Exiled as Useless, I Healed the Demon General Who Fell at My Feet novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Circle

They drew the circle in the courtyard at moonrise.

The Archpriest knelt in the middle of the flagstones with a pot of gold ink and a brush, under guard.

Ishkra stood over him with her ledger open, checking every symbol he drew against the old records.

"If you draw one line wrong," she said, "I will feed you to the east wall."

"I am only an old man," the Archpriest said mildly.

"You are only an old man with a very long list."

He drew.

The Legion had gathered along the walls without being asked, four hundred silent shapes against the stars.

Kanae stood outside the circle in her white robe, and she did not look at any of them.

Vorhaan stood behind her.

He had not said a word since the war room.

He had not touched her, either, and she had felt every inch of the three feet he left between them.

"It is ready," Ishkra said at last, and her voice was thick.

The old man sat back on his heels.

"The words are simple," he said. "You step inside, you speak your own name, and the way opens. It will stay open until the moon passes the tower."

"And then?"

"Then you are home."

Kanae looked at the circle.

The ink shimmered on the stones, thin and bright.

She stepped over the line.

The air changed.

It went still, and warm, and smelled faintly of train brakes and wet rain on concrete, a smell she had not smelled in fourteen months.

Her heart stopped.

"Kanae Mizuhara," she said.

Her voice shook.

The light rose.

It came up from the symbols in a soft white wall and curled over her head.

In the middle of it a door opened.

It was an ordinary door.

It was a pale rectangle of light in the dark, no bigger than the door of a closet.

Through it she could see a kitchen.

A tiny, cramped Osaka kitchen with a rice cooker on the counter and a calendar from the neighborhood dentist.

An electric kettle sat on the stove, unplugged.

Somebody had unplugged it.

There was a cup beside it, with a tea bag still in the saucer.

Kanae made a noise that wasn't a word.

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