Chapter 25

  Calira’s eyes skated from shadow to shadow as they slipped through the castle’s outer halls. The King was gone—physically absent, at least—but her heart still beat like a hummingbird’s, frantic and deafening in her ears, threatening to betray them with every step. Sweat prickled under her collar despite the winter chill threaded through the stone.

  Albert and Amalia moved ahead, silent and steady. Their bonded had been left at Amalia’s estate—too large, too conspicuous, too…hopeful for a night like this. Weeks of studying the layout, of tracing corridors on parchment until ink ghosted their fingertips; days of planning every detail, rehearsing contingencies until the contingencies needed contingencies. And yet dread curled in Calira’s stomach anyway, hard as a knot of iron and twice as cold.

  King Leo didn’t make mistakes. He didn’t leave vulnerabilities. He was the sort of man who counted his breaths, waiting for a moment to pounce. But choice had narrowed down to a blade’s edge: risk it, or lose River forever.

  The thought of what Leo might’ve done to River knifed through her, red and raw. For a heartbeat, heat slicked her skin. Fire bloomed under her ribs, eager as a hunting dog. She crushed it—one breath, a command she’d practiced until her throat ached—and the glow guttered out. Shadows closed over her like a well.

  Her pulse steadied. The fear burned away the softer thoughts of what might happen to her. Good. She could use the fear.

  She flowed forward, following Amalia’s lead.

  The red-haired girl crouched low, movements fluid, her steps impossibly quiet, like she’d taught her bones to forget they were bones. Torchlight combed the strands of Amalia’s hair and set them burning—no coward’s flame, a banner. Calira watched her with a small, silent awe: the way Amalia carried them when grief had almost broken their backs; how she kept them sharp when the world wanted to turn them dull. Amalia had dragged them back from despair by the throat. It was her stubborn, ordinary strength that kept the thought of River alive when faith alone wasn’t enough.

  Amalia’s fist snapped up, knuckles white. Someone was coming.

  They froze. Even the air seemed to halt, held between one heartbeat and the next. Silence crashed over them like a wave and left the world ringing.

  Then—footsteps. Slow, deliberate. The cadence of a man who owned the place he walked. The stone corridor gathered each step and fed it back, echo after echo, closer and closer until Calira’s heartbeat synced to the rhythm and tried to outrun it. Where was River when they needed him?

  The steps paused. Turned. After an age that lasted five, six, seven seconds, they faded. The air was thick and suspicious, as if it were pretending to be quiet and doing a poor job of it.

  They walked once more. Going deeper. Down and down. The air grew heavier with each level they descended—denser, tainted, a sweetness gone foul. Calira tried to breathe through her mouth, but the taste of it stuck anyway, like rot stitched to shadow with wire.

  When Amalia finally stopped, Calira saw why.

  The door loomed out of the dim: massive, jet-black, the surface so dark it swallowed torchlight and breathed it back as a smear. It pulsed with something—subtle, malevolent, the hum you feel in your teeth when a storm is near. Crimson runes snaked across the frame, glowing like coals under ash. Calira couldn’t recognize them. Couldn’t even look for long without a tilt in her vision, vertigo that suggested the door was looking back.

  It radiated death, or the careful imitation of it. No guards. No shuffle of armor. No cough. The emptiness itself felt curated.

  She nodded to Albert. “Get it open.”

  Albert stepped forward without a word. He’d spent weeks buried in Amalia’s family archives, surfacing only to drink lukewarm tea and mutter about syntax. Runes. Dark wards that liked to be read in the wrong direction first, just to see if you’d notice. The blueprints had promised protections, wards layered like lacquer, but promises were cheap and traps cheaper.

  This was the moment of truth, though truth felt like a luxury item.

  He ran his fingers along the edges of the runes, whispering to himself—halting, then faster, stumbling, then catching, as if the language wanted to be spoken and remembered him from a previous life. Calira could tell he understood at least part of it. The rest he wrestled into shape by stubbornness alone. They would have to hope that was enough.

  His hand dropped. He spun back to them, grin smeared across his face, a little wild. “I got this—get back a little.”

  Calira and Amalia retreated two steps, eyes on the black. Albert moved with precise, practiced motions now, confidence tightened into the line of his shoulders. His fingertips skimmed the surface, sketching symbols in sequence, pausing, reversing, a rhythm like knocking a secret code only the door could hear.

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  A sharp click: small; vulgar in the hush.

  They waited. Breath held. Expecting a flare, a shriek of alarm. Expecting teeth.

  Nothing.

  “That’s it?” Amalia asked, voice low, disappointed and wary in equal measure.

  No hidden alarms. No magical burst. Just silence.

  They stepped inside.

  Books lined the walls, aged and bound in leathers Calira didn’t recognize, scaled, pebbled, too supple. Glass ornaments and stoppered vials lay scattered across the wooden tables, each exhaling years of dust. The room appeared forgotten, which meant, probably, that it wasn’t.

  But the center held something else.

  A crystalline structure, brilliant white, rose from the floor like a tooth. Concentric runes encircled its base, carved into the stone and mirrored above in the ceiling. Golden light pulsed faintly in the crystal’s core—steady, then quicker for one pulse, as though it had noticed them—and the air around it shimmered with a power that wanted to be named and refused. It was alive, whatever it was.

