She’s not wrong.
The air beyond the ancient door is dry. The kind of dry that clings to your throat and makes every breath taste like old parchment and forgotten things. It’s heavy with the weight of magic, the kind that’s been sealed for too long and doesn’t like being disturbed.
Stone walls curve around us in a perfect circle, etched with faded runes that glow faintly as I pass. Shelves lean at odd angles, overtaken by ivy that crackles faintly with dormant enchantments. Ancient books lie scattered like fallen soldiers, their pages curled and whispering as if they might speak if only we got close enough to listen.
In the center of the room, a pedestal—simple, carved from obsidian or something like it—rests in a shaft of soft blue light.
And on it…a book.
Not bound in anything I recognize. The cover shimmers like moonlight over rippling water, always changing—leather, then metal, then something that feels like pure Veil magic pulled into form.
Tamsin exhales beside me, her voice sharp with awe. “By the blasted vines of Varlarian…”
I glance at her, brows raised. She just stares ahead, eyes wide.
The moment I cross the threshold, the room inhales; a low, resonant sound that seems to come from the walls themselves. The light dims, then flares, as if the chamber is blinking…awake.
My mark ignites, flaring violet and white beneath my sleeve, and the runes carved into the stone pulse in answer. A fine web of glowing threads spreads out from beneath my feet, racing across the floor like cracks made of starlight, all of it converging on the pedestal at the room’s center.
Books shudder. Shelves creak. One rune high above sparks and fizzles out entirely.
Tamsin lets out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. “Okay, so this isn’t creepy at all. Totally normal. Just your average cursed library reacting to my bestie’s skin tattoo.”
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
Because the pedestal’s book has begun to glow. And the air, dry and brittle before, now tastes like magic mid-bloom—heady and metallic, like the moment before a storm breaks across the sky.
I don’t mean to touch it.
Not really.
But something draws me in, like gravity with intent. Like the book wants me to. My fingers graze the cover.
The moment I do, the world erupts.
A burst of magic explodes from the pedestal, not like the other flares I’ve felt before, but deeper. Wilder. Raw Veil magic, unfiltered and ancient. It slams into me, through me, as if the Veil itself is reaching out to pull me closer. My mark sears, white-hot, and for a breathless second, I feel everything—the academy, the Veil, something vast and broken behind it all?—
And then the room howls.
Tamsin stumbles back with a choked curse in a language I don’t recognize. Her hand clutches at her chest like it burns her too. “Stars and shadow, Lindsay—what did you do?!”
I can’t speak. My vision’s gone silver at the edges. The book thrums beneath my palm, pulsing with my heartbeat. I try to pull away, but it’s too late—the magic is already threading into me and sinking into my bones.
A sound cuts through it all; a low, commanding growl, like thunder with teeth.
Kael.
He steps through a ripple in the air, like he sliced the Veil open with nothing but will.
Not glamoured. Not calm.
His horns curve upward in sharp, gleaming lines. His eyes—pale and furious—lock onto me like I’m the source of every war he’s ever fought. His wings stretch wide, casting shadows over the ruined room. Power rolls off of him in hot, angry waves.
“What in the fuck are you doing?” His voice is low and lethal, edged with something that scrapes down my spine.
The sound of it slams into me like a shockwave—jarring, electric. It cuts straight through the strange haze that had started to wrap around my thoughts, yanking me out of whatever spell the book, or the room, had tried to cast. The connection breaks, and I stumble back a half step, suddenly aware of just how deep under I’d started to fall.
