The map is messy.
Scattered notes. Scraps of parchment. A cracked glyph from the archive. Lines drawn between names I barely know how to pronounce.
But it's mine.
I sit cross-legged on the floor of my quarters, surrounded by paper, the pendant warm against my collarbone. The air is thick with dust from books I pulled off shelves without permission. Most of them don't belong to me.
I don't care.
The candlelight flickers low, casting shadows across everything I've been trying to piece together. There's no elegance to it——-no formal record. Just fragments.
But they're enough.
Because now I know where the break happened.
The Court didn't fracture overnight. It split like a seam pulled too tight——names erased, bloodlines silenced, power hoarded on one side and feared on the other.
And right in the center?
Velarde.
My family.
Their crest wasn't just a symbol of rule.
It was a warming.
The same mirrored glyph that's etched into my pendant——-the one that flared in the Hall, the one Nova pretended not to recognize——was carved through both the Seelie and UnSeelie trees in the archives.
They tried to erase it.
But Lumindellar remembers.
And now, I know.
I drag the ink across the parchment again, connecting one Court name to another, drawing the branches they thought I wouldn't see.
Nova knew.
Not everything. But enough.
Enough to know why she helped me when I came back from Nox when others wouldn't have. Enough to recognize that I wasn't supposed to come back at all.
Alette hesitates every time I say my parents' names.
And Lilly…..she hasn't come to see me since I returned.
That says more than silence ever could.
I lean back on my hands, staring at the map forming on the floorboards.
This isn't just about finding Cassie anymore.
This is about inheritance.
About why they feared the Velardes enough to kill them.
And why I'm still breathing when I wasn't supposed to be.
The pendant pulses once——quiet and warm, like it agrees.
I reach for the final piece——a folded note I found tucked inside one of the Seelie records. A phrase I haven't dared say out loud yet.
"The Vanished Line Endures."
My fingers tighten around the page.
They tried to end us.
But I'm still here.
And I'm going to make them remember why they were afraid in the first place.
*********
Nova's POV
She's not the same girl who entered the Ritual Chamber.
I see it in her walk now——shoulders squared, movements deliberate, like she's no longer waiting for permission. No longer playing along.
The quiet magic that hums around her doesn't just follow.
It listens.
From the balcony above the archives, I watch her retreat into her chambers, the candlelight inside flickering through the narrow arch of stained glass. She doesn't look up. She doesn't know I'm here.
She wouldn't care if she did.
She's past caring what we see.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the marble balustrade, the chill of it grounding. The wind slips through my hair, perfumed with moss and memory, and I force my breath to remain steady.
I've seen too many like her.
And too few survive.
Her parents were one of the very few who did it flawlessly.
Behind me, the familiar rustle of silk against stone.
Alette.
She doesn't speak right away. She never does. I can feel her gaze moving from me to the chamber below.
"She's not going to stop," I say quietly.
"No," Alette answers. "She's not."
Her tone is cool. Neutral. Practiced.
The way we were trained to be.
"She's asking the right questions," I murmur. "She's drawing the lines."
"That's not our concern," Alette says, too quickly. "Let the Council manage the consequences.
"She nearly died in Nox."
Alette exhales through her nose, sharp and barely audible. "And she returned stronger for it."
"That's not the point."
"She survived," Alette replies, finally meeting my gaze. "And that makes her dangerous."
I turn fully toward her.
"She's dangerous because we failed her."
Alette stiffens. Her silence this time is louder than words.
She knows I'm right.
But she won't say it.
"We're not meant to intervene," she says at last. "You know the risks of taking sides."
I nod once. "Yes. But I also know the cost of silence."
Alette leaves without another word.
I stay until the wind grows colder, the candles below dimming one by one.
Then I turn,, step lightly down the stairs, and disappear into the quiet corridor behind the archives.
I reach the sealed chamber where the private records are kept——the ones we don't list in the official archives. The ones we guard with blood-locked seals and speak of only in code.
I don't need to open them.
I know what's inside.
I retrieve one scroll, roll it tight, and mark the edge with a glyph that hasn't been used in decades.
Velarde.
She'll know what it means.
Or the pendant will.
Either way, the message will reach her.
The UnSeelie are moving.
And if we don't warn her now, we'll all answer for it later.
************
She doesn't knock.
She just appears——-elegant and still in the doorway of my quarters, her silhouette framed in amber light.
Nova.
Her expression is unreadable. That soft Seelie calm she always wears like armour. But tonight, her eyes won't meet mine.
I rise from where I've been kneeling beside my makeshift map, ink still drying on the parchment spread across the floor.
"You came," I say, now as a question.
Nova steps inside. The door clicks shit behind her.
She holds something in her hand——a tightly rolled scroll, sealed in gold wax. She doesn't offer it right away.
Instead, she studies me for a long moment. Not as a subject. Not as a girl she helped after Nox.
As something else.
"You're stronger than they thought you were," she says quietly.
I nod, "But I think they always knew I would be. Didn't they?"
A flicker in her eyes. Guilt or recognition——I'm not sure which.
Nova finally steps forward and places the scroll on the table beside me.
No words. No explanation.
But the seal is enough.
I know it before I touch it.
The crest etched into the wax is broken——but not unrecognisable.
Two mirrored threads. A crown above them. And at the center, a star cleaved in two.
Velarde.
I stare at it, my breath stilling in my chest.
Nova turns to leave.
"Why now?" I ask, voice low.
She hesitates, one hand resting lightly on the doorframe.
"Because they're watching you again," she says. "And not all of them plan to wait."
Then she's gone.
I pick up the scroll slowly.
The wax is warm beneath my fingers. As if it remembers me.
When I break the seal and unroll the parchment, the pendant flares instantly against my skin.
The ink is darker than it should be. Almost alive.
And the line written across the center of the page is simple.
"The line that was lost must never rise again."
I don't breathe.
Not at first.
Because this isn't a promise.
It's a warning.
And not just to me——but about me.
The pendant heats beneath my collarbone, bright and sharp and furious. Like it recognizes the words. Like it remembers why they were written in the first place.
I clutch the scroll tighter, the parchment trembling between my fingers.
They didn't just erase the Velarde name.
They outlawed it.
Feared it.
Marked it.
And now I know why they're afraid.
Because if "the line that was lost" is still alive——
Then I'm not just a mistake.
I'm their reckoning.
**********
Justin's POV
I feel it hit before I see her move.
The quiet collapse of everything I've tried to hold together.
She's changed since Nox. Everyone sees it. But they're watching the wrong things——her posture, her voice, the way she no longer waits to be invited into rooms that were never meant for her.
They don't notice the stillness.
The kind that comes right before someone attacks.
I do.
Because I know what it means to carry something too heavy for words.
To hold it so long it turns into fire.
I see her slip from her quarters beneath the stars, steps silent, scroll still clutched in her hand. She doesn't hesitate. Doesn't look around. She's not being cautious.
She's already decided.
I follow.
Not closely. Not enough for her to feel me.
Just enough to see the way she moves——straight toward the sealed halls the Seelie pretend don't exist.
The doors open for her.
And I stop just before the turn in the corridor, jaw clenched, hand braced against the stone.
She found something.
And whatever it was——it didn't scare her.
It changed her.
The scroll is gone now, tucked away somewhere close by. But the way she carried it…..she already knows. She's not guessing anymore. She's walking straight into the memory they tried to bury her inside.
And I let them.
I let them do it.
I close my eyes.
She's about to uncover what I've kept from her. What I told myself wasn't mine to reveal. What I justified, what I obeyed, what I feared more than anything else:
That the truth about her past starts with mine.
And when she finds it——-
I won't have any excuses left.