Emerson was not supposed to be here.
He knew it with every step he took down the marble corridor, boots whispering over stone that had never been meant for a duke’s son to walk alone. The palace belonged to men like his father, to lords and councillors and princes, not to boys with ink-stained fingers and too many secrets in their chest.
But Alora was going to break, and Emerson had run out of rules to obey.
He kept his pace steady, not too fast, not too slow. Moving with purpose made people look past you; hesitating made them ask questions. The servants he passed bowed or dipped their heads, more out of habit than respect. Guards in the black and crimson of Theros watched him with flat, assessing eyes.
The trick was never to look lost.
He wasn’t supposed to leave the waiting chamber. He wasn’t supposed to be in the same building as his sister, much less think about her while he was here. The separation had been drilled into him from the time he was old enough to understand doors could lock.
You may not go to your sister’s wing, Emerson.
You may not speak of her at table.
You may not ask.
They’d never said why outright. They didn’t have to. Children heard more than adults realized.
“Like his sister,” he’d heard one steward murmur to another once, when they thought he was out of earshot. “Mark or no mark, it’ll ruin him if they’re allowed to cling to each other.”
He clenched his jaw at the memory, fingers tightening around the folded scrap of paper in his pocket. It was soft at the edges now from being unfolded and smoothed so many times the ink had almost faded.
Alora’s handwriting, crooked from writing by candlelight so she could hide the letters under her mattress before dawn.
I’m fine, the last one had said. I’m okay, Little Brother.
Lies, every stroke of them. Servants talked. Walls were thin. Emerson had heard enough in half-caught whispers and muffled footsteps to know his sister did not sleep well. That she fainted. That she woke shaking from dreams she didn’t remember. That sometimes—this part came in trembling fragments—light bled from her skin like moonwater.
He turned a corner and nearly walked straight into the point of a spear.
“Hold there,” a guard said.
Emerson stopped so abruptly his boots squeaked. The palace guard in front of him was young but broad-shouldered, helm shadowing his eyes. Another stood just behind, watching.
“This corridor is restricted,” the guard said. “Petitioners are to wait in the antechamber until summoned.”
Emerson straightened his spine the way his father had taught him. “I’m not a petitioner,” he said, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “I’m Emerson Everthorn. The Duke’s heir. I’m here with my father.”
One dark brow lifted beneath the helm. The guard gave him a quick, scanning look, gaze flicking over his plain but well-made tunic, the Everthorn crest stitched at the collar, the way he stood like someone who’d been told a thousand times not to slouch.
“Everthorn,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. It wasn’t a name that tasted good in most mouths these days. “And where, exactly, are you meant to be, Lord Emerson?”
Not here, a sensible part of him thought.
“In the waiting chamber,” he admitted. “But I… I have an urgent matter with His Highness the Crown Prince.”
The second guard snorted softly. “Do you now.”
Emerson swallowed. His palms were sweating. He didn’t unclench his fists; if he did, they’d see them shake.
“It concerns the safety of a member of my house,” he said, forcing the words through a throat that wanted to close. “I know I shouldn’t come without being summoned. But there wasn’t time to… to write petitions and wait and—” He stopped himself before he began to babble.
The guards exchanged a look. Emerson hated that look. Adults had been sharing it over his head his entire life. Pity and annoyance, curiosity and calculation, all folded into one small movement.
“Who?” the first guard asked at last.
He hadn’t expected that. “What?”
“Which member of your house?” the man clarified. “Your father is in council. Your mother is in the city.” He caught himself, as if remembering he wasn’t supposed to discuss Everthorn family matters with an Everthorn. “Who?”
The world had a way of pretending Alora didn’t exist unless forced.
“My sister,” Emerson said, and let all the weight he was carrying leak into the honesty of it. “Lady Alora.”
The guards went very still.
For a moment, the corridor held its breath. Far away, a bell chimed the hour. The sound crept along the halls and settled on them like dust.
“Wait here,” the first guard said finally.
He turned and walked a few paces down the corridor to a side door Emerson hadn’t noticed, knocked once, then slipped inside. The second guard stayed, spear at rest but not relaxed, gaze fixed on some point just past Emerson’s shoulder.
Emerson stared at the floor. The marble was veined with pale blue, like the ice that formed along the streams outside Everthorn in deep winter. He’d fallen into those streams as a boy, once, chasing after a kite Emerson had made and Alora had flown too near the water.
