By afternoon, waiting becomes impossible.
The phone feels heavy in my hand. I stare at Naomi's number, the contact photo bright and ordinary, her smiling face at some diner Christmas party I barely remember. My thumb hovers over the call button.
I should go in. I should pour coffee and smile at customers and pretend the key in my pocket isn't burning through the fabric.
I press call.
It rings twice. Three times. Then Naomi's voice, bright, concerned.
"Evie? Everything okay?"
"No." The word comes out cracked. I force it steady. "I mean—I'm not feeling great. I need to call out."
Silence. I can picture her face, the worry creasing her forehead.
"You were here yesterday. You looked like hell then too."
"I know." I press my palm to my eyes. "I'm sorry. I just—I need today. Please."
"Evie." Her voice drops. "Is this about whatever's been going on? Because Jim and I—"
"It's not." The lie slides out smooth. "Food poisoning, maybe. I'll be fine tomorrow."
Another pause. Longer.
"Okay," she says finally. "But if you need to talk..."
"I know." I hang up before she can finish.
I stand in my room with the key in my pocket and the feathers under my pillow and Grace sleeping down the hall. The house feels too small, too close. Every creak is her waking, every shadow is her standing in my doorway, asking questions I can't answer.
I can't be here when she wakes. Can't lie to her face again. Can't risk her knocking on my door while I'm preparing to tear a hole in the world.
Uncle Robert's house.
The thought comes sudden, desperate. The house is empty. No Grace. No questions. No one to hurt if something goes wrong.
I pack quickly. The book. The feathers. The key. A change of clothes I won't need. I write a note—Gone to check on the house, back tonight—and leave it on the kitchen counter where she'll see it.
I don't say goodbye. I don't look back.
The drive takes five minutes. The house looms when I pull up, unchanged since the day Uncle Robert left it to us. The paint peels from the siding in long strips. The yard is overgrown, choked with weeds. It looks less menacing, more sad. A project waiting to begin. A promise unfulfilled.
I let myself in. The air is stale, thick with dust and old wood and the particular silence of houses left too long alone. I climb the stairs to the master bedroom, the one with the window that overlooks the street, the one where I can see if anyone follows.
I sit on the bare mattress with the key in my hand and wait for midnight.
The hours crawl. I read the book again, the same pages, the same warnings. I press the black feather to my scar and wait for warmth that doesn't come. I watch the sun cross the sky and tell myself this is right, this is safe, this is how I protect her.
But when the clock on my phone reads 11:57 p.m. and the house has gone still as held breath, I hear it.
A knock.
Soft. Three raps. Not Grace—she'd call, she'd text, she'd never just appear. Not a neighbor—no one knows I'm here.
I freeze on the mattress, the key clutched in my fist, my heart hammering against my chest.
Another knock.
I creep to the window, peer down at the street. Empty. No car. No figure on the porch.
The knock comes again. From downstairs. From the front door that I locked, that I checked twice.
"Evelyn." The voice is closer now, from just outside the door. "I know you're in there. I know what you're planning."
I press my back to the wall, the key clutched in my fist, my breath coming too fast. The master bedroom is empty, no furniture, nowhere to hide. The window is too high to jump. The closet is the only door.
Wood splinters downstairs.
The front door gives way with a sound like breaking bone. Footsteps on the stairs, heavy, deliberate, not human in their rhythm.
I fumble for my phone, my hands shaking. The screen blazes to life. 12:00. Midnight.
The key burns in my palm.
She appears in the doorway. The angel from the alley outside Benedict's bookshop—brown hair pulled back, jeans, ordinary jacket. But her eyes are wrong. Too clear. Too knowing. Piercing in a way that turns my stomach.
"Stop," she says. "You don't understand what you're opening. You don't understand what will follow you back."
I think of Adrial. Bound. Wings pinned. Chains glowing silver-white. You shouldn't be here.
My hand finds the closet door. Warped, paint peeling, but a door. A threshold. A place to use the key.
"You're the one who warned me," I say. My voice barely works. "You're the one who said they'd use him against me."
"And you didn't listen." She steps closer, and the air around her shimmers, heat-wave distortion, wrong. "The Court wants this, Evelyn. They want you to come. They want you visible and reaching and desperate enough to tear open doors that shouldn't be opened."
"Then why are you here?"
"To give you one chance to stop." Her voice softens, almost human. "Before you become what they need. Before you give them leverage over him. Before you walk into a prison you can't walk out of."
I look at the closet door. At the key in my hand. At the angel who knew my name, who warned me, who is trying to save me from something she can't explain.
I think of him. Never her. The shadows protecting Grace. The voice in the dark.
I press the key to the closet door.
"Adrial," I whisper. "Adrial the Unyielding. I call the door. I call the threshold. I call—"
The angel moves. Too fast. Her hand closes on my shoulder, pulling me back, and her touch burns like ice, like light, like everything that isn't him—
The key turns.
The closet door explodes open. Not wood. Not paint. Darkness spills out, shadow made solid, and I feel hands—not hers, not mine—pulling me through.
I see her face as I fall. Surprise. Fear. Something like regret.
Then the world tears open.
And I fall through darkness that smells of smoke and roses, away from the angel's grasp, away from the house, away from everything I know.
Into the space between.