The shop stayed quiet after the twins left, but it wasn’t the comfortable kind of quiet anymore.
It felt charged.
Faylan stood behind the counter with her arms folded, staring at the door like she could glare answers out of it. The bell had stopped moving. The clocks had gone back to their uneven ticking. Sunlight had shifted across the floorboards in pale stripes.
Everything looked normal.
Nothing felt normal.
Rowan was still near the front of the shop, hands in his jacket pockets, posture loose in that practiced way he had when he wanted to seem unbothered. It was almost convincing.
Almost.
Faylan turned slowly and fixed him with a look.
“You knew them.”
Rowan’s expression barely changed. “You’ve said that already.”
“Because it’s still true.”
He let out a soft breath through his nose, half laugh, half surrender. “Fay—”
“No.” She stepped out from behind the counter, heat still buzzing under her skin. “Don’t ‘Fay’ me like I’m overreacting. Two gorgeous men walk in here, act like the air belongs to them, and you look like you’re one bad second from biting somebody.”
One corner of Rowan’s mouth lifted.
“Gorgeous?”
Faylan narrowed her eyes. “That is not the point.”
“It was a little the point.”
She made a face at him. “You’re annoying.”
“And yet,” Rowan said lightly, “you keep me around.”
Faylan huffed, but the irritation didn’t leave. She crossed her arms tighter, studying him. “You were tense.”
“I’m always tense.”
“No, you’re smug. There’s a difference.”
That got a real laugh out of him, low and brief. Then it faded, and for a second something sharper showed through. His gaze flicked toward the window, then back to her.
Faylan caught it.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“That thing where you act casual while obviously hiding something.”
Rowan looked at her for a moment, quiet now. His fingers brushed the dark red stone at his throat, just once, like he didn’t realize he was doing it.
Faylan’s eyes dropped to the necklace.
“You always touch that when you’re lying.”
Rowan’s hand fell away immediately. “That’s slander.”
“It’s observation.”
He smiled faintly, but it didn’t fully soften him. “You should stop observing me so closely.”
“Then stop being suspicious so beautifully.”
That slipped out before she could stop it.
Rowan went still.
Faylan felt her face heat. “You know what I mean.”
His expression changed just enough to make her pulse trip. Softer. Closer. More dangerous than joking.
“Do I?”
Faylan looked away first. “You’re impossible.”
Rowan stepped nearer, stopping just on the edge of her space. “They’re just passing through.”
She laughed once, sharp. “You expect me to believe that?”
“No,” he said. “I expect you to let it go.”
That landed wrong.
Faylan’s gaze snapped back to his. “That’s not happening.”
Something unreadable passed through Rowan’s face. Worry, maybe. Or frustration. “Faylan—”
“No, Ro. You don’t get to do that.” Her voice dropped. “You don’t get to show up exactly when they do, act like you’ve never seen them, and then tell me not to ask questions.”
The air between them tightened.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Rowan looked away, jaw working slightly, and Faylan knew she’d hit something real.
That only made her more certain.
She stepped back, grabbed her jacket from the stool, then paused.
“…I’m closing early,” she muttered, more to herself than him.
Rowan didn’t argue.
Faylan moved quickly now, channeling all that restless energy into motion. She flipped the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED, the soft click louder than it should’ve been. The shop seemed to react—like it noticed.
She walked the aisles with purpose, checking the cases, adjusting locks, making sure every fragile piece of history was where it belonged. Her fingers moved automatically, but her mind wasn’t in it.
Caspian.
Cassius.
Rowan.
The bell.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She returned to the counter, shut off the register, and grabbed the keys. For a second, she just stood there, looking out at the empty street through the front windows.
Then she reached up and stilled the bell with her fingers before it could move again.
“Not today,” she murmured.
Rowan watched her the whole time.
Faylan ignored him.
She locked the door, testing it once, then twice, before stepping back. The glass reflected her faintly—her and Rowan behind her, both of them looking like they belonged in a story she didn’t remember starting.
“I’m going home,” she said.
Rowan’s eyes flicked to her immediately. “I’ll drive you.”
