Chapter Text
The streets of Camelot’s lower town always seemed to breathe with life, even at dusk. Market stalls clattered as merchants packed away their goods; pigs squealed as boys chased them through muddy alleys; the last rays of the sun caught on the rooftops of crooked houses. The smell of roasted meat lingered with the more pungent stench of damp straw and manure.
Merlin picked his way through the bustle with his usual distracted air, hands shoved in his thin jacket, dark hair flopping into his eyes. Beside him walked Gwaine, swaggering as though he owned the entire street, his grin wide and his boots already muddied from their earlier tavern visit.
“You know, Merlin,” Gwaine said, weaving around a cart of turnips, “if you ever got sick of following Arthur around like a faithful hound, you’d make a fortune brewing ale. You’ve got some sort of… miraculous touch. I’ve seen you turn the sourest wine into nectar with a flick of your wrist.”
Merlin rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t magic, Gwaine. That was you being drunk.”
“Well, drunk or not, it tasted better. Admit it, you’ve got the touch.”
Merlin only shook his head, though a smile tugged at his mouth. After a long day it was nice to joke around with Gwaine.
They turned into a narrow side alley, one of those winding back routes that cut through the lower town like veins. It was quieter here—the cries of the market dimmed, replaced by the faint trickle of water in the gutters. A dog barked in the distance, then fell silent.
That was when Merlin felt it.
It began as a prickle across the skin, as though the air itself had shifted. He slowed, frowning, turning his head slightly as if to catch a sound only he could hear. His breath hitched. This wasn’t the hum of Camelot’s ley lines or the whisper of druids at work—this was raw, unstable magic, and it rubbed him the wrong way.
“Something wrong?” Gwaine asked, his hand already drifting toward the hilt of his sword as he noticed Merlin’s swift change in mood.
Merlin didn’t answer immediately, still puzzling through the feeling he was getting. Then ground beneath them trembled ever so slightly, a ripple through stone and dirt. A sharp smell reached him—sharp, sulfurous, like burning pitch. His heart lurched, it was too late.
“Stay back,” Merlin ordered, thrusting out an arm to hold Gwaine where he was.
The warning as usual came too late.
A line of red light seared across the cobblestones at their feet, curling in jagged patterns. Strange symbols flared into existence, not the fluid elegance of the Old Religion but something jagged, and alien. The air grew hot and heavy, pressing down on Merlin’s chest making it difficult to breath. He recognized the shape—binding magic, but twisted, corrupted.
“Merlin—” Gwaine began starting to sound panicked.
The circle of fire snapped shut, enclosing Merlin in its heart. Light surged upward, forming a sphere of pulsing energy around him. He staggered, hands lifting instinctively as if to push it back. Gwaine tried to dart forward but could not reach him through the light, Merlin shouted, voice hoarse with urgency.
“Stay away! This isn’t—this isn’t anything human!”
The roar that followed drowned out his words. Light exploded, blinding white edged in a dark blood-red.
“Tell Arthur—” was all Merlin managed to cry before the world was ripped out from under him.
When his vision cleared, he was no longer in Camelot.
He landed hard on damp ground, air driven from his lungs. For a moment, Merlin lay stunned, staring at a sky that was neither the deep purple of evening nor the clear black of night but dotted with harsh yellow lights. They hung on tall poles, humming faintly.
Merlin pushed himself to his knees, heart hammering. Around him stretched a road paved not with stone but with some strange black surface that smelled faintly of tar. On either side sat strange metal carriages, shining under the lights, yet utterly still.
He blinked at them, confused. They gleamed like knights’ armor, but smoother, sleeker, and without horses to pull them.
“What…?” he breathed.
The town around him was silent, almost unnaturally so. Squared buildings lined the road, windows glowing with pale light. Signs swung in the faint breeze, painted with words he could not quite decipher: GasMart. 24/7 Diner. Laundromat.
Merlin staggered to his feet, cloak dragging on the damp pavement. His hands trembled as he reached out with his magic, trying to trace what had pulled him here. The connection snapped taut like a rope being yanked. He felt it at once: the ritual had been meant to bind him. He saw flashes in his mind—flames, screams, and a gate flung open to some burning realm.
It looked like Hell.
Merlin shuddered. Whoever had tried to summon him, they wanted to use his magic as a key. But the spell had fractured. Instead of appearing in their grasp, he’d been spat into this… place.
