“Agreed,” Elder Zhenhai said. “And deliberate.”
Elder Huailin looked grim. “The Traveler tampered with the Sinclair ritual. But why the elder daughter? Why protect the younger? Why return now?”
Elder Yaojin began sketching a runic diagram.
“We will need to reconstruct the exact conditions. The time. The sigils. The intent.”
Elder Shenwu’s voice dropped to a growl. “And we will need Poppy.”
Lan glanced toward the garden above them. “She will not withstand immediate questioning.”
“She will,” Shenwu said flatly. “Because we do not have time. The corrupted sister walks the dragon veins.”
Foxfire flickered violently across the portrait.
“Whether she walks alone,” Zhenhai murmured, “is another matter.”
No one spoke.
The Traveler’s name hovered ghostlike between them.
Night draped itself over the shrine like a velvet curtain.
Mingxi lay on his back, staring at the wooden beams of his ceiling, arms folded behind his head. He had extinguished his lantern an hour ago. Sleep still had not come.
He exhaled. Too sharp. Too tight.
You are losing your composure, he told himself.
He had not lost his composure since he was a boy—since before the shrine, before his mother’s death, before he learned to wrap discipline around his heart like armor.
Yet today… Poppy’s grief had cracked something open in him.
Not because she was fragile. Not because she was wounded. But because she had faced horrors and still stood. Still protected others. Still offered kindness. Still loved.
When she looked at him, her eyes raw, voice trembling, he had felt something ancient tug deep in his chest. Not duty. Not obligation. Something else.
Something he had no name for.
Too soon, he scolded himself.Too much.
He rolled onto his side, arm draped over his eyes.
Quietly, reluctantly, he whispered into the darkness, “I hope she is sleeping.”
He did not expect an answer, but the plum blossoms outside his window stirred—just slightly—as though something old and unseen was listening.
Chapter 49
Poppy did not remember falling asleep. One moment, she was staring at the moonlit beams of the ceiling, exhaustion tugging at her bones but refusing to pull her fully under. The next, she was back in the ballroom.
Back in the ritual circle. Back on her knees on cold marble. Back choking on the scent of beeswax and burned magic. Her parents’ chanting echoed around her like a cage. The sigils crawled across the floor. The air vibrated with wrongness, and she felt that cold, greedy pull under her skin—the entity reaching.
Then—
“Poppy…”
Lysandra stood before her. Half whole. Half rotted. The corrupted half crawling with black veins that pulsed like a second heartbeat.