“I have legs.”
“You also have a talent for finding trouble.”
Faylan gave him a flat look. “That sounded way more insulting than protective.”
“It was both.”
Despite herself, she almost smiled.
Almost.
She headed down the sidewalk anyway, and after the smallest pause, Rowan followed.
Greythorne felt quieter than it should’ve been. The clock tower loomed over the square, tall and silent, its dark face unreadable in the pale afternoon light.
Faylan glanced at it once and felt that strange, steady pulse under her ribs again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Her stomach tightened.
She looked away fast.
By the time she reached the Hart house, the heat of her anger had settled into something sharper—curiosity with nowhere to go. Rowan stayed near the porch while she unlocked the door, watching her in that maddeningly careful way.
Faylan pushed inside, kicked the door shut behind her, and stood in the quiet entryway of the old house.
Rowan stayed on the porch when she went inside.
Faylan felt him there even after the door shut behind her—like a presence pressed just beyond the wood, patient and watchful in that deeply annoying way only Rowan could manage. He didn’t call after her. Didn’t try to stop her again. Which somehow made it worse.
Because it meant he knew better.
It meant he knew she was angry enough to bite, and unlike certain other men she’d met today, Faylan actually did bite when pushed.
The house was quiet.
Not peaceful. Just quiet in that old, suspended way houses had when no one else was inside them. The faint hum of the refrigerator carried from the kitchen. Somewhere upstairs, the pipes gave a soft metallic knock. The oak tree beside the house tapped one thin branch against the siding in the wind with a slow, uneven rhythm.
Faylan stood in the entryway for a moment with her hand still wrapped around her keys, listening to the silence.
No Seina.
No Daniel.
Just stillness.
Her pulse had steadied on the walk home, but now that she was alone, the heat from the day rose back up under her skin in a different form. Less anger now. More restlessness. Questions with nowhere to go. The kind that scratched at the back of her mind until she either did something about them or lost her mind trying not to.
She dropped her keys into the bowl on the little hallway table and looked up.
Toward the ceiling.
Toward the attic.
The thought came quietly, but once it was there, it rooted itself hard.
If everyone in this town was hiding something, maybe her mother had too.
Faylan let out a slow breath.
“Cool,” she muttered to the empty house. “Love that this is my life now.”
She tugged off her jacket and tossed it over the banister post, then headed for the stairs.
The Hart house creaked around her as she climbed, each step carrying that old familiar sound of wood settling under weight. She’d lived here all her life. She knew which floorboards complained, which doors stuck in humid weather, which hallway light flickered for exactly three seconds before staying on.
She also knew she hadn’t opened the attic in years.
Not really.
Maybe once or twice after her mom died, when Daniel had been sorting boxes and grief had still sat openly in the house instead of hiding in corners. But after that, the attic had become one of those spaces families stopped talking about without ever making a rule. It was just there. Above them. Quiet. Full of things no one touched.
Faylan reached the second-floor landing and stopped at the narrow hallway that led to the attic pull-door. The air up here always felt a little different—cooler, thinner somehow, like the house kept its oldest breath trapped near the ceiling.
At the end of the hall, the attic door sat flush in the plaster overhead, a small metal ring hanging down on a cord.
Faylan stared at it.
A weird little pressure started behind her ribs.
Not fear exactly.
Anticipation.
She stepped beneath it and reached up, fingers brushing the cord.
For half a second she almost turned back.
Then she thought of Cassius’s too-knowing smile, Caspian’s silence, Rowan’s deflections, her father’s careful half-truths, the bell, the deer, and every strange little thing in Greythorne that people kept folding neatly away like it would disappear if no one looked at it directly.
No.
She was done not looking.
Faylan pulled.
The ladder groaned as it unfolded, wood steps dropping down in a stiff, awkward collapse that sent a small shiver through the ceiling. Dust floated down in a pale cloud, making her wrinkle her nose.
“Wow,” she said dryly. “Charming.”
She climbed slowly, one hand braced against the frame, and pushed the attic hatch wider.
The smell hit her first.
Dust, cedar, old paper—
and beneath it, faint and almost impossible, something softer.
