Lyra
The east wing hadn't been opened in years.
Its silence was different—denser, as though the walls held their breath when I stepped in. Tristan had forbidden anyone from entering this part of the estate. I should've listened. I wanted to listen. But the whisper had been too familiar, too haunting.
Lyra…
That voice. Gentle. Warm. Coaxing.
My mother's voice.
I hadn't heard it since I was fifteen, and still, I knew it in my bones like the rhythm of my own pulse. It drew me past the cracked velvet wallpaper and forgotten portraits, toward the room no one spoke of anymore. The one with the locked door, dust-laced handles, and stained glass windows that filtered in fractured sunlight like blood.
I pushed it open.
The room was dim, blanketed in old lavender and shadow. The air smelled of faded perfume and paper. And there, on the floor by the hearth, half-buried under a velvet sheet, was a wooden chest. Old. Scratched. Locked.
But not sealed.
It opened with a soft click.
Inside was a journal wrapped in silk. My mother's initials—E.M.—etched into the corner in gold. My hands trembled as I lifted it.
The first page was a letter.
> To the daughter I may never live to guide,
There are truths you were never meant to inherit. But you must. They'll use you like they used me. But if you learn the truth, maybe you'll survive it.
Forgive me.
—Elysia Michelson
My chest tightened, and I sank to my knees, the journal cradled in my lap like something sacred and cursed all at once.
---
The next pages told a story I'd never known.
My mother had once been like me—bright, hopeful, and doomed. Promised to a man of power, bound by laws older than love. She'd learned the truth by accident, just like I had begun to. That the curse wasn't born from some divine punishment, but from Consul hands. A weapon to keep bloodlines obedient.
Her grandmother—my great-grandmother—had been the first to defy them. She loved a man beneath her station, and they made her pay. Not just her, but every daughter in the bloodline. Not just in tragedy—but in design.
The Consuls didn't just rule with magic.
They rewrote legacies with it.
My mother had been researching a way to break it—quietly, dangerously. But when she got too close, she grew sick. Died young. Officially, it was illness.
Now, I wasn't sure.
The silence in the room roared louder than my thoughts.
---
I didn't hear Tristan enter.
But I felt him behind me before he spoke.
"What is this place?" His voice was low, like he knew he shouldn't be here either.
I closed the book slowly. "It was my mother's."
His eyes flicked to the journal, then to me. "And what did she write in it?"
I stood. "Something I was never meant to forget."
A beat passed between us. Neither of us moved. The air between us thickened.
"You're not alone in this," he said finally. "You never were."
I wanted to believe him. And maybe a small part of me did.
But another part—the part that had learned to expect betrayal—held on tight to the journal in my arms.
Just in case.