thinking. The way she flinched from tenderness but reached for it anyway. The way she'd looked at him tonight—as if she wanted to trust him and couldn't forgive herself for it.
He didn't deserve that.
Didn't deserve her.
But gods, the way she looked when lit by firelight. Like something sacred and half-forgotten.
Alaric let his head rest against the wall, eyes still closed.
I would burn kingdoms to see her safe, his heart whispering to the dark. And I don't know what that makes me.
He stayed until the corridor cooled and the scent of sandalwood faded from beneath her door.
Then, finally, he left.
Maerlowe's Study – Harrower's Hall, late evening
The study was mostly dark, save for the golden lamplight pooling across the cluttered surface of Maerlowe's desk. Dust floated like motes of memory through the air, drifting past tall shelves packed to indifference. Outside, the courtyard trees whispered in the wind, their leaves rustling like old paper.
Maerlowe moved slowly, with the precise economy of someone who'd once been hurried, and had since outgrown the habit. He was searching for a misplaced book on ancestral binding when he found something else instead.
A grey-bound notebook, tucked askew beneath a stack of scrolls and a long-cold tea cup. No title. No markings. But he knew the object instantly, the way one recognizes a coat long-worn by someone you've watched grow.\
Field Journal: Twinned Threads — On Heroic Archetypes and Fractured Kinship
Submitted* (eventually) to Professor Kamara Durei
Module:* Symbolic Mythology and Soulwork Ethics
Author:* Grey Wyrde* (Yes, technically still overdue.)
He hesitated. Then opened it.
The handwriting was careful. Not neat—careful. Script that made room for second thoughts, ink pressed just a little too hard in places where emotion had evidently outweighed restraint.
He flipped to a random page.
"I think that might be the most tragic shape grief can take: Love without ground to stand on."
His breath caught—not in shock, but in recognition. The kind one feels when stumbling across a truth they already suspected but never dared phrase aloud.
He lingered there. Just a moment.
And then, he closed the journal.
No smile. No frown. Only the soft, unreadable tilt of his mouth that meant thinking had become remembering.
He reached for a length of undyed silk cord from the shelf beside him—threadbare at one end—and tied it gently around the notebook. No notes. No reprimands. Just a small card placed on top, handwritten in his unmistakable script:
For Grey. Yours.
Later that night, the journal appeared on Grey's pillow while she slept, nestled between the folds of her blanket and a sprig of dried lavender bound with a Celtic knot charm.
Maerlowe never mentioned it.
He never needed to.