Lavender.
Faylan froze halfway up the ladder.
Her mother had smelled like lavender sometimes.
Not always. Not in a perfume-ad commercial sort of way. Just faintly, in the sleeves of sweaters and scarves and once, years ago, in the brush Faylan had found on her dresser after everyone stopped saying her name like it didn’t hurt.
The scent was so light she almost could have convinced herself it wasn’t there.
Almost.
She climbed the rest of the way up.
The attic stretched out in dimness around her, lit only by the weak afternoon light filtering through the single round window at the far end. Dust drifted in the air like slow snow. Boxes lined the slanted walls in uneven stacks. Old trunks sat half-buried beneath blankets and folded quilts. A broken rocking chair leaned in one corner beside a lamp with no shade. A dress form stood near the back with one of her mother’s old shawls still draped over its shoulder, enough to make Faylan’s stomach twist before she looked away.
Everything in the room looked untouched.
Not abandoned exactly. Preserved.
As if the attic had become a place for things too loaded to throw away.
Faylan stepped carefully between boxes, the floorboards giving soft groans under her weight. Her eyes moved over labels written in her father’s blocky handwriting.
Winter clothes.
Christmas lights.
Garage tools.
Old books.
And then, farther back, in neater handwriting that made something in her chest tighten—
Elara.
Faylan stopped.
The box wasn’t large. Just an old wooden chest, really, tucked near the far wall beneath the little round window. It was darker than the other storage boxes around it, polished once upon a time and now dulled with age. No dust touched its surface the way it did everything else, which was strange enough on its own.
Faylan crouched in front of it slowly.
Her mother’s name was burned into the wood in elegant script: Elara Vance Hart.
The sight of it hit harder than it should have.
Vance.
Not Hart.
Not just Mom.
Something older.
Something that belonged before them.
Faylan swallowed and reached out.
The chest was cool under her fingertips at first.
Then warm.
She jerked her hand back immediately.
“What the hell,” she whispered.
The attic stayed silent.
Faylan stared at the chest for another long second before touching it again, slower this time. The warmth remained—not hot enough to burn, just… alive somehow. Like the wood had been sitting in sunlight, even though there was barely any sunlight up here at all.
Her pulse began that strange measured tapping again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She leaned in closer.
A small symbol had been carved into the lid, nearly hidden beneath the grain of the wood. It looked hand-cut, deliberate: a thin circle crossed through the center by three branching lines, almost like a sigil or a knot worked into geometry.
Faylan frowned.
She had never seen it before.
Which didn’t make sense.
This had been in her house all along.
She wrapped her fingers around the front latch and tried to lift it.
Nothing.
It didn’t budge.
There was no visible lock, no keyhole, nothing except the metal clasp itself—which should have opened easily if it were a normal chest.
“Okay,” Faylan muttered, kneeling back on her heels. “So that’s not creepy at all.”
She tried again, harder this time.
The clasp held fast.
A faint pressure built in her ears.
Then, soft as a memory—
a bell tone.
Faylan went still.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t even real, maybe.
Just the briefest note inside her head, low and distant, like iron sound carried through water.
Her breathing turned shallow.
The symbol on the lid seemed to shimmer.
Not visibly, not exactly—but something in the lines changed under her gaze. For one strange second, the carving looked less like a decoration and more like something layered over the wood. Something placed there.
A seal.
Faylan’s heartbeat thudded harder now, but that steady rhythm underneath it stayed.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Without fully thinking, she pressed her palm flat against the lid.
The reaction was immediate.
A chill flashed through the wood and up her arm, sharp enough to make her suck in a breath. The symbol flared—not with light, but with presence, like something waking under her hand. The air around the chest seemed to tighten. Her ears rang.
And then—
a crack.
Small.
Barely audible.
But real.
Faylan snatched her hand back.
The clasp had shifted.
Not fully open.
Just enough that the seal—whatever it was—had split at one edge.
Faylan stared.
For a long moment, she couldn’t move.
Then very carefully, like the chest might bite, she slid her fingers beneath the lid and lifted.
