The envelope lay in her lap like it might shift if she looked away.
Paper, thin and pale, but heavy with intent.
A bird folded badly. One wing bent where it shouldn't be.
The moon still hung on, stubborn, but dawn had already begun sanding it down, pulling gray across the horizon.
The light wasn't enough anymore.
Lyra brought the page closer, almost touching her nose, eyes burning with that dry, granular ache that comes only after a night that never agreed to end.
This wasn't Kael's neat hand.
Not the one she knew from copied passages and careful notes in the margins.
This writing hurried. Angled.
Letters clenched tight, as if his wrist had stayed half-hidden while he wrote.
Ink sank deep into the paper in places, dark blue bruising toward black.
The pen had pressed too hard, then slipped. Corrected nothing.
"Lyra—"
The L curved wide and sure. Then the line thinned. Wavered.
Faded at the end, like he had stopped himself mid-motion.
"—it doesn't matter what happened in that hall. It doesn't matter what he said, or what they saw. Under the tunic, under the title, you are still you. The one who wants to know how shadow-roots feed. The one who holds a book like it's a passport to somewhere better. No one, not even a Black Moon Alpha, can take that from you unless you give it away."
She paused.
Her throat closed, slow and stubborn.
The words struck too close, found her without searching.
They named the fear she had avoided all night: that Sion's voice, his claim, had overwritten her.
That Lyra had been replaced by a role.
Kael was refusing that version. Quietly. In ink.
"You aren't safe there. And I can't reach you. But there is a place."
The writing changed here. Smaller. Packed in.
The letters leaned toward each other like they were listening.
"The old observatory. East cliffs, past the broken greenhouses. Two in the afternoon, after Defense. There's a route. Servants use it to avoid the courtyards. East wing. Down the service stairs behind the firewood cupboard. Follow the hall with water stains on the ceiling. Last door on the right before the outer wall opens into a closed yard. Observatory's in the northwest corner. The lock is rusted. I'll be inside."
She could picture him without effort.
Shoulders tight. Standing somewhere dusty and forgotten, scribbling fast, heart loud in his ears.
He wasn't offering escape. Not really.
Just a pocket of invisibility. An hour where eyes might look elsewhere.
"Be careful of Sion."
The line was underlined so hard the paper buckled.
"He isn't what he seems. There are stories. Old records. Things that shouldn't exist. He recognized you in a way that isn't normal. Not even for an Alpha. I don't know what he wants, but it isn't only a Mate. It's something else. Something old. Something wrong. Please, Lyra. Be careful. And come."
Nothing more.
"—K."
Not a signature. A residue. Just enough of himself to be known.
Lyra let the page lower.
Her hands were shaking, but it wasn't the loose tremor of exhaustion.
It was tension, pulled tight.
The envelope wasn't just words. It was a mark on the day ahead.
Two in the afternoon. The observatory.
How had Kael learned all this. The servants' routes. The rusted lock.
She remembered him in the winter garden, talking about old irrigation systems, guild structures that outlived cities.
He loved forgotten frameworks. Things that still worked after people stopped paying attention.
Of course he had mapped the Academy's hidden veins.
He wasn't only a Beta with books. He studied the places power forgot.
And the stories. The records.
Was that Sion alone, or something larger.
Her thoughts slid, unwilling, toward the visions.
Stone burning. Three moons hanging wrong in the sky.
A name spoken like a promise and a wound.
Had Kael found traces of that past. A past that held both of them.
The warning settled hardest.
Be careful of Sion.
Kael was stepping into dangerous territory, opposing the Academy's most powerful heir.
Loyalty could explain some of it. Fear, too.
But maybe what he'd found simply refused to stay buried.
The room shifted as night loosened its grip.
The silver stripe on the floor dulled into a flat gray.
Details surfaced.
Loose threads in the canopy. Dust along the desk's edge. A thin crack in the stone of the hearth.
In daylight, the room felt older. Less theatrical.
More capable of harm. A place built to cradle luxury and danger with equal care.
Her eyes found the water jugs. Clear. Still.
Don't drink.
Kael's warning slid through her thoughts.
Who had touched them. Elara. On whose order.
Sion, measuring obedience. Or someone else, eager to solve a problem before it learned how to speak.
The threat was smaller now. Sharper. Something that fit into a cup.
The first line of sunlight broke through the clouds.
Not warm. Not kind.
A thin, pale blade that struck the arched window and fell across the floor, revealing every worn thread the moon had been gentle enough to hide.
The night was over.
Lyra felt it then, that quiet certainty: daylight would not save her.
It would only change the shape of the danger.
Light brought eyes. Questions. Defense class.
Sion's presence, now suspect. Elara's closeness, suddenly edged.
The scar at her collarbone pulsed, steady, reminding her that her body had already been claimed once.
Still, there was something solid.
Two in the afternoon.
The meeting wasn't an escape. It was orientation.
Time had direction now. Each minute meant something.
She could endure that.
She stood.
Her joints protested, stiff from cold and stillness.
She folded the letter carefully, the paper already soft at the creases.
No pockets. Nowhere obvious.
Her gaze swept the room, quick and precise.
The bed. She knelt, worked her fingers into the seam between mattress and frame.
A narrow gap. Enough.
She slid the folded paper inside until it vanished.
At the washstand, she lifted a jug and poured it out.
Water rushed into the marble basin.
She washed her face, the cold biting, clearing sweat and salt.
She didn't drink.
The mirror showed her a stranger.
Pale. Shadowed eyes. Hair still trapped in its unraveling knot.
But her gaze held. Focused.
Fear remained, sharp and present, but it had weight now. Direction.
Outside, the sun climbed over the forest, pale and cold.
No howls.
Soon the bells would ring. The Academy would wake and remember itself.
Lyra stepped away from the window.
She would dress.
She would meet Elara's eyes.
She would survive the day.
And somewhere between lessons and watchful glances, she would find the firewood cupboard, descend the service stairs, and follow the corridor marked by water stains overhead.
The first despair was finished.
What remained was smaller, sharper, and far more dangerous.
She had something to do.
And for now, that was enough to keep her above water.