She’d screamed his name so loudly the birds had flown from the trees.
He wondered if she could scream now. If she had enough breath left between visions and fear to make a sound like that.
The door opened again.
“You’re fortunate,” the first guard said. “His Highness is in the lesser training hall. He’ll see you—briefly.” His eyes narrowed. “You will speak plainly. You will not waste his time.”
Relief slammed into Emerson so hard his knees felt weak. He nodded, too quickly. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” the guard muttered. “If he didn’t want you half-dead with curiosity, you’d be halfway back to your father by now.”
He stepped aside and gestured.
Emerson followed, heart pounding too loud in his ears. They moved through a narrow, undecorated passage that smelled faintly of oiled leather and steel, nothing like the perfumed halls where courtiers practiced their smiles. The sounds changed here—no murmured petitions or rustle of silk, only the sharp bark of commands, the clash of wood on wood, the thud of bodies hitting mats.
The lesser training hall was a long room with pale stone walls, its floor covered in layered straw mats. Wooden practice weapons lined racks along one wall. High, narrow windows let in knifed slivers of light.
Crown Prince Evander stood in the center of the room, a practice blade in one hand, his tunic darkened with sweat in places that did nothing to soften him. Another man—one of the royal arms instructors, Emerson guessed from the grey in his beard and the way he held himself—bowed, said something low, and withdrew to the edges when the guard approached.
Evander turned.
Even at a distance, Emerson felt the force of his gaze. Those mismatched eyes—one a deep, old blood red, the other the pale iron-grey of a winter sky—caught and held him like a pinned moth.
“Your Highness,” the guard said, bowing low. “Lord Emerson Everthorn requests a moment of your time. He says it concerns the safety of his house.”
Evander’s attention flicked briefly to the guard, then back to Emerson. “Leave us,” he said.
The guard bowed again and retreated to the far wall. The arms instructor did the same. They were still there, technically, but far enough and disciplined enough that they might as well have been stone carvings.
Evander rested the practice blade’s tip lightly against the mat at his feet. “You are far from where you’re meant to be, Lord Emerson,” he said. His voice was soft, but there was something in it that made Emerson stand straighter.
He bowed, clumsy but sincere. “Your Highness. I—thank you for seeing me.”
“You have three minutes,” Evander replied. “Make use of them.”
Three minutes. Emerson swallowed and forced the words into line.
“It’s my sister,” he said. “Alora.”
Evander’s expression didn’t change, but something tightened in his shoulders. “I recall Lady Alora,” he said. “From many years ago.”
Emerson had been too young then to attend the spring festivities, but Alora had told him the story in breathless detail afterward, her eyes shining. How she’d worn a dress that made her feel like a piece of sky. How the prince had spoken to her in the gardens. How, the next day, Father had locked her door.
“She’s not well,” Emerson said now. “And my father will never admit it. He’ll say she’s delicate, or overwrought, or… or difficult. But it’s not that. It’s worse.”
Evander watched him the way a man might watch a map being filled in. “Go on.”
“She has spells,” Emerson said. The word felt too small, pathetic against the memory of what he’d overheard. “She sees things. Falls. Can’t breathe. The maids talk. They say they find her on the floor, or gripping the wall, or staring at nothing. They’re afraid to tell my father. I think he already knows and just pretends he doesn’t. And Dorian—” He stopped, forcing himself to swallow the name like a bitter pill. “Lord Dorian,” he corrected, “is… circling.”
“The hand-in-waiting to my own,” Evander said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“He courts her.”
The statement made Emerson’s stomach twist. “He… it’s being discussed. Between him and my father. No one says it to me, but I’m not blind.”
“And what do you expect me to do?” Evander asked. Not unkindly. Carefully.
Emerson’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Something,” he said, and then hated how young he sounded. “Anything. Request her presence here. Ask for her to serve in some… some official capacity. Say you want her as a lady-in-waiting, or as a healer, or as someone to copy texts, I don’t care. Just—get her out of that house. Away from him. Away from Father.”
Evander looked at him for a long time. The training hall felt colder with every passing second.
“Do you know,” he asked slowly, “what happened to your aunt?”
Emerson’s breath caught. “We don’t… talk about her,” he said. “No one does.”
“That was not my question.”
He swallowed. His throat felt dry as dust. “I know,” he said. “She had the mark. Like Alora. She… lost herself. They say Father had to… had to stop it. To stop her. That it was mercy.”