It opened an inch.
Dustless darkness waited inside.
And tucked right at the top, beneath the lid where it would be the first thing seen, was an envelope in aged cream paper with her name written across it.
Not Fay.
Not sweetheart.
Not baby girl in her father’s handwriting.
Faylan.
Written in elegant ink, precise and unmistakably deliberate.
Her breath caught.
Below the envelope she could see the edge of a photograph. The corner of a newspaper clipping. Something bound in dark leather.
But her eyes stayed fixed on her name.
Faylan reached in with unsteady fingers and lifted the envelope from the chest.
The paper was dry and delicate, but still sealed.
And on the back, pressed into dark wax, was that same carved symbol from the lid.
Only now, split clean through the middle.
She should have opened it right then.
She knew that.
Every nerve in her body was screaming at her to tear the paper apart and finally get one real answer for once in her life.
But something else pulled at her attention.
Not the chest.
Not the envelope.
The floor.
Faylan frowned and looked down.
The old rug beneath the chest was thicker than the others in the attic, faded burgundy patterned with curling vines and age-softened gold thread. It had probably been beautiful once. Now it looked worn and slightly uneven near one edge, as though it had been dragged and then pushed back into place too quickly.
Her brows drew together.
That hadn’t been her imagination.
The rug was crooked.
Faylan set the sealed envelope carefully on top of the chest and crouched lower, catching the edge of the rug between her fingers. Dust clung to the fringe. The fabric was heavier than she expected, dense and old and faintly smelling of cedar and lavender like everything else up here.
“Please let this not be murder basement energy,” she muttered.
She tugged.
The rug shifted a few inches with a rough scrape across the floorboards.
And beneath it—
a circle.
Faylan froze.
At first she only saw pale curved lines burned or painted directly into the wood. Then more detail emerged as she peeled the rug back another inch.
Not just a circle.
Several circles, nested into each other.
Thin rings intersected by sharp lines, branching marks, symbols she didn’t recognize carved into the wood in repeating patterns. Some looked almost geometric. Others were stranger—crooked, looping, like letters from a language that had never belonged in schoolbooks. One section held a crescent shape crossed through with tiny vertical strokes. Another looked like a cluster of thorns trapped inside a ring.
Only half of it was visible.
The other half still disappeared beneath the rug.
But even that partial glimpse was enough to make the attic seem to tilt around her.
Faylan stared.
Her first thought was absurdly practical.
Who carves a giant symbol thing into their attic floor?
Her second thought came colder.
Why hide it?
It wasn’t random. It was too careful for that. Too deliberate. Too large. The lines had been measured, placed, made to mean something. The entire visible half of the circle spread wider than the chest itself, as if whatever had been done here needed room.
Her pulse picked up.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Only now it sounded less like warning and more like recognition.
Faylan reached out, hovering her fingers just above one of the symbols without touching it. She could feel something there—not heat this time, not exactly. More like static before a storm. The faintest prickling pressure against her skin.
Her throat went dry.
“What did you do up here, Mom?”
The words fell into the dimness and vanished.
She swallowed and pulled the rug a little farther, just enough to reveal one more section of the circle. Another strange symbol came into view. This one looked like three branching lines enclosed in a ring.
The same symbol from the chest.
Faylan’s stomach dropped.
No.
No, that was not normal.
She shifted back on her heels, eyes darting between the marking in the floor and the broken seal on the chest. Something connected them. She didn’t know how, and she definitely didn’t understand what she was looking at, but she knew enough to know it mattered.
Maybe this was why the attic always felt different.
Maybe this was why the chest had been warm.
Maybe this was why nobody came up here.
Her breath came faster now.
She wanted the whole rug off.
She wanted to see the rest of the circle.
She wanted to open the envelope.
She wanted ten different answers all at once.
Faylan grabbed the rug again—
—and downstairs, a floorboard creaked.
She went completely still.
A second sound followed.
The front door.
Opening.
Then shutting.
Her heart launched hard against her ribs.
Not the steady tap now.
A real thud.
Voices drifted faintly from below.
One of them was Daniel’s.
