Chapter 6 Every Instinct Agreed

Sebastian POV

She was not the caster. She was the reason for the call, held within the working by blood and something older that I could not immediately identify. Her presence reached me only as an impression, but it carried grief, anger and a stubborn refusal to yield even while fear moved beneath both. She was not asking me to come. I doubted she knew the spell had found me at all. Yet I found myself listening for more, reluctant to let the impression fade.

My response caught me unprepared. Concern for a stranger should not have unsettled composure I had maintained through wars, bargains and courts built upon beautiful lies. Every instinct I possessed turned toward her. Not with obedience, but with the unmistakable certainty that the woman hidden inside the spell mattered to me in a way no stranger possibly should.

I withdrew sharply and paced to the windows. Beyond the glass, evening had settled over the city, turning the rooftops dark beneath a violet sky. Nothing outside had changed, yet the room felt altered because a direction now existed where there had previously been only distance. I could sense her somewhere far to the west, faint enough that I could have dismissed it as imagination if my entire nature had not remained fixed upon the same point.

"Absolutely not," I said, although there was nobody present to appreciate the firmness of the declaration. "I do not answer unexplained magical invitations from dying witches, particularly when those invitations interfere with negotiations that were already intolerable." The call waited. It did not argue, and that made refusal considerably more difficult.

I returned to the table and examined it again, more deeply this time. The spell still contained no demand. I could answer, learn why her presence had affected me, and leave again if the situation proved dishonest. Whatever waited at the source could not compel me to remain. The choice would continue to belong to me after I arrived, just as it belonged to me now.

That understanding settled something inside me. I allowed my magic to touch the open thread and shaped my answer with enough precision that no uncertainty could exist between us. "I will come willingly. I promise nothing beyond my arrival, and I retain the right to decide what follows when I understand what you have asked of me." The spell accepted without attempting to alter a single word.

Power closed around my answer, and the connection sharpened. For one breath I felt the young woman more clearly, along with a warmth that was not mine and the distant impression of earth, iron and restrained violence. Someone else had already answered. The presence was unmistakably predatory, but it did not feel hostile to the woman at the centre. Before I could examine it, the calling stretched outward again, searching beyond both of us for something even farther away.

"You already have an answer," I whispered as the structure strained beneath the expansion. "What else are you looking for?"

The caster never had the opportunity to respond. Agony tore through the spell as something failed at its source, and every thread shuddered. I caught the connection instinctively, but it was not mine to control. The older woman's presence vanished, the unfinished magic fractured, and the direction remaining inside me pulled tight enough to make my breath catch. The young woman was still there. So was my determination to reach her.

I steadied myself against the table until the last tremor passed. The broken call no longer offered anything I could examine, only a persistent direction. Trying to force it open might damage the remnant guiding me.

I took a sheet from the writing tray and addressed it to my steward. There were appointments to cancel, correspondence to redirect, and several people who would interpret my departure as an opportunity to become inventive with our agreements. I named those people first.

The final instruction took longer. I began to write that I would return within a fortnight, then stopped. I knew neither the distance nor the danger. Ink was easy to set down. An assurance could become considerably harder to withdraw.

I crossed out the unfinished line and asked him to maintain the household until he heard from me.

My travelling papers lay in the inner pocket of my coat. I checked them, counted the money in my purse, and sealed the instructions. These were familiar tasks. They should have made the journey feel ordinary.

Instead, I kept looking west.

Whatever had killed the caster had left the younger woman alive. I could no longer sense her clearly enough to know whether she was hurt or alone. That uncertainty made the prospect of another hour with Carrow unbearable.

I collected the letter. There was someone in the outer office who could see it dispatched while I found a horse.

I had made arrangements for many journeys without pausing over what waited at the destination. This time I found myself hoping the woman had someone beside her. The older witch had been afraid of leaving her alone. I could offer no comfort through a damaged spell, and reaching blindly for her seemed likely to frighten her further. I put my hand back on the door handle. Getting there was the only useful promise I could keep.

I released the privacy seal and crossed to the door, already calculating how quickly I could conclude my affairs, obtain a reliable route west and determine who possessed land in the direction the spell had left behind. Lord Carrow rose from a chair in the outer room with his objections prepared, but whatever he saw in my expression persuaded him to reconsider them.

"Our negotiation is concluded," I told him as I collected my coat. "You will honour the original agreement because it is valid, because you signed it willingly, and because I no longer have time to explain either fact with the patience you apparently require." He stared at me. "Where are you going?"

I looked toward the west, where an unknown woman waited at the end of a broken spell, surrounded by danger she might not yet understand. "I am going to discover why a dying witch believed someone needed me, and why every instinct I possess agreed with her."