Unease curls in Poe’s stomach as she watches him, and a stiff wind seems to pick up in the chapel, blowing past the roses and ruffling their hair. Poe can’t tell if the wind is some kind of admonition or encouragement, or if it’s merely mirroring the intensity in Auden’s face as he lifts the hammer and swings it at the side of the door.
There’s a crack of steel on stone, and Proserpina feels it in her teeth when it collides. The noises reverberate through the chapel and throughout the trees, and they all stand still as Auden drops the hammer to look at the place on the frame he struck.
There’s no change. Even though he swung with enough force to scar the face of the hammer, the stone is unchipped, undented, uncracked. Auden could have tied a red yarn bow around the stone for how much