Faylan’s eyes widened.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she whispered.
She dropped the rug instantly, shoving it back into place with both hands. The heavy fabric slid over the markings, hiding most of the circle again, though not perfectly. One sliver of pale line still showed at the edge.
She yanked it straighter.
Closer.
There.
Not good, but less obvious.
Her hands shook as she snatched up the envelope and looked wildly at the chest. Leave it? Take it? Open it now?
Downstairs, Daniel’s voice came clearer.
“Faylan?”
Her name echoed up through the house.
Too late.
She shoved the envelope against her chest and looked back once at the rug, at the hidden half-glimpse of circles and symbols buried underneath it, her pulse roaring in her ears.
She didn’t understand what she’d just found.
But she knew with terrifying certainty that it had not been put there for decoration.
“Faylan?” Daniel called again, closer now.
She turned toward the attic ladder just as footsteps sounded in the hall below.
The ladder creaked under her weight as she climbed down too fast.
Faylan nearly missed the last step, catching herself on the wall with a sharp breath before her feet hit the floor. Her pulse was still racing, the echo of what she’d seen upstairs buzzing through her like static that refused to settle.
Circle.
Symbols.
Her mother’s name burned into wood.
Her name written in ink like it had been waiting.
“Faylan?”
Daniel’s voice was closer now.
She shoved the attic cord up with a quick motion, forcing the hatch closed with more force than necessary. It clicked into place above her, sealing everything back into darkness like it had never been opened.
Like she hadn’t just cracked something wide open.
Faylan dragged a hand through her hair, trying to steady her breathing, and turned—
Daniel stood at the end of the hallway.
He’d taken off his jacket already, sleeves rolled up just enough to show the tension in his forearms. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d run his hands through it one too many times on the drive home. There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there years ago, the kind that came from worry more than age.
And right now—
He looked straight at her.
Not confused.
Not surprised.
Focused.
Too focused.
Faylan forced a breath.
“Hey,” she said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere just short of convincing.
Daniel’s gaze flicked once—past her, to the attic door above.
Then back to her face.
“…What are you doing?” he asked.
The question was calm.
Too calm.
Faylan shrugged, leaning her shoulder against the wall like she hadn’t just sprinted out of the attic.
“Looking for old stuff,” she said. “You know. Normal daughter activities.”
Daniel didn’t smile.
Didn’t relax.
If anything, something in him tightened.
“You don’t go up there,” he said.
Faylan’s chest prickled.
“That’s not a rule I remember agreeing to.”
“It’s not about agreeing,” he said, sharper now. “It’s about leaving things where they are.”
There it was.
Not anger.
Fear, dressed up as control.
Faylan straightened slowly, folding her arms.
“Why?” she asked.
Daniel’s jaw flexed.
“Because it’s not your place to dig through things you don’t understand.”
Faylan let out a short, humorless laugh.
“That’s kind of the problem, don’t you think?” she shot back. “I don’t understand anything because no one tells me anything.”
Daniel took a step forward.
“Faylan—”
“No,” she cut in, voice rising now. “No, you don’t get to do that either. Everyone keeps acting like something’s wrong—like something’s happening—and I’m just supposed to what? Ignore it?”
His eyes hardened.
“You’re supposed to trust me.”
Faylan stared at him.
The words hit harder than they should have.
“Trust you?” she repeated, quieter now but sharper. “You won’t even tell me what the attic is.”
Daniel’s gaze flicked again—just for a second—toward the ceiling.
That was all it took.
Faylan saw it.
Saw the crack.
“You do know,” she said, voice dropping. “You know exactly what’s up there.”
Daniel didn’t answer.
Silence filled the space between them.
Heavy.
Confirming.
Faylan’s pulse kicked harder.
“And Mom,” she added, the word catching slightly in her throat despite how steady she tried to sound. “She knew too, didn’t she?”
That did it.
Daniel’s expression changed.
Not anger.
Not exactly.
Something deeper. Older. The kind of fear that didn’t come from the present—it came from memory.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
Faylan’s stomach twisted.
