“How do you like your brew?”
Before I could answer, Rhodes cut in smoothly. “Just sweet cream, Ma. And a little vanilla. She’ll like your roast.”
She shot him an amused glance and reached for my mug. I squinted at him, mouthing, “Vanilla?”
He leaned in, lips brushing my ear. “Just trust me.”
A shiver chased down my spine at the husk in his voice. I turned back to watch his mother work. Tatum and Davis, already at home, inspected mugs on the shelf before drifting toward the counter.
His mother handed me the steaming mug with a warm, knowing smile. Up close, I saw the exact shade of baby blue in her eyes—the same bright color that rests in Rhodes’s right eye.
“I’m Camilla,” she said. “But you can call me Cami.”
“Thank you,” I said softly, fingers curling around the warmth. “I’m Scarlet.”
She turned to ask Tatum how she liked her coffee, but as she poured, she glanced back at me with a sly, conspiratorial smirk. “I know who you are,” she said lightly. “You’re the one who’s going to help me save my boys.”
We spent the next few hours going over everything we’d discovered these past months. Cami led us down into the cellar, and I was shocked to find even more shelves lined with ancient tomes and worn scrolls. Unlike the history section in Mageia’s library, there wasn’t a speck of dust down here.
Cami kept the entire place immaculate. You could see her love for knowledge in the way she treated every book like a treasure, no matter the genre, the author, or the age of the story it told.
While we sat surrounded by old maps and records, I learned that Elias Wylder had built this entire library with his own two hands—just for her. The same Shadow Glade General I’d only ever seen cloaked in malevolence and disdain. The man who twisted Rhodes’s place in an ancient prophecy into something cold and brutal—not to shield him, but to forge him into the weapon he believed he needed.
It baffled me—how someone could change so drastically. Rhodes had said Elias used to be their idol, the man he and Shayde looked up to as children. The way he spoke about his father made it clear the change hadn’t been sudden, but slow. Insidious. A gradual loss of the man he’d once been.
“And here it is,” Cami’s calm voice cut through my thoughts. She unrolled a large cylinder of parchment, revealing detailed sketches of a castle. “The only known map of Mageia War College. I’ve spent decades piecing this together, collecting any scrap of intel from Elias—or his warriors—that I could get. Owning a map like this is considered treason by War Chief Kalluri, so it stays here. Or else,” she added, narrowing her eyes at each of us in turn, “I’ll haunt you from my grave.”
“Why is that?” I asked, curiosity sharpening my voice. “Why is it treason just to have a map of the castle? It never made sense to me.”
Cami leaned over the table, pressing her palm to one corner of the parchment to hold it flat. Her mouth curved into a sly, almost sinister smile, and she flicked her gaze to Rhodes with a knowing glint. “I like her,” she said, voice low and satisfied. “She asks the right questions.”
Heat rushed to my face at the compliment, and I cleared my throat.
She lifted the top parchment and set it aside, rifling through the stack beneath. “Because War Chief Kalluri isn’t truly interested in saving our people. Not anymore. Not since the day his daughter was killed—your mother, isn’t that right? Ever since, he’s been obsessed with digging up the continent’s oldest secrets, chasing after something he has no right to find.”
“Like what?” Rhodes asked.
“The Mareki,” Cami replied. “To this day, no one has laid eyes on it and lived. It’s the power source of our world’s magic… but it’s more than that. Or it was. I believe what we call the Mareki now is only a fragment of what it once was. A shattered piece of history. And only those truly destined to find and wield it the right way will ever get close. For centuries, our continent has fought over this arcane source. Humankind has always hungered for the power—to control life, to bend the world to their will—”
“But magic isn’t an object to be owned,” I said. “It’s a gift.”
Cami’s eyes found mine. “Exactly. And if my theories are right, it was humankind’s selfishness that splintered the Mareki in the first place. Bit by bit over time. Now it’s diminished, reduced to the four elemental essences we know today. But what happens when humankind abuses even that?”
Silence fell, heavy.
Cami exhaled, running her fingers through her wild black curls. “If I’m right… this is our last chance. The First Four weren’t the first humans to walk this continent—just the first to return after the humankind here faced a reckoning. This prophecy? It’s been triggered before. And it’s failed. Over and over. Until now.
“Either we fulfill the Mareki’s prophecy—save humankind and magic—or we fail as a species. For the final time.”
Davis’s voice broke the quiet, softer than I’d ever heard it. “And if we do fail again?”
Tatum curled into his side. He pulled her close, protective and still.
“That…” Cami hesitated, pressing her lips together. “That I don’t know. Maybe we’ll be decimated once and for all. Or maybe we’ll be banished to live in a world of mundane energy.”
I stepped forward, breath catching. “You mean… either we all die, or magic dies.”
Cami nodded solemnly. “Or we break the curse.”
