The timber of the workshop door groaned under the weight of three rusted iron drop-bars.
Outside, the second underground bell tolled from the dark rock towers of the High Lapidarium. Its heavy bronze chime rolled across the lower terrace like a thunderhead trapped in an iron kettle, rattling the leaded window casements and sending showers of dried clay down from the ceiling joints.
Ren Vale didn’t look at the door. He knelt in the sawdust beside the grinding trough, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. His hands pressed a damp linen pad against Mira’s chest bone.
The pad did nothing. The heat streaming from her skin was not fever. It was the friction heat of stone growth. Beneath her collarbone, the smoky quartz had pushed three jagged spurs through the fat under the skin, their semi-clear edges glinting with pale violet soft glow. The sound drone in her chest had shifted from an irregular hum into a violent, high-pitched screech. A clashing shaking that set the teeth in Ren’s skull aching.
“Ren,” she whispered. Her left hand clung to his wrist with surprising strength, her short fingernails digging into his tendons. “The floor... The floor is shaking under my spine.”