  Calira edged closer, eyes narrowing to slits as she traced the runes along the outer ring. A few were familiar. Warning. Danger. God. That last one, doubled, then crossed out, then rewritten the same.

  Her breath caught. She turned to Amalia and Albert. Both stared, mouths slightly open. No one spoke. Even Albert’s thoughts seemed loud.

  This wasn’t what they had expected. They had come hunting for proof: a ledger, a letter, a pact with the Blightborn, a stupidly simple seal hidden behind a painting. Evidence of a betrayal they already believed in. But this… this was something that made betrayal look small.

  Calira opened her mouth; only croaks and squeaks came out. Heat in her face. She coughed, steadied the panic clawing her throat, and hauled her voice back by force.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Albert didn’t meet her eyes. His earlier confidence folded up neatly and went away. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But from what I can read… it’s not good.”

  Amalia didn’t hesitate. Hesitation kills. She moved, fast, her voice clipped but calm. “Gather what you can. Books, objects, anything that might help us understand this.”

  They scattered. Calira’s fingers skimmed the shelves, drawn to the leather-bound tomes like iron to a magnet. Each book hummed—a subtle, thrumming thing—an essence unlike anything she’d felt. Her fingertips tingled as she passed them. River used to read like that, she remembered suddenly; late into the night in Varosha, nose buried in brittle pages, eyes bright with a private sun. He would have loved—no, feared—this place.

  And then she saw it.

  The Gods of Old: A Prison of the Future.

  The title shimmered stronger than the others, reacting to her gaze, as if it had been waiting. Calira reached out—hesitated only once, which was once too long—and slipped the book free. It was warm. A thrum in her palm. She tucked it into her robe, heart pounding hard enough to shake her bones.

  She wanted more. So many things beckoned: glass spheres etched with riddled wards; sealed vials of shifting mist that rolled like captured weather; metallic constructs that buzzed with latent power and, she suspected, opinions. The room was a treasury and a trap at once.

  But time was thin.

  The more they took, the more obvious the theft. And King Leo didn’t miss specks; he inventoried dust. He was meticulous, paranoid, vindictive.

  Calira forced herself to move. A few more items. She bargained for a little more time, hoping the gods would hear her prayer. “Calira.” Amalia’s voice cut across the hum. From the crystal’s edge, Albert called out, urgent. “We have to hurry.”

  The words yanked her from the memory—River’s arms, her rebirth, the warmth of being a newly hatched phoenix. Dangerous thoughts. She wrenched free of the shelves and moved, legs before brain. Panic drove their heartbeats, their footfalls—triplets drumming toward the corridor.

  Behind them, the heavy door exhaled and stayed ajar; there was no clean click of a seal. Calira didn’t hear it. What she heard was their breath. The promise of open air. The promise of out.

  “Did we close it?” she whispered as they slid into the passage, the question already sending a shiver down her spine.

  Albert’s face went pale, blanching to parchment. He glanced back; the dark rectangle yawned like a missing tooth. He shook his head. “No…”

  He pivoted to go back, panic rising in his eyes, but Amalia’s hand landed on his shoulder—a small weight, decisive. “There’s no time. Even if he finds out someone was there, he won’t know it was us. We just need to get out.”

  Albert didn’t look convinced. Conflict raged within him as his eyes flicked from side to side, almost loud enough to make out.

  They moved quickly—faster now—halls smearing to gray streaks until the night air kissed their faces, sharp, cold and right. For a moment, they stood, stunned, the tension sloughing off in shreds. Calira almost laughed. Almost. They were free.

  Back at Amalia’s estate, they said little. Virella and William weren’t in on the plan, but secrets dripped, and Calira was sure suspicion had pooled somewhere. That was fine. They needed deniability—thin as paper, still useful. When the bedroom door shut, laughter burst out anyway, messy and too loud, a relief-valve hiss that couldn’t be helped. Nymeira and Tessa leapt from the beds, trills and rumbles tumbling over each other, caught by the contagious joy even if they didn’t understand its shape.

  Calira drew the shimmering book from her robes and set it on the bed. Amalia and Albert did the same. Three items, small enough to hide, heavy enough to change something.

  Calira’s book The Gods of Old: A Prison of the Future.

  Amalia’s pulled something from her tunic: a scroll written in script older than anything they had ever seen, the ink browned to the color of dried blood.

  Albert’s: a dark purple book stamped with an ivory emblem, True Power: Family Trees of the Powerful Mages.

  Albert’s voice thinned to a whisper, as if the room had ears. “That might be what River was looking for. Let’s look at it tomorrow, im too spent to be of any use now.”

  Amalia agreed, turning to leave.

  Calira didn’t respond. Something changed.

  In that moment, her essence bloomed. Her soul pulsed. A warm glow of fire unfurled beside her, soft as a hand on the cheek, her bond, alive again. Heat spread through the room, not burning, just certain. Her eyes widened; breath snagged and held.

  He was alive.

  Amalia and Albert stared, speechless, questions gathering like birds and then scattering; they didn’t need to ask.

  Calira smiled, couldn’t help it. “It’s him. He’s coming.”

  And just like that—for the first time in what felt like forever—everything was right in the world. For a breath, for the length of a heartbeat, the future brightened.