Elara didn't eat that evening.
She tried. She sat with a bowl of thin soup and a heel of stale bread in the corner of the servants' hall, pretending to listen to the kitchen chatter. But her eyes kept drifting to the folded piece of parchment in her apron.
"Meet me in the courtyard at midnight. Come alone.
You are not the only one they tried to burn."
She read the message at least twenty times before sunset, and every time, the words felt heavier. The phrasing. The certainty. It wasn't a threat it was a recognition. A call from someone who knew what it meant to die and wake up changed.
Who else had they tried to burn?
By the time midnight approached, the rest of the staff were long asleep. Elara slipped out beneath the excuse of emptying chamber pots and crept through the dim, drafty corridors of the lower palace. She didn't light a lantern. She moved by instinct, by memory, by the cold knot of fire pulsing behind her ribs.
The night air bit at her cheeks. Thin clouds veiled the moon above, casting a ghostlight across the courtyard stones.
She stepped through the garden arch, into the courtyard's center, and waited.
No sound. No movement. Only the low rustle of wind through the ivy-covered walls.
Was this a trap?
She didn't know. But after the archives, after Corven's warning and the sigil in the hidden room, Elara wasn't sure what she was walking toward anymore only that it was pulling her deeper.
A minute passed. Then five. Her breath frosted in the air.
Then she felt it.
A shift in pressure. The sense of eyes on her back.
"Elara," came a voice behind her. Smooth. Female. Familiar.
She turned slowly.
A cloaked figure stepped from beneath the covered trellis. Her boots were silent, her hood pulled low over her face. But when she reached the moonlight, she let the hood fall.
And Elara froze.
"You," she whispered.
The woman smiled faintly. "We've met, in a way."
It was the same woman from the chapel. The one tracing blood magic. Younger than Elara had expected no more than twenty but her violet eyes glowed faintly in the dark, the mark of magic long embedded in the blood.
"Who are you really?" Elara asked, her voice cold.
"My name is Seryth. I was the High Priestess's apprentice. I died with her. Or at least, I was supposed to."
Elara's blood chilled. "I never saw your name in the trial records."
"You wouldn't have," Seryth replied. "They burned the records. The council erased my existence before her body was cold. They didn't want anyone asking how the girl with prophecy magic survived."
Elara's mind raced. This woman this survivor was the kind of person she had prayed for in her cell before death. Proof that she hadn't been the only one who saw the corruption, the hidden hands at work.
"Why now?" she asked. "Why contact me?"
Seryth studied her. "Because the veil between lives is thinning. When you came back, the prophecy stirred again. You woke something that never wanted to be disturbed. And they know it."
"They?" Elara echoed. "The Order?"
Seryth nodded. "The Order. The Court. Even the Crown. They each play a part in the prophecy's end, but none of them control it. That's why they fear you. You're a variable they didn't expect to repeat."
"And what are you?"
"An echo," she said softly. "A fragment left behind. But I remember more than they think. And I know one thing for certain if we don't act before the Equinox Gala, the fire that killed us both will consume the entire kingdom."
Elara stared at her.
She wanted to believe her. Needed to. But trust was a luxury she hadn't had since the day Kaelith raised his hand and let her burn.
"I'm not here to be anyone's pawn," she said sharply.
"You never were," Seryth replied. "But we all start as pieces on the board. The difference is whether we choose to stay there."
Elara's jaw clenched.
Seryth reached into her cloak and held out a scroll wrapped in crimson silk.
"This was meant for the High Priestess the night she died. I found it sealed in her private chamber. Hidden. I think she knew it would never reach her. But maybe it was meant for someone else."
Elara hesitated, then took it. The parchment burned faintly in her hand. Not with heat but with magic. Ancient, buried, and dangerous.
"What's inside?" she asked.
"I don't know. I was never allowed to read her private correspondences. But whatever it is… it's tied to you. To us."
Elara opened her mouth to speak, but the distant sound of metal scraping stone cut her off.
They both froze.
From the far end of the courtyard, the hedge wall shifted.
A shadow stepped into view. No lantern. No cloak. Just slow, deliberate footsteps and the glint of steel.
Seryth swore under her breath. "We were followed."
"Go," Elara said, tightening her grip on the scroll.
Seryth didn't argue. She vanished into the garden paths like smoke.
Elara backed away, hiding the scroll beneath her apron. The figure in the shadows paused. Then turned and disappeared the same way it came.
She didn't relax until she was back in the servant's corridor, pressed against the stone, her heart thudding like a war drum.
That night, she sat on her cot with the scroll in her hands, the crimson silk still wrapped tightly around it.
She couldn't open it.
Not yet.
Because something in her blood whispered that once she did, nothing would be the same. Not her plans. Not her mission. Not even herself.
For the first time since waking in Thalia's body, she felt fear not of dying but of what she might become.
The fire was no longer behind her.
It was waiting in front of her.
And it had a name.