The night air was heavy, laced with scents he couldn’t name—oil, smoke, something metallic and sour. It was so unlike Camelot, so utterly foreign, that for the first time in years Merlin felt very small.
“Arthur…” His voice cracked. He turned in a slow circle, but there was no Gwaine, no castle towers, no familiar heartbeat of home. Just the still, glowing town.
A sign above the nearest building buzzed faintly, letters flickering: OPEN. Merlin didn’t know the word, but the pulsing light felt oddly alive. He approached the window and peered inside. Bright colors filled the room—wrappers, bottles, strange objects stacked in rows.
The lights overhead hummed louder the closer he stepped. Magic, he thought, though not any kind he knew.
Then he froze.
The tug of power returned, sharp and acrid, brushing against the edges of his senses. Dark. Faint, but unmistakable. Somewhere in this town, the ones who had dragged him here were still reaching.
Merlin swallowed hard, drawing his cloak tighter around him. He had to stay hidden, had to understand this strange world before it swallowed him whole.
He didn’t see the sleek black car until its headlights flared, sweeping over him like a sudden sunrise.
The engine purred, alien and powerful. The car rolled to a stop at the edge of the street, and the driver’s window slid down with a low mechanical whirr.
A man leaned out, face half-shadowed, eyes sharp. “Hey, Gandalf. You lost?”
Merlin blinked at him, heart stuttering. “I don’t know a… Gandalf. My name is Merlin.”
The man raised a brow, then glanced to the passenger beside him, a taller figure with long hair and kinder eyes.
The passenger’s lips parted, shock plain on his face.
“Holy crap,” the driver muttered. “Of course it would be Merlin.
For a few heartbeats, none of them moved. The car’s engine idled, a low animal purr, breath fogging in the cool air. Merlin stood framed in the headlights, cloak hanging sodden and dark, the hem already picking up the dirt and grit of this unfamiliar road.
The driver had the sort of wariness Merlin knew from soldiers—eyes that never stopped scanning, a body sitting at ease only because it had learned to spring from that position faster than anyone else. The passenger’s gaze, though, softened as it landed on Merlin’s face, confusion giving way to something like pity.
“Okay, that’s a new one,” the driver said. “Name’s Dean. This is Sam.” He jerked a thumb at the passenger. “We’re, uh… local weird-problem-solvers.”
Sam offered a tentative smile and raised both hands in a placating gesture. “You look like you could use help.”
Merlin licked his lips, trying to make sense of the cadence of their speech. The words were English—broadly—but the rhythm was strange, some syllables clipped and others stretched. He wasn’t surprised he understood them; magic, when it carried him, tended to be unkind but not uncomprehending. Still, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Arthur reminded him. Trust slowly, or not at all.
“If you’re servants of the ones who tore me here,” he said, “turn around and leave. I won’t be bound nor serve you.”
Dean huffed. “Buddy, if we were with the bad guys, you would’ve already been in the trunk.”
“Dean,” Sam said, though his tone carried a warning not to push. He peered more closely at Merlin, at the mud smears, the old stitching of his jacket, the way the wool cloak fell. “Look, you seem lost at the very least.”
Merlin’s eyes slid past them to the storefronts—frosted glass, neon, posters with blocky letters, reflections of dull yellow light in the car’s polished skin. “That is correct,” he admitted. “everything is strange and different here, I recognize nothing.”
Sam glanced at Dean. “Summoning,” he said quietly. “And if it’s the same spike as the other incidents tonight—”
“Yeah,” Dean muttered. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “Okay. Listen, Merlin—if that is your real name—”
“It is.”
“—we’ve been tracking some people who would love to get their hands on you. If you want to avoid that, we can give you a lift, get you out of the open. Safer to talk where nothing with black eyes can jump us from a doorway.”
Merlin hesitated. He could feel that acrid tug against his magic, faint but insistent, like a hook snagging the hem of his cloak. The summoners were close enough to cast their shadow across him. Alone on a strange street, with strange stars and artificial suns, he was a beacon.
“Do you swear you aren’t with them?” he asked.
Dean opened his mouth with a quip, but Sam cut in, voice steady: “I swear.”
Merlin studied the taller man’s face. There was a tiredness to him, yes, but also honesty in his eyes.
“All right,” Merlin said.
