Seventeen corrupted wellsprings. One missing girl. Levon’s contact list in the back of his records—twenty years of evidence compiled by someone who’d been watching this longer than any of them, waiting for someone with enough access to finally see the full shape of it.
I picked up my pencil and kept working.
5
Elio
I’D SPENT YEARS PERFECTING THE art of provocation and knew exactly which words landed like daggers and which silences cut deeper than insults. Attack, counterattack, riposte—a carefully choreographed dance where I always led.
Now I was waiting for curtain call on a performance I hadn’t scripted.
Not metaphorically. Actually waiting because my parents were out there somewhere, working with the master, and eventually they’d make their move. The question wasn’t if. It was when and how badly it would hurt everyone I cared about.
I was alone in the common room. The fire flickered at the grate as I leaned back on the velvet settee.
Only the tips of Echo’s scales shimmered yellow—like a tremor running along the edges of her skin. But the colors never reached her core. My chameleon familiar had never been good at hiding my real emotions, which was ironic considering I’d spent years perfecting that particular skill myself.
Only truth now, I muttered, studying the intelligence report in front of me.
Even when the truth was terrifying.
The report had come through Keane’s portal network an hour ago, containing confirmed sightings of my parents in three different countries over the past week. Prague, Vienna, Cairo—all cities with ancient wellsprings and extensive magical archives.
But the sightings were just the latest piece. Over our extended break, while Marigold was in Albany, I’d gone home. Not to see my parents—they were already in hiding by then—but to go through what they’d left behind.
Files. Research notes. Correspondence. Decades of intelligence-gathering hidden in false-bottom drawers and behind warded portraits. Everything they’d compiled while working with the master. The paper trail of betrayal, catalogued in elegant handwriting and perfect ink, like a final act staged without me.
I’d spent three weeks cataloguing it all, trying to understand exactly what they’d been planning.
The report only confirmed what I’d already pieced together. My parents weren’t just collaborators. They were the master’s primary intelligence network, and they were looking for one thing—not Marigold herself but what she could do.
My fingers found the rings I wore—five of them today, silver and onyx, gifts from people who didn’t know me anymore. I twisted them compulsively, a nervous habit I’d never quite managed to break.
Old instinct screamed at me to bury this information. Hide it where Marigold would never see it. She had enough stress already. Why add more to her plate?
Except I knew exactly why. Because hiding things for her own good was what had broken her trust in the first place. Because love wasn’t protecting someone from hard truths. It was standing beside them while they faced those truths head-on.
Because I’d promised. No more masks. No more performances. Just honesty, even when it hurt.
Especially when it hurt.
A single line of bold crimson split down Echo’s spine, stark against her silver-green shimmer—a declaration more than a mood.
I stood. Come on. Let’s go ruin her evening.
Outside Marigold’s door, I knocked and waited. The door wouldn’t open unless she willed it.
When it did, I entered, and she looked up, her dark brown eyes immediately wary. Elio? Everything okay?
I held back my reflex to joke and went with the truth. I learned something. About my parents. It’s bad.
I watched her tense and saw the calculation behind her eyes. Was I about to hide something again? Dress up the truth in pretty words and careful omissions?
Echo shifted to honest blues on my shoulder—please believe me, please trust me—while my fingers twisted my rings compulsively.
They’ve been sighted, I continued, pulling out the intelligence reports to show her what I meant. I paused before making myself say the rest. They’re researching necromancy. Wellspring interactions with death magic. Historical records of heirs whose powers synergized.
They’re trying to understand why we work together, she said slowly, processing. Why our magic is stronger combined.
