The wall answered with a pulse so slight that, had Fang not been listening with every thread of his magic, he might have mistaken it for the settling of old masonry. Yet the moment it came, he felt it travel through the stone and into the bones of the mansion itself, as if the house had briefly inhaled and then held its breath.
Ren kept his palm against the wall.
He did not speak at once. In the narrow service passage, where the light from the upper lanterns fell only in thin slants, his face looked carved from quiet intensity. Fang knew that expression. It meant that Ren had already crossed from concern into calculation, and once he reached that point, he would not stop until he had reduced the impossible to something he could name, isolate, and cut apart if necessary.