“Great,” Dean said, relief flickering across his features even as he made it look like it didn’t matter. “Hop in. Try not to get the horse-blanket muddy.”
Merlin’s hands found the door handle awkwardly; it yielded with a click that made him flinch. The car’s inside smelled of leather, oil, and something sweet and flaky he would later learn was pie. He folded himself into the back seat, cloak and all, and the upholstery creaked in protest. Sam twisted to look at him over the headrest.
Dean grunted, satisfied everyone was in the metal carriage, and rolled them back onto the road. The world became a tunnel of light and shadow, pavement unspooling under the soft roar of the engine. Merlin stared out at the passing buildings. A woman behind a counter at a lit window lifted a cup to her mouth, the gesture so ordinary it pierced him with sudden homesickness. He imagined Gwaine, hands on his knees, peering over the edge of the alley where the circle had flared—calling his name, cursing, sprinting toward the citadel with mud flying.
Arthur, he thought. Arthur will have heard by now. He pictured his king and friend’s features distorted into worry. He wondered if Arthur would be angry first, or afraid; he wondered if Gaius would scold the wall where Merlin wasn’t, just to hear the sound of reprimand steady his own nerves. The ache of missing them nearly folded him over.
“You breathing back there?” Dean said.
“Yes,” Merlin said, struggling to make the word polite rather than raw. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Dean said. “We specialize in picking up medieval cosplayers from deserted streets at two in the morning. Five-star service. There’s even a mint under your seat.”
Sam shot his brother a look. “Pay him no mind. Dean copes with stress by being annoying.”
“I’m charming,” Dean said.
“Annoying,” Sam repeated.
Merlin startled as the car slowed and turned into a gravel lot. A squat square looking building stood off to one side, the paint on its door peeling, a cracked sign hanging at an angle that read Pine Rest Motel in a cheerful script it absolutely did not deserve.
“This doesn’t look habitable,” Merlin said, before he could stop himself.
“It is barely,” Dean said, killing the engine. “It’s a palace of despair and unwashed sheets. But it’s got four walls and our gear bag.”
Merlin reached for the door handle; Sam got there first, opening it from the outside so Merlin wouldn’t have to fumble. The night’s cool pressed in as he stepped out. Gravel crunched underfoot, each pebble finding a seam in his boot with irritating accuracy.
He followed them through the parking lot and up a rusting staircase. Dean unlocked a door with a clunk. The room beyond smelled faintly of cleaning chemicals losing a war against mildew. A small round table, two beds with gaudy purple bedspreads, a lamp that flickered to life when Dean tapped it twice. Above, artfully disguised by a splotchy ceiling stain, someone had drawn a circle with precise lines and symbols.
Merlin’s eyes narrowed. He recognized nothing of the script, but he felt the way the air sank beneath it, as if the shape held weight. It had the same gravity as the circles drawn by druids to keep storms from wandering into sacred groves, and the same taste on the tongue as the circles sorcerers drew to keep monsters from standing up after being slain.
Dean noticed his attention. “Devil’s trap,” he said. “Keeps demons from taking the wheel if they step under it. We like our roommates predictable.”
Sam set a brown paper bag on the table and began unpacking items: a silver flask, a small tin, a bundle of chalk, and a battered leather-bound book swollen with papers shoved inside at all angles.
“Sit,” Dean said. “Please,” Sam added.
Merlin lowered himself onto the chair, pulling his cloak close around him. The chair protested with a squeal that suggested it had seen some things and hated all of them.
Dean handed him a bottle of water. Merlin took it, puzzled by the clear slickness of the plastic, and then more puzzled by the cap, which refused to yield until Sam showed him how. The water tasted like nothing he’d ever drunk before, so clean it might have been sunlight.
Dean leaned against the table. “Okay. Here’s me being straight with you: you landed in the middle of a mess. A group of nasty types did a ritual tonight. Purpose: summon fuel. They want to open a door that should stay closed. You showing up”—he pointed—“means their plan worked enough to be a problem.”
Merlin’s fingers tightened around the bottle. “They tried to bind me,” he said quietly. “But it didn’t hold. The magic was wrong and it snarled.”
“Snarled,” Sam repeated, tasting the word. “Like interference.”
Merlin nodded. “Like an instrument out of tune. They braided languages together that weren’t meant be together.”
