And when it’s done, the falcon doesn’t collapse. It rises.
Wings stretch wide, impossibly wide, powerful now, not shaking. Its gaze locks onto mine one last time before it pushes off the edge of the fountain and soars, strong and clean, toward the open sky. A whisper of wind trails behind it like a goodbye.
I collapse to my knees.
Rafe’s beside me in an instant, one hand braced against my back, the other gripping my shoulder like I might fall right through the stone.
“You... what the fuck was that?” His voice is hoarse, shocked.
“I don’t know.” I breathe hard, blinking against the pulsing glow still flickering under my skin. “I didn’t plan it. I just... felt it.”
He stares at my hands like he’s seeing them for the first time. “Your hands were glowing. And not like they did before. That was focused. Direct. You fixed him.”
I nod slowly, heart pounding. “That wasn’t shifter healing. That was magic.”
“Which means...” He trails off, his expression darkening. Not out of anger. Something deeper. A realization settling in his bones.
I finish it for him, whispering like saying it too loud might break something sacred.
“I’m a witch.”
His jaw flexes. He’s trying to stay calm for me, but the weight of it hits both of us.
Not a seer. Not just an empath. Not just the girl the Seal glowed around. I healed a falcon shifter with nothing but my hands and some old power in my blood I’ve never known how to name.
Rafe helps me to my feet, but I keep staring at my fingers like they’re foreign.
“I need to know more,” I say. “I need to understand what this is.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Then we find answers.”
We spend the rest of the morning in the library tucked into the north end of the villa, the one no one’s opened in years. Rafe digs out books with cracked spines and loose bindings. Texts from the Pact era, scrawled notes, journals half-burned at the edges. The room smells like dust and dry wood and long-buried secrets.
I comb through page after page, searching for names, bloodlines, anything about healer witches or latent magic. There are dozens of accounts about the first Seal-born, the covens that served beside shifters during the early rebellions, and most importantly—ancient lines of witches whose power only activated under specific stress or exposure to Seal magic.
One name appears again and again in the oldest scrolls:Althea the Lightbearer.
She was one of the first healers known to work alongside shifters. Some claimed she could mend bones with a glance. Others said her touch brought back the dead, though the latter reads more like myth than history. But what grabs me is the sigil next to her name: three crescents surrounding a flame. That same sigil is etched into the cover of one of the tomes I found on my first day here, the one I thought was just decorative.
As I follow the family trees branching off Althea’s name, my breath catches.
There, on a lower limb, nearly faded into nothing:Seren Vale.My grandmother’s name. Connected by a thin line, barely inked.
I freeze.
“Kaleigh?” Rafe moves beside me, peering over my shoulder. “What is it?”
I point. “That’s my bloodline.”
He looks hard. Then slowly, he lets out a long breath. “You’re directly linked to her.”
I lean back in the chair, pulse pounding in my throat. “All this time... my grandmother used to talk about old stories. Called them myths. Said the women in our line carried light. I thought she meant kindness. Strength. I didn’t know she meant this.”
Rafe crouches beside me, his hand slipping into mine.
“She knew,” he says. “Maybe not all of it. But enough.”
I nod slowly, processing everything. The healing. The glow. The call I’ve been feeling—not just from the Seal, but from something older. Something waking up.
