Chapter 22: The Veil of Glass
Point of View: SabrinaWord Count: 1,305
"She does not need to entertain your curiosity, Julian."
Silas's voice resonated through me, a velvet shield against the poison in the room. I stood centered in the boardroom, watching the world through the translucent lattice of my veil. Across the table, Julian leaned back, his fingers steepled to hide their tremor. He did not recognize me; he only recognized the threat Silas brought into his sanctum.
I did not speak. I searched for the structural pulse of the building, the way the steel and glass hummed. Since the lab, my power was no longer a fever; it was a gravity.
I allowed my Sovereign mark to throb. The first crystal pitcher on the table groaned. A fine, hairline fracture appeared, spreading upward like a vine. The board members froze as the vessel began to weep droplets onto the quartz.
"The temperature," one man stammered. "It is dropping."
"The atmosphere is merely reacting to a superior biological signature," Silas countered.
Julian's smile died. He looked at the leaking pitcher, then up at me. He felt it now—the bone-deep chill. The primal alarm that sounds when a predator enters the cave.
I shifted my weight, and the remaining three pitchers shattered simultaneously. Shards of glass erupted across the table, sparkling like fallen stars. In the chaos, I saw Julian's eyes dilate. He wasn't looking at a stranger anymore. He was looking at a pattern he recognized.
I reached for the hem of my veil. "You told the world the ocean took her," I rasped, my voice a terrifying melody. "But the ocean has a way of spitting back the things it cannot drown."