Chapter 17 · Frontier Lord - Chapter 17: The Voice in the Stone

The stone was bleeding.

Ava pressed her palm flat against the crack Klaus's men had carved into the foundation wall. Warm. The rock shouldn't be warm. Her bloodline hummed under her ribs, that low frequency she'd learned to ignore until it became impossible to miss. It was louder now. Angrier.

"Back up," Rain said from behind her. His voice had that tight edge he got when he was two seconds from pulling her bodily away from danger. "We don't know what he rigged in there."

She didn't move. The warmth spread up her wrist, into her forearm. Not painful. Just insistent. Like the land was trying to tell her something and she kept missing the words.

"Ava."

"I hear you." She didn't look back. The crack was narrow, maybe two fingers wide, but it ran deep. She could feel the hollow behind it. Someone had been chipping at this for days. Weeks, maybe. Right under her feet while she'd been obsessing over grain storage and winter timber counts.

Sera crouched next to her, close enough that Ava caught the smell of pine sap and smoke on her coat.