If she’s marked…
Then what did that make Thessa, standing here shaking, too afraid to go back inside?
A door creaked open across the way. Their neighbor leaned out just far enough to see. Her eyes lingered on Thessa, on the tremor in her hands, the wildness in her face.
Thessa straightened at once, jaw tight, forcing her shoulders back. Without a word, she pivoted and made her way home.
She shut the door. Locked it. Every bolt, every chain. Her hands were shaking so hard the metal clattered against itself. Then she slid down against the wood, knees pulled to her chest.
Inside, her mother still hadn’t moved. Her brother stared at the hearth like he was waiting for it to speak.
And Sera was humming again. Soft. Crooked. Off-key.
Thessa pressed her palms to her ears.
But the sound didn’t stop.
Chapter 39
They’d crouched in that gods-cursed corridor for hours the night before. Cold stone under his boots, darkness so thick he was sure he’d inhaled some of it. After they’d crept out, he’d lain in bed, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling like it might have answers. It did not.
Because Cedric had seen magic.
Real magic. None of the illusionist nonsense peddled at taverns or sleight-of-hand charms sold by snake oil merchants in the eastern markets. No, this had been different. Powerful, ancient and took its price from somewhere beneath the ground.
Which was a delightful thing to witness right before bed.
Now, running on the kind of sleep deprivation that made statues look spry, he stood like a particularly tense potted plant by the wall of the royal breakfast room. The morning light cut sharp across the silverware. Somewhere next to him, a servant coughed into the hush of clinking cutlery.
The king was eating. Evelyne was slicing her fruit with surgical precision. Alaric looked as if he’d just woken from a ten-hour nap on a cloud made of compliments, if it weren’t for the fact that he was staring at the princess like she was a fuse and he was waiting for the spark.
Always impatient. He wanted all the answers, and he wanted them yesterday. His obsession with magic had once been an academic curiosity, but over the years it had fermented into something else. Some kind of hunger. He saw patterns in everything: scrollwork, swordplay, the spacing of stars, the shape of someone's grief.
The worst part? He was rarely wrong.
Still, he was Cedric. And he had no intention of feeding that already well-fed obsession.
Alaric was doing just fine spiraling all on his own.
Now Cedric was too busy trying to catch Vesena’s eye without openly waving his arms. He was also very busy holding back his tears when someone mentioned that he felt an earthquake during the night.
Fifteen minutes. That’s how long he’d been silently willing her to look at him. He was two blinks away from having them dislodge entirely and roll onto the parquet.
Finally,finally, Vesena noticed. She made some quiet gesture to the princess, then moved to his side. Her expression, he was relieved to see, mirrored his own: tired, tight-lipped, and ever so slightly on the edge of panic.
“What is it?” she murmured, her tone clipped.
Cedric leaned in just enough to avoid royal eavesdropping. “We found something.”
She tilted her head slightly. “You too?”
“I see we weren’t the only ones having a fun evening of creeping through forbidden spaces. What did you find?”
Vesena cast a glance toward the others, then replied, quick and quiet. “We found a report in Ravik’s office. It mentions another incident. A similar massacre—before Dasmon. Covered up.”
Cedric blinked. “Well, that’s lovely.”
He leaned in further, lowering his voice until it was barely a breath. “We found a hidden ritual chamber. Deep under the chapel. There was a stone altar, a mysterious symbol made of a circle and three lines. And three people met there. Passed a message. And then—”