Sam’s gaze sharpened. “Languages. Plural.”
“The script looked like something an angry child scribbled on parchment,” Merlin said. “And there was another cadence beneath it, older than that ugliness, but still unfamiliar to me. I don’t know the words, but I know this was made to enslave, with how it was tugging in my magic I’m sure of that. The only reason it didn’t is because they tore the weave when they pulled me here.”
“Because they’re idiots,” Dean said. “Lucky us.”
Sam had flipped open the battered book and found a page so often consulted it had been taped together twice. He laid out a photocopy of a sigil on the table and slid it toward Merlin. “Anything like this?” he asked.
Merlin leaned forward. The lines swam a little; his head was beginning to ache in a new way, the sort of ache that came when magic tried to listen to a world that wasn’t speaking to it properly. Still, he could see enough to recognize an echo. “The corners,” he said, tracing a finger in the air above the paper. “Sharp like that. But more… messy.”
Sam’s mouth thinned. “Great. A derivative. They’ve been cribbing from stuff they barely understand.”
“Welcome to demons,” Dean said. “They like to cheat off other people’s homework.”
Merlin thought of Morgana, of lines drawn poorly in stolen books. He tried to steady the anger in his chest by focusing on the ordinary room: a painting of trees so generic it looked like a memory of a forest rather than an actual one; the way the cheap bedspread pilled in spots where it had been abraded; the chipped varnish on the table edge catching the light.
“Why me?” he asked, even though he knew some of the answer. “There are other sorcerers, and probably closer to home.”
“Not like you,” Sam said gently. “Not with your… resonance.”
Dean cocked his head. “Resonance?”
Sam didn’t look away from Merlin. “I don’t think he’s just a sorcerer, Dean. There’s something else,” He hesitated, then asked, “Dragons?”
Merlin blinked. He almost laughed. “You know of dragons?”
“We’ve killed a few,” Dean said, with the grim nonchalance of someone who had also killed ghosts, vampires, ghouls, and things with too many teeth. “They like virgins, gold, and living in sewer tunnels. Not big fans.”
“Then you don’t know dragons, or they are different here,” Merlin said softly. “They’re… complicated. And old and like to spout confusing prophecies and give vague advice.”
Sam nodded, as if that confirmed a suspicion. “If the cult wanted a living conduit for an opening ritual, and they were looking for dragon-adjacent power… that narrows it down.”
“Fantastic,” Dean said. “So they’ll keep sniffing until they find you.” He reached for the paper bag and fished out a pie in a flimsy tin. “Which means we need to move you and our next moves faster than they can get their black little ducks in a row.”
Merlin’s stomach chose that moment to remind him he hadn’t eaten since late afternoon in Camelot. The smell of whatever Dean had pulled out of the bag was sweet in a way he couldn’t place, buttery and warm even through the chill of the room.
Dean noticed. “Eat,” he said, softer than before. He slid a plastic fork across. “It’s not stew, but it’ll keep you from face-planting mid-plan.”
Merlin didn’t argue. The first bite was a shock—tartness and sugar and something like sunshine trapped in fruit, crust flaking on his tongue. He closed his eyes for a second, letting the taste anchor him.
Sam settled into the chair opposite. “We’ll keep watch tonight,” he said. “We’ve set up sigils that ward against possession, and the door’s salted.”
Merlin opened his eyes. “Salted?”
“Yeah,” Dean said from the bed where he’d sprawled like a cat on a patch of sunlight. He pointed at the door. A fine line of white crystals glinted along the threshold. “Demons don’t cross salt. House rules. You can walk through; they can’t. Usually.”
Merlin looked, then reached out, letting his magic feather lightly against the line. It thrummed like a plucked string. He could feel the shape of it, not as fragile as it looked. Simple, and because of that, stubborn.
“You fight a lot,” Merlin said.
“That’s the job,” Dean answered, examining his phone.
Sam’s phone chimed—a text he read quickly and tucked away. He and Dean exchanged a look that Merlin couldn’t decipher, an old conversation that didn’t need words. Then Sam pushed the book aside and folded his hands.
“What happened to you,” he said, “exactly? Before you arrived.”
Merlin pressed the fork’s prongs into the tin, leaving tiny moon-shaped dents. He told them. About the alley, the smell of sulfur, the scrape of jagged letters in the air. About the sound the world made right before it tore—the way it was not a sound so much as the absence of one. About Gwaine’s startled shout, his own unfinished words, and then the fall.