Evander’s jaw tightened at the corners. “It was not mercy,” he said. “It was fear.”
Emerson’s heart hammered. “That’s why I’m here,” he blurted. “Because I think he’ll do it again.”
Finally, something in Evander’s face shifted. Not fully into emotion—he wasn’t a man who wore those where people could see them—but into something like the shadow of one.
“You believe your father is capable of killing your sister,” he said.
“Yes,” Emerson whispered. “If he believes she’s a danger to the house. Or to the realm. Or even just to his peace of mind.”
The words hung in the air between them, too big to be taken back.
Evander let the silence sit. It stretched long enough that Emerson’s knees began to feel weak. He wondered if he’d gone too far. If he’d be dragged before his father or the council or worse.
Then Evander spoke.
“When I was very young,” the prince said, “I had a twin.”
Emerson blinked. He hadn’t expected this.
“I remember,” Evander went on, tone clinical, as if reciting from a ledger. “His laugh. His temper. The way he never learned to stand still. The night they killed him, the moon was bright. They told me it was his choice. That he’d rather die than doom us both.”
Emerson didn’t breathe.
Evander’s gaze felt like frost. “They were lying, of course. He was seven. Children do not choose martyrdom.” He paused, letting the words sink their teeth in. “Theros loves stories about necessary sacrifices. It finds it easier than admitting we kill what frightens us.”
Emerson’s vision blurred suddenly. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste iron.
“You are asking me,” Evander said, “to intervene between a duke and his cursed daughter. To interfere with a man’s house, his heir, his alliances. To defy a narrative this kingdom has told itself for generations.”
“Yes,” Emerson said. His voice shook, but the word did not.
For the first time, a faint, strange light touched Evander’s mismatched eyes. “You think I care enough about your sister to risk that?”
Emerson met his gaze. “I think you remember her,” he said. “From the gardens. From before. I think you were watching her at the event, even if no one else saw it. And I think you, more than anyone, know what it’s like to have someone you love taken from you because of a curse you didn’t choose.”
He said the last part in a rush, before courage left him.
The prince’s fingers tightened on the practice blade’s hilt. The only other sound in the room was the faint, steady drip of water from some high window where rain had found a crack in the stone.
“One day,” Evander said at last, “your father will miscalculate. Men like him always do. He will push her too far, bind the leash too tight. When that happens, the house of Everthorn will shudder.”
Emerson’s stomach dropped. “And then?” he whispered.
Evander’s gaze did not waver. “Then,” he said quietly, “tell me.”
“That’s all?” The frustration came out before Emerson could swallow it. “You want me to wait until she breaks?”
“I want you alive long enough to be able to help her,” Evander replied. There was steel in the softness now. “If I move now—openly—I give your father an enemy to point at, and he will use your sister as a shield. If I move later, when the house is already cracking, I may be able to pull her out from under him.”
Emerson’s breath hitched. It wasn’t enough. It was more than he’d expected.
“You intend to run,” Evander added, the observation so blunt Emerson flinched. “With her. Away from all this.”
“I—” Emerson started, then shut his mouth. Lying seemed pointless. “Yes. If I have to.”
Evander nodded once. “Then you will need more than desperation,” he said. “You will need timing. Roads. Names of men who can be trusted not to sell you for a better future.”
He stepped closer, until Emerson could see the faint scar that cut through his left brow—the only imperfection in a face built on severity. He smelled faintly of steel, sweat, and some bitter herb.
“You will not speak of this conversation to anyone,” Evander said. “Not your father. Not your mother. Not your sister. Not even in a letter. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Emerson’s voice came out hoarse.
Evander studied him a moment longer, as if weighing the content of his soul against something only he could see. Then he reached into his belt and pulled out a small, flat token—a disc of dark metal etched with the twin serpents of Theros, so worn at the edges it had clearly seen use.
He pressed it into Emerson’s palm and closed the boy’s fingers around it.
“Show this to the captain of the eastern garrison if you ever find yourself on the back roads of Theros,” he said. “He won’t turn you away if you carry my mark.”
Emerson blinked down at his fist, at the sudden weight of it.
“You’re… helping,” he said, shock bleeding into the words.
“I’m leaving a door unlocked,” Evander corrected. “Whether you choose to run through it is not my decision.”
He stepped back, the moment shuttering.
