She didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t need to.
Halwen didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He exhaled slowly, folding his hands over his lap. “No,” he admitted at last. “We and the followers of Orvath… aren’t exactly on trusting terms. There are walls, Your Highness. And we’ve learned not to lean against them.”
Evelyne let the silence spool out. What had they been speaking of? She doubted the High Preceptor had ever set foot here before. Unless, of course, it was only her frayed, sleepless mind, stitching conspiracies into shadows where none existed.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” she murmured finally, “that there are hidden tunnels beneath the castle, or that no one is surprised.”
Halwen gave a soft hum. “Old places collect secrets. Just as they collect dust. And your castle…” He looked up toward the opening in the ceiling. “Your castle is ancient enough to be a library of them.”
Again. Exactly what Alaric said.
She faced him. “And where do I file this one, Keeper?”
He studied her for a moment. His eyes had always reminded her of the riverglass windows—faintly blue, faintly tired. “Perhaps under survival,” he said gently. “Sometimes we don’t get the luxury of choosing what our chapters are called.”
“I still want to believe we’re the ones writing the ending.”
“You are,” he replied. “But the ink is running, and you don’t have a clean page.”
Evelyne looked down at her gloved hands.
“Do you think I’m ready?” she asked quietly.
Her voice caught on the word. Ready. As if that meant anything. As if any of this could be prepared for.
“No one is,” Halwen answered. “But readiness is a fiction people cling to when they don’t know what else to believe. What you are, Princess, is willing. And willing women change history.”
She swallowed, the breath behind her ribs unsteady. Then turned her gaze again on Rhyssa’s marble expression, as if she could read prophecy in the unmoving lines of her lips.
“She’s always so calm,” she murmured. “Serene. Even when everything burns beneath her feet.”
Halwen’s smile was fain. “That’s the curse of being carved from stone, I imagine. You endure, but you don’t bend.”
He looked at her, gently. “You keep asking how to survive this,” he explained. “But maybe that’s not the question. Maybe the question is—what are you willing to lose to change it?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she tilted her head up toward the gap in the shrine, where a shaft of light spilled down over faded murals. Colors long dulled by dust, hints of a beauty that once had been. She found herself wondering what this place had looked like before.
Her fingers curled in her lap. The list lived behind her eyes, branded there like a birthmark. She could make sense of murder under the right circumstances. But a name on a list felt more ancient. Who had written it? Why had it ended with her?
It would’ve been easier not to know. Ignorance was lighter than this shadow of certainty. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. Knowledge burned, yes—but it illuminated.
But she wasn’t that Evelyne anymore.
“Do you believe in signs, Keeper?”
“Only when they persist. That’s when the gods are whispering.”
She nodded slowly, more to herself than to him. Whispers or not, the next move was hers. And she would not stand at that altar tomorrow with her eyes closed.
“Ysara spoke to you?” she asked, voice soft.
He inclined his head. “Yes. She sent instructions. Everything’s ready.”
“Thank you,” she smiled, though her eyes were already drifting past him.
Her hand drifted to the edge of the pew. She paused, nose wrinkling.
“It smells different.”