He didn’t tell them that he’d been making a list in his head while they walked back from the market, a list of herbs Gaius needed and a joke he would make later about Arthur’s newest decree that had all the fishmongers grumbling. He didn’t tell them about the way the light had fallen over the castle that evening, gilding the pennants like a painter’s dream. How he had been given an extremely rare evening off by Arthur. He kept those to himself, small stones in his pocket to touch when he needed to remember the weight of home.
By the time he finished, Sam’s brow was furrowed in concentration and Dean was upright again.
“So they grabbed you, and you slipped the leash mid-jump,” Dean said. “They must be missing their summoned sorcerer, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start looking for you tomorrow.”
“They already are,” Merlin said. He didn’t mean to sound as bone-tired as he did, but the ache behind his eyes pulsed in time with the motel’s buzzing light. “They keep… reaching. It’s like I keep feeling an annoying tugging sensation that won’t leave me along.”
Sam nodded. “They keep trying to lock onto your signature until they can triangulate. We’ll jam them as best we can.”
“How?” Merlin asked.
Dean hopped to his feet, suddenly all business. “First, we don’t let you walk around dressed like you lost a bet with a tapestry,” he said. “We’ll get you some clothes that don’t scream ‘stab me, I’m from the past.’ Second, we move you. Randomness helps. Third, we go hunting.”
Merlin’s head lifted. “Hunting?”
“Their nest,” Dean said. “They didn’t do a ritual like that in a random basement. There’ll be a place they set up—candles, bones, a nice chalk mural they’re real proud of. We find it, we wreck it, we make it hurt to try again.”
Sam had turned the book toward himself and was flipping through pages with more focus than speed. “This town has three likely places they’d likely use,” he said, tapping each as he listed them: “the old cannery on the edge of the river, a deconsecrated church near the cemetery, and the storm drains beneath the east end. All have histories of weird. All have space and… resonance.” He glanced up at Merlin. “Can you sense where that tugging sensation is strongest?”
Merlin closed his eyes. He let his breath drop into the slow cadence Gaius had taught him years ago—count heartbeats, then drift between them. He didn’t send his magic out violently; he exhaled it like a fog and waited to see where it pooled. The hum of the motel room asserted itself first: the steady tick of a clock, the filament’s buzz, the faint smell of old cigarette smoke ground into the carpet. Beneath that, a tremor, like a plucked harp string several rooms away. Farther still, a thread pulled taut toward the outskirts.
“There,” he said, opening his eyes and pointing, surprised by the certainty. “It’s coming from that direction.”
Sam had already grabbed his laptop, typing furiously. “Looks like the only thing in that direction is the Church. Records show St. Agnes was closed ten years ago, then occupied by a fringe group for a while. Evicted after they refused to pay taxes. No current tenants. Doors chained.”
Dean grinned, sharp and humorless. “Road trip at dawn. For now, sleep.”
Merlin stared at the bed Dean indicated.
“You can take the bed by the wall,” Dean said, more gently than his words often allowed. “Closest to the window’s mine. Sammy’s a snorer, so if you hear a bear, don’t panic.”
“I don’t snore,” Sam said automatically, eyes still on his screen.
“Sure, Bigfoot,” Dean said.
Merlin toed off his boots, unsure if there was a ritual to follow with this bed, then decided that ritual was a luxury this room didn’t deserve. He lay down on the far mattress. The pillow made a crinkle under his head; the bedspread smelled faintly of soap and a little of dust. He stared at the ceiling. The stain around the devil’s trap looked like a map of an island he’d never visit.
He whispered, because it felt wrong not to say it out loud into the world, “Arthur, I’m not gone. I’m only… displaced.” He let his hand rest over his heart where the druid spiral had once been drawn and was now only memory. “I’ll come back.”
The room’s noises settled into a pattern—Sam’s keyboard, then the quiet click of it closing; Dean’s weight shifting; the metal creak as someone used the bathroom; the sigh of the air through the vent. His mind drifted, then sank. He dreamed of water that looked like glass, and of voices speaking a language made of consonants alone, harsh and beautiful. In the dream, he didn’t understand them. In the dream, he sang vowels back, and the two songs braided into something that made the water ripple into a path.