“Until then,” he went on, voice returning to its usual, cool evenness, “you will watch. You will listen. And when your sister begins to fall, you will tell me. Not a day later.” His mismatched eyes hardened. “Do not wait until she is screaming.”
Emerson swallowed. Seraphine’s screams had echoed in his father’s nightmares for years. He’d heard that too, through thin walls and locked doors.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he said.
“Your three minutes are over,” Evander said. “Return to where you’re expected. If your father asks, you’ve been walking the outer halls to clear your head. I will not lie for you.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” Emerson bowed, deeper this time. “Thank you.”
Evander turned away, lifting the practice blade again. His posture shifted subtly as he slipped back into drills, the sharp, clean lines of each movement cutting the air like answers no one else would ever hear.
Emerson backed away until he reached the door. His fingers tightened around the token in his palm, edges biting into his skin, reminding him he was still here, still breathing, still capable of something.
“Lord Emerson,” Evander called, just as he touched the door.
Emerson looked back.
The Crown Prince’s gaze slid to him one last time, unreadable as ever. “She will need you,” he said simply. “When the time comes. Don’t die before then.”
Emerson’s throat closed. “I’ll try not to,” he managed.
Evander nodded once, dismissing him. The guards outside straightened as he stepped into the corridor again, but they did not stop him.
As he walked back toward the antechamber, he slid the token into the lining of his sleeve, where his father would not think to look, where Dorian’s sharp eyes might pass over it, where only his own pulse would know it was there.
He thought of Alora, locked in her too-small room, a goddess’s mark burning under her skin, visions clawing at the edges of her mind. He thought of his father’s hand, steady on a sword hilt once before.
He thought of running. Of roads. Of dawn.
If he had to drag her out of Everthorn himself one day, he would.
And if the world tried to take her from him, curse or no curse, he’d make sure it remembered that she had a brother before it ever called her a burden.
______________________________________________________________
The sky was still a pale, breathless gray when I left my room.
Not night. Not quite morning. That thin, trembling hour where the world seems undecided whether to wake or stay asleep. The manor lay hushed around me—servants not yet risen, halls echoing with only my own careful steps. Even the fire in the hearth had burned itself down to low embers, as if it too were holding its breath.
I did not light a candle. I had moved in darkness my entire life. This was nothing new. The Crown Gallery waited beneath open sky.
I dressed simply—soft gray linen beneath a darker cloak, the hood drawn low. No jewels. No colors that might catch the eye. I tucked my hair back in a plain ribbon and slipped Caelen’s coat over my arm instead of wearing it. It felt… wrong to put it on. Too intimate. Too much a claiming of space that was not mine.
The note was still in its pocket.
My heart beat hard and uneven as I slipped from my room and into the narrow servants’ corridor. The stone was cold beneath my slippers. Every shadow seemed too deep; every distant creak of the manor made my pulse jump. At any moment, I half expected to feel my father’s hand seize my arm from the dark.
Where do you think you’re going?
Back to your room.
But no one stopped me.
The garden doors were unlocked at this hour—left so for the early servants. Dew slicked the stone paths outside, the scent of damp earth and night-blooming flowers heavy in the air. I stepped into the courtyard and drew a sharp, steadying breath. The Moonbrand warmed faintly beneath my skin in response to the open sky, like something inside me lifting its face to the light even before the sun had risen.
The palace lay quiet at this hour, too. Only a few guards moved along the outer walls, silhouettes etched against torchlight. I kept to the edges of the grounds, cloak pulled close, the coat held tight against my side like a secret.
Each step toward the Crown Gallery felt heavier than the last.
Not with fear alone—but with a strange, aching pull, as if the space itself were calling to me. The closer I drew, the stronger it became. My mark throbbed once… twice… not in pain this time, but in recognition.
The Crown Gallery stood open to the sky, a wide arc of white stone and slender columns that curved like the ribs of some pale, ancient creature. Above it, the stars were fading, the moon sinking toward the horizon, its light thinning into pearled mist.
He was already there.
Prince Caelen stood near the balustrade, his back to me, pale hair catching what little moonlight remained. The cold morning air seemed to gather around him, his breath faint and silver as he exhaled. His posture was flawless—still, composed, as if even dawn had less authority here than he did.
For a moment, I only watched him.