“Don’t what?” she pressed. “Say her name? Ask questions? Wonder why there’s a box with her full name on it hidden upstairs like it’s—”
Daniel’s eyes dropped.
Not to the attic.
To her hands.
Faylan’s breath hitched.
She hadn’t realized she was still holding it so tightly.
The envelope.
Her fingers curled instinctively around it, pressing the fragile paper closer to her chest.
Daniel’s face went still.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, voice low.
Faylan swallowed.
“…Upstairs.”
“Give it to me.”
The words came immediately.
Sharp.
Not a request.
Faylan’s grip tightened.
“No.”
Daniel stepped forward, not fast, but with purpose. “Faylan, that doesn’t belong to you.”
Her eyes burned.
“It has my name on it.”
Silence cracked between them.
For a second, Daniel didn’t have an answer.
And that—more than anything—hurt.
Faylan’s voice wavered despite herself.
“She wrote this,” she said, softer now, staring down at the envelope like it might disappear if she looked away. “She wrote this to me.”
Her thumb brushed over her name, tracing the ink.
Careful.
Deliberate.
Like it had mattered.
A tight, unfamiliar pressure built behind her eyes.
“This could be the last thing she ever…” her voice caught, breath hitching. “You don’t get to just take that from me.”
Daniel’s expression faltered.
Just for a second.
Guilt.
Pain.
Something raw and unguarded.
But it hardened again just as quickly.
“You don’t know what opening that will do,” he said.
Faylan looked up, tears glassing her eyes now, frustration bleeding into something deeper.
“Then tell me!” she snapped. “For once, just tell me the truth!”
“Enough.”
The word cut through the room.
Sharp.
Final.
Faylan went still.
Daniel stepped closer, his voice low now, controlled in a way that felt more dangerous than yelling.
“You don’t know what you’re touching,” he said. “And you don’t understand what it can do.”
Faylan’s breath caught.
Not what it is.
What it can do.
Her mind flashed—
the warmth of the chest
the symbol
the crack in the seal
the circle under the rug
Something inside her snapped into place.
“This isn’t just old stuff,” she said slowly.
Daniel didn’t respond.
He didn’t need to.
Faylan shook her head, a disbelieving laugh slipping out.
“You’ve been lying to me my whole life.”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” she cut in. “You’ve been hiding things. From me. From Seina.”
At the mention of her sister, something flickered in Daniel’s expression again—protective this time, sharp and immediate.
“Seina stays out of this,” he said.
Faylan blinked.
“…out of what?”
Daniel didn’t answer.
Faylan’s heart dropped.
“Out of what?” she repeated, louder.
Silence.
The worst kind.
Faylan stepped back, shaking her head, clutching the letter tighter against her chest like it was the only real thing in the room.
“Wow,” she breathed. “Okay. So that’s where we’re at.”
Daniel’s voice softened slightly. “Faylan—”
“No,” she said again, but this time it wasn’t sharp. It was tired. Frustrated. Hurt in a way she didn’t want to unpack right now. “You don’t get to tell me nothing and then expect me to just… be okay with it.”
He ran a hand down his face, tension finally cracking through.
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
Faylan’s eyes stung.
“That’s what everyone says right before things get worse.”
Daniel flinched.
Just slightly.
But she saw it.
And suddenly, everything in her chest tightened.
Because that meant—
Things were going to get worse.
The realization hung between them.
Unspoken.
Heavy.
Faylan swallowed hard, then turned away before he could see too much on her face.
“I’m done,” she muttered. “For now.”
She walked past him, down the hall, her shoulder brushing his arm just enough to feel how tense he still was.
He didn’t stop her.
Didn’t follow.
Which almost hurt more.
Faylan reached the stairs and paused for half a second, gripping the railing tighter than she needed to.
Upstairs, hidden beneath dust and silence, the attic sat like a secret with its mouth half open.
The chest.
The letter.
The circle.
And the part that wouldn’t leave her alone—
Her name written like it had been waiting.
Faylan exhaled shakily and continued down the stairs.
Because one thing was very, very clear now.
Whatever her mother had left behind—
it wasn’t meant to stay buried.