Beneath the town, under the old church Merlin had felt without seeing, candles stuttered in the stale air. Someone had cleared the altar and marked its surface with black lines that looked like veins. The pattern crawled when you weren’t looking directly at it.
A man in a black suit stood with his hands folded as if he were about to deliver a sermon. His shoes were polished, his tie a precise knot. His eyes, when they slid to address the others in the room, were a glossy animal black.
“They missed him,” said a woman near the foot of the steps. Her voice layered over itself like two people speaking at once. “They pulled too hard too soon and it slipped.”
The man smiled. It was a cold, pleased expression, like frost climbing a window. “They’re sloppy,” he said. “We knew that. But even sloppiness leaves a stain.”
He turned to the circle on the floor—not chalk, but something thicker, shinier. It dried with a faintly brownish edge. The lines that comprised it weren’t of one language. Some arced like angelic script, others angled like Hell’s precise geometry, and still others were rough attempts at both, as if a child had drawn a cathedral with a crayon.
“You asked for a conduit,” said another voice—this one male, a reedy tenor coming from the mouth of a man whose eyes kept trying, unsuccessfully, to be human. “We delivered. It will not be lost forever.”
The man in the suit tapped his finger against his wrist, as if checking a watch he didn’t wear. “No. It won’t.”
He stepped lightly over the circle’s edge, and the lines shivered under his shoe like disturbed snakes. He bent and pressed his palm to the very center. A breath of air rose—cold, metallic—and the candles around the room bent toward him as if seeking his heat.
“There you are,” he murmured, eyes unfocusing. “Thin as fishing line, but strong. You sang when you landed. Do you know that? Your arrival made a shape.”
He straightened. “He’s in town, but behind what appears to be wards.” A small sneer curled the corner of his mouth. “Salt and lines. Like children building forts.”
One of the possessed men shifted, anxious. “We should go now. Call more. Take him while he sleeps.”
The man in the suit’s smile widened with too many teeth. “And trigger every alarm his protectors have laid? No. There is a difference between hunger and appetite. One leaves you weak; the other gets you what you want.”
The others fell silent, cowed. He walked a slow circle around the symbol on the floor, speaking as if to an attentive classroom.
“You tried to stitch angelic structure to infernal fire with a human hand,” he said, almost kindly. “Admirable, in the way watching a toddler hammer a horseshoe onto a cat is admirable. But if we want a door that won’t slam in our faces the first time the wind changes, we need a hinge that sings in both tongues.”
He stopped where the painted lines widened to accommodate a human body. “What sings in both tongues, you ask?” His gaze slid upward, and though there was no one standing where he looked, the attention felt like a touch. “Something that remembers dragons and has spoken kindly with angels, even if he doesn’t know that’s what they were called in his world.
He lifted his hand. On the index finger there was a ring—iron, plain, pitted with age. He rubbed it with his thumb like a rosary bead. “Merlin.”
The name carried a weight in the room that had nothing to do with sound. The candles wobbled. The lines on the floor trembled. Far above, on a motel’s peeling wall, a paper map tacked with pins shifted and one pin tilted just slightly, as if a gust had reached it through a seam no one else could see.
The man in the suit closed his eyes as if listening to an orchestra warming up. “We let them tuck him in. We let them feel safe enough to move. And then, when they feel the safest we’ll strike.”
“And what if the line snaps?” the reedy tenor asked.
He shrugged. “Then another door. Another conduit. There are always other doors. But I’d prefer this one.” He smoothed his tie, expression pleasant again. “He’s… special.”
The woman by the steps cocked her head. “You sound fond.”
“I sound practical,” he said. “Fondness is for people who live long enough to indulge it.”
He stepped out of the circle, wiped his palm on a handkerchief he produced from an inner pocket, and returned the handkerchief to the pocket with a neat fold. “Ready the hostages. And tidy this place. It’s a house of God; we should at least take off our shoes.”
They laughed, because he had, and because laughing when your throat wants to cry feels like victory. They didn’t notice the way one candle near the altar refused to straighten itself, its flame leaning obstinately toward a small, old stain on the stone that no one had ever successfully scrubbed out—wax from decades ago, a child’s offering left without permission.
The man in the suit did. He glanced at it, something like amusement touching his mouth. “Well,” he said softly. “Everyone brings their own keys.”