Watched the way the world seemed to quiet around him. The way the gallery felt… steadied, as though his presence anchored it. I had lived my life braced for impact—waiting for the next command, the next denial, the next locked door. Standing here now, in this fragile between-hour with a prince I should not have trusted, something inside me loosened in a way that frightened me more than fear ever had.
I took one step forward.
The faint scrape of my slipper on stone was enough. He turned at once.
His gaze found me instantly, as if he had known exactly where I would emerge. Violet eyes cut through the soft gray light, read me with the same unsettling precision as the day before. But there was something different now—no court, no spectators, no polished walls of expectation between us. Just two figures in a half-lit gallery, balanced between night and day.
“You came,” he said.
It should not have felt like an accusation.
It did.
“I almost didn’t,” I admitted. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet. “If I’m discovered—”
“You will not be,” he said calmly. “I ensured the eastern watch was rotated an hour early. The western guards are facing outward, not inward.”
My breath caught. “You arranged that?”
“Yes.”
Of course he had.
I crossed the remaining distance between us slowly. Up close, the cold that clung to him was more real—like standing near a winter river. Not painful. Just… absolute. I held the coat out to him with both hands.
“Your coat,” I said. “Thank you for letting me keep it.”
He did not take it at once. His gaze dropped briefly to the fabric, to where my fingers touched the dark wool, then lifted back to my face.
“You kept the note,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
Something softened—only the slightest fracture—in the glassy stillness of his eyes. He reached out and took the coat from me, our fingers brushing for a fleeting second as the fabric changed hands.
The contact was lightning.
Not a spark—a fracture. A sharp, sudden jolt tore through my chest, straight through the Moonbrand. I gasped, stumbling back a half step as heat flared beneath my skin like a living thing waking from sleep. The mark burned, brighter than it ever had in my room, responding to his touch as if it recognized him.
Caelen’s eyes widened.
Only a fraction. Only for a heartbeat. But it was real.
He caught my wrist before I could fall, his grip firm and surprisingly warm through the leather of his glove. The contrast—cold aura, warm hand—sent another shudder through me.
“Your mark,” he said softly. “It reacts to me.”
I was shaking now, breath shallow, pulse racing in my throat. “It shouldn’t,” I whispered. “It’s just a scar. It’s nothing.”
“Scars do not pulse with light,” he replied.
We both looked down.
Even through fabric, a faint silver glow shimmered over my heart, seeping through the neckline of my dress like moonlight through water. The crescent shape was unmistakable now, no longer hiding in polite suggestion.
“I saw this in the hall,” he said. “But I needed to confirm it in silence.”
Fear curled tight in my chest. “Confirm what?”
“That you are not sick,” he said. “You are awakening.”
The word struck like a bell.
“I don’t understand.”
“I doubt anyone has ever explained it to you truthfully,” he said. “Your family treats it as illness. Your suitor treats it as weakness. The court will treat it as leverage. But it is none of those things.”
His gaze lifted to mine, sharp and unwavering.
“It is divine.”
The world seemed to tilt.
“No,” I whispered. “That’s impossible. Maerial is just a story. A forbidden one. A myth.”
For the first time, real uncertainty crossed his face. Not emotion—hesitation. “You know the name?”
“I’ve heard it in half-burned books and whispered prayers,” I said. “They say she was a goddess once. They say she vanished. They say the kings destroyed her temples.”
“They say many things,” he replied quietly. “Only some of them are lies.”
My heart hammered so violently I thought I might faint again. “You speak as if you know.”
“I speak as someone whose blood was shaped by her curse,” he said. “Drakenvyre remembers what the world tries to forget. Not in emotion. In consequence.”
His grip loosened slightly on my wrist, but he did not release me. “Your aunt bore the same mark.”
The name slammed into me like a blade. “Seraphine…”
“Yes.”
My vision swam. “She went mad.”
“She was unprepared,” he corrected. “Her body could not contain what was trying to wake inside her.”
Terror bloomed in my gut. “And mine can?”
For the first time since I had met him… Caelen hesitated.
“I do not yet know,” he said.
The honesty of that frightened me more than comfort ever could. I ripped gently but firmly from his grip, staggering back until my hands struck the cold stone of the balustrade. Dawn was bleeding into the sky now—faint gold at the horizon.
“If my father learns of this—”
“He will do what he did before,” Caelen said calmly.
The words felt like ash in my mouth.
