Music Suggestion While Reading:
🎵 "Lustre" by Claire Wyndham
🎵 "In This Shirt" by The Irrepressibles
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The moon over Dhalmora burned red that night—a mourning eye in the sky. In the western wing of the old cathedral where the Council had once housed its scribes, Mara stood in the center of a shattered rose window, blood trailing down her palm.
She'd cut herself again. Not out of clumsiness—never that—but as ritual. The pain grounded her, staved off the madness that coiled too tightly around her spine.
Lucian had chosen him.
She whispered it aloud, the words curdling in the air like smoke.
"Lucian chose him."
Behind her, a shadow stirred. Soft steps echoed through the marble ruin.
"You said you would be done with this obsession," came a voice—Ravien, one of the old acolytes who had once longed for her favor. She didn't turn. She only smiled faintly, too tired to lie.
"I thought I would be," she murmured. "Until I saw the way he looked at him. Like fire made flesh."
Ravien moved closer, jaw tight. "You should leave this to the Council. There's nothing for you now. He was never yours."
She laughed. A beautiful, cracked sound. "He was never mine. But that boy—Kyrell—he isn't his either. Not truly. He doesn't even know what he is yet. But I do."
She opened her palm and let her blood drip onto a rune etched into the stone at her feet. It pulsed faintly.
"I've seen the prophecy. I've read the ash-written tomes the rest of them fear to touch. That creature—he'll unravel us all if Lucian continues down this path."
Ravien stepped back. "What did you do?"
She turned finally, her eyes rimmed in fevered red. "I told the Council where he was. I told them the truth Lucian buried. I watched Kyrell in the mirror long before the others saw what he was."
"And now?"
"I let the storm come," she whispered. "And when it's over, and Lucian is broken beyond repair, he'll remember who was loyal through every silence."
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Meanwhile, across the Veil, Lucian stood alone beneath the shattered spires of the Council's tribunal, Kyrell's warmth already fading from his fingers.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he said aloud to the wind. "The tide turning."
He touched the pendant that once belonged to Kyrell—burnt, cracked, fragile as his hope.
They had no more time for innocence.
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