Page 119 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Henry felt strangely clear. The feeling he’d had
in Sintra after the Well—the certainty that meaning
wasn’t a thing you say but a path you walk—
returned and set his bones in a better order.
“We go,” he said.
Carolina squeezed his hand once, like starting a
race. “We go.”
Sera listened to the air, eyes half-closed, as if to
memorize the pitch of a city that had not
surrendered. “I will try to keep time,” she said.
They walked down from the roof into a Tangier
that had chosen to be messier, and therefore alive.
Behind them, the Wireless Voices tuned their
transmitters the way one tunes a prayer. Ahead of
them, the Strait sighed, old as argument, ready to
carry them back to the river where the Mirror had
taught itself to listen.
The first collapse was not total. It was enough.
The world knew now what it stood to lose.
And the Mirror knew who would come to ask
for it back.
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