I pressed my hand over the Moonbrand, forcing the glow to dim through sheer desperation. “Then why speak of it at all?” I demanded. “Why drag me here if all you bring me is a different kind of death?”
Because now emotion did flicker across his face. Not warmth. Not fear.
But something dangerously close to determination.
“Because,” he said quietly, “you are not meant to face it alone this time.”
The sun crested the far towers then, spilling light into the Crown Gallery. Gold washed over white stone. Over his pale hair. Over my trembling hands. Over the mark that refused to die quietly beneath my skin.
For the first time in my life, the truth stood before me without disguise or mercy.
And it had chosen the very man who could not feel… to be the first to see me clearly.
The sky had begun to pale by the time I slipped back inside the Everthorn gates. Dawn stretched thin and uncertain over the rooftops, bleeding softly into the mist like watercolor on damp parchment. The world looked fragile in this light. As if one wrong breath could tear it open.
My body still felt wrong—too light, too heavy, as though gravity hadn’t quite decided what hold it had on me since the Crown Gallery. The warmth of the Moonbrand lingered beneath my skin, not flaring now, but watching. Awake.
Every step toward the manor felt like a choice between two lives: the one I had always known, and the one that had just claimed me in stone and moonlight and truth.
I entered through the servants’ side door, the quiet hinge protesting with a soft groan that made my heart leap into my throat. I froze, breath held, listening for footsteps. None came. Only the low, distant murmur of the household stirring far below. I moved again, slower this time, shadow to shadow.
The corridor to my room stretched ahead like the spine of a beast I had learned to walk along without waking. The same narrow width. The same faded tapestries. The same faint scent of old linen and cold stone. Nothing had changed.
Except me.
When I reached my door, my hand hovered over the latch for a long moment before I touched it. Some small, irrational part of me feared what might be waiting on the other side—my father’s cold eyes, guards, questions I could not answer without dying.
But the room was empty when I slipped inside. Quiet. Still.
The small fire in the hearth had burned itself nearly to ash. Pale gray light crept through the single high window and pooled across the floor. My dresses hung untouched along the wall. My bed waited neatly made, exactly as I had left it hours before.
I shut the door softly and leaned my weight against it.
Only then did I allow my knees to give.
I slid down the wood until I was seated on the cold stone floor, cloak pooling around me like a discarded skin. My hands trembled in my lap. My breath came shallow and uneven, as though my lungs had forgotten the proper rhythm of living.
Divine.
The word echoed again in Caelen’s steady voice. Not a curse. Not a blessing. Not even a choice.
A truth.
I pressed my palm over my heart. The Moonbrand answered with a slow, pulsing warmth—quiet now, but impossibly alive. As if it had been listening the entire time. As if it approved of having finally been seen.
“I didn’t ask for you,” I whispered.
The mark did not care.
I moved to the small washbasin and splashed cold water on my face, willing the tremor from my hands. The girl in the reflection looked pale and hollow-eyed, silver-gold hair falling loose from its ribbon, green eyes too bright with something like fever or stormlight. I barely recognized her.
“You must not let them see,” I murmured to her. “Not Father. Not Dorian. Not anyone.”
Especially not Father.
The thought of his face—of his horror if he ever saw the Moonbrand shine as it had in the gallery—sent a fresh wave of cold through my chest. Seraphine’s broken image stirred at the edge of my mind. Blood. Fire. Light. A man with my father’s eyes standing over her.
I turned away from the reflection sharply.
A soft sound against the door made me flinch.
Not a knock.
A whisper of movement.
Paper sliding against wood.
My heart stuttered. I crossed the room in three silent steps and yanked the door open.
The corridor beyond was empty.
Only a small folded scrap of parchment lay on the floor at my feet.
My breath caught painfully as I knelt and picked it up. I knew the hand that had written it before I ever opened it.
Emerson.
The paper was hastily torn, the ink uneven, as though written in poor light and greater haste:
Be ready.
Soon.
No signature. None was needed.
My fingers curled tightly around the note until the thin parchment crumpled. A strange mix of relief and terror flooded me all at once. He was moving. Whatever plan he had formed in secret, it was no longer only a dream whispered between walls.
He was going to act.
And that meant there would be no turning back.
I pressed the note to my chest, right over the Moonbrand. For just a moment, the warmth there softened—no longer a blaze, but something quieter. Almost… listening.
“Soon,” I echoed.
I did not know whether it was a promise or a warning.