Lyra
The estate had moods.
She hadn't noticed it the first few days—too caught up in Tristan's contempt, in the suffocating luxury of her new prison—but now, she swore the walls sighed when she passed. Lights flickered slower. Shadows didn't stretch right.
Today, it was quiet. Too quiet. Even the marble floors seemed to muffle her footsteps as if urging her not to be heard.
She found herself drawn again toward the western corridor—the sealed one. The wing with the relic, the runes, the whisper that had spoken in her own voice.
She knew Tristan didn't want her here.
Which was exactly why she came.
The moment her fingers brushed the wall, warmth pulsed through the stone. Not painful this time—inviting. A heartbeat thrumming beneath her skin.
She wasn't alone.
Not in the corridor. Not in the estate.
Not in her own damn body.
A cold breath slithered across the back of her neck.
She turned.
No one.
The hall behind her remained still. Silent. Watching.
---
Tristan
He saw her disappear into that wing again.
She moved like she didn't care who saw her anymore. Like she knew there was no one to stop her.
He should've stopped her. Should've ordered a guard, barred the hallway, forced her to obey.
But he didn't.
Because part of him wanted to know why she kept returning.
Because part of him... didn't want her afraid of him anymore.
Because when she vanished into the corridor, something deep and wrong moved beneath the estate.
---
Lyra
The door this time opened a crack.
Not wide. But enough.
Enough to let out the whisper.
Her name.
Not in her voice this time. In another. Familiar. Family.
Her mother's.
"Lyra."
She staggered back.
The glyphs flared briefly, blood-red, and then—
Darkness.
A pair of hands caught her before she hit the ground.
---
Tristan
She was ice-cold in his arms.
He hadn't thought. Hadn't hesitated.
He'd seen the light flare. He'd heard her scream.
Now, she was trembling. Whispering something about voices. A door. Her mother.
He held her tighter than he should have.
"Stop," she murmured, pushing weakly at his chest. "Don't act like you care."
His jaw tightened. "If I didn't care, you'd still be bleeding on the floor."
Her breath hitched.
He hated that sound. Hated that it made his chest tighten.
"Maybe I'd prefer it," she said, but it came out softer than she intended. A lie, poorly told.
They stared at each other too long.
Then she pulled away. "Don't follow me."
"I don't have to," he said. "The house already does."
---
Lyra
She didn't sleep.
Even after the hot bath. Even after the tonics. Even after Tristan, for once, left her alone.
That voice haunted her.
Her mother had died when Lyra was fifteen. A fever, they said. Sudden, brutal, incurable. But Lyra had never believed it—not truly. Her mother had always been too careful. Too calculating. Too bound by secrets.
That voice in the corridor hadn't been a memory. It knew her. It knew her name like it had named her.
By morning, she was back in the small private library.
Not the grand one the Consuls displayed for show—but the cramped, dusty room hidden behind a false panel near the sealed wing. She didn't know whose library it had been—only that the books here weren't censored.
And in one of them—wedged between a broken binding—she found it.
A page torn from another book.
The handwriting was shaky, old... and it was her mother's.
She knew it instantly. The loops. The way the "L" in Lyra curled like a blade.
"They'll kill her if they know. I made the deal, but it wasn't enough. The Consuls demanded a punishment for our line—one that would last generations. I didn't think they'd curse my daughter before she was even born. But if she finds this… maybe she can break it. Maybe she can finish what I couldn't."
Lyra's hand trembled as she traced the ink. There was more scribbled beneath it—some sort of incantation, half-erased.
But her name was clear.
Her mother knew.
And she hadn't saved her.
---
Later That Night – Tristan
He found her in the rooftop garden.
No cloak. No guards. Just her hair unbound and her hands gripping a letter like it might fly away.
"I know you're watching me," she said without turning.
"I always do," he answered.
Her laugh was hollow. "Do you know what it's like to realize your mother condemned you with silence?"
His throat went tight. "Yes."
She turned.
And for the first time, her eyes didn't burn with rage—but with something worse.
Wounded understanding.
"Then you know why I can't trust you."
"I'm not asking you to," he said. "I just want you to live long enough to hate me properly."
That pulled the ghost of a smile from her lips. "Getting soft, husband?"
He shrugged. "Not soft. Just patient."
"Then be patient with this." She held out the letter.
He didn't take it. Not yet.
Because something was changing between them.
Not forgiveness. Not even truce.
But the first hairline crack in the wall they'd both been hiding behind.
And once a crack forms—something always slips through.