With a steadying breath, she gripped the handle and twisted.
The scent of honeysuckle and parchment enveloped her, its familiarity punching a hole in her chest. The bed was still made the way her mother always kept it, crisp, precise.
Vivienne strode to the bookcase in the far corner, eyes scanning titles. The books mirrored those in the central space—nothing new, nothing helpful.
As she turned to leave, her foot caught on something uneven.
Frowning, she looked down. One of the floorboards near the bed sat slightly raised, just a fraction off from the others.
She knelt, fingers tracing the seam. Loose.
A soft creak filled the silence as she pried it open, revealing a hidden book.
Not a book. A journal.
The leather cover was worn, edges softened by time and handling. Pressed flowers adorned the front in the same intricate pattern carved into their mahogany door.
Vivienne exhaled sharply, hands trembling as she lifted it free.
Her mother’s elegant, looping handwriting filled the pages, dispersed between intricate sketches. Rough maps of places she didn’t recognize. Exotic plants, annotated in the margins with notes and theories. She flipped faster, her breath stammered. One page stopped her cold.Oh my gods, it’s an island.
Vivienne stared, her heart hammering. The sketch stretched across the page in a graceful arc of land with clearly marked waterfalls, rivers, rock formations, and a strange leafless tree. Beneath the illustration, in her mother’s careful script, the label readIsle of Verdance.
A series of other islands followed, each with fewer details than the last, as if her mother hadn’t returned to finish mapping them. Some were nothing more than a question mark and a guess at their locations.
The front door rattled with a familiar knock before swinging open.
“Viv?” Lewis’s footsteps approached, then halted at the bedroom threshold.
His jaw slackened, eyes darting from her to the displaced floorboard.
“Viv!” he hissed, glancing over his shoulder like a guilty accomplice. “Are you trying to get us in trouble? You’ve never—” His gaze landed on the journal in her lap. Realization dawned. “Oh, gods. Are you snooping?” His hands flew to his hair, raking through the strands in exasperation.
Vivienne secured the floorboard back into place, expression unreadable. “It’s not like they’ll find out, unless you plan on tattling.”
Lewis snorted, arms crossing. “And incriminate myself? Hard pass.” His attention flicked to the journal. “Do I want to know what’s in that?”
Vivienne considered the possibility of deeply personal entries. If she'd found something too intimate she wasn’t sure if she’d have sealed the book beneath the floorboards or burned it outright.
“Ugh, no,” she grimaced. “I think my mom left us a map. Or…” she hesitated, “as close to a map as we’re going to get.”
Lewis’s eyes sharpened with intrigue, glasses sliding down his nose. “A map?”
Despite sorting through her feelings around her parents’ dishonesty and secret lives, the journal felt like an olive branch of sorts.Sure, it’s an olive branch I stole from my mother’s room, but it still feels like a sign.
Vivienne led him to the dining table, flipping through the pages. “Look at this.”
Lewis leaned in, fingers ghosting over the inked lines.
“My mom mapped these islands. The terrain, the rivers, the climate…”
Lewis held up his hands in mock surrender. “I hate to be this guy,” he said, cautious, “but how do we know she wasn’t just—” he gestured vaguely, “daydreaming?”
Vivienne stabbed a finger at a page. “Do your daydreams include latitude, longitude, and cardinal directions?”
Lewis tilted his head, weighing her point. “No… but your mom was always an overachiever.”
Vivienne huffed out a breath, heartbeat steadying. “If the curse is real,” she said carefully, “then it’s not a stretch to think my mom left us?—”
