Dane bristled, moving back. “I’m fine.”
“You are walking on willpower alone,” she countered, her voice dropping an octave. “Your spine is a fracture line waiting to snap. The internal inflammation is so high I can feel the heat from here.”
She pointed to the stone bench.
“Please, sit. Your legs are trembling. We don’t want to undo the patchwork holding you together.”
Dane looked at me. I nodded. “Sit down, Dane. Please.”
He gritted his teeth, his pride fighting his pain, but he sank onto the bench with a ragged exhale he couldn’t hide. The woman was at his side in a heartbeat, her hands glowing with a soft, pale light as she began to work on the air above his back.
“I’m Una,” she said, her eyes briefly meeting mine. “We have tea. And I can stabilise him, but he needs rest.”
I looked at Riven. He was watching them—Una working on Dane, the twins watching the door—with a look of total alienation.He knew the place, but he didn’t know the family that had grown here while he was gone.
“You need to sit down, Selene.” Riven said, his voice low. “You’re shaking.”
He was right. The adrenaline crash was hitting me hard.
I sat at the nearest table. Una placed a cup in front of me instantly. It smelled of mint and something earthy, like roots.
“Who are you people?” Dane asked, his voice already sounding less strained as Una’s magic took hold. “Really.”
“We are the Keepers of Vaelor,” Goran said.
He gestured to the empty tables, the rows of silent doors.
“We are what remains of the Aetherkind who chose to hide rather than conquer.”
“It’s empty,” I said, looking around the vast hall. “If you’re an organisation… where is everyone else?”
“There were once many more of us,” Goran said. “Time has thinned our ranks. But we are not gone. We still have eyes on the surface.”
“And right now,” the black-haired twin added, his grin fading, “those eyes are watching a lockdown. The police have been ordered to stand down. Private contractors are flooding the zone.”
“The designation has changed,” the silver-haired sister said. “You are priority targets now. They’re sweeping in a tightening grid with military-grade hardware. They are building a kill box.”
“He wants me,” Riven said, his voice flat. “I deserted him. I embarrassed him.”
“He wants both of you,” Aelira corrected.
She stepped forward, placing her hands on the table. Her expression was grave.
“He knows Selene helped you escape and you are working together. To a man like Korenth, that makes you both liabilities. Loose ends that need to be cut before you can talk.”
The silence in the cavernous room was stifling, the reality of the trap tightening aroundus.
“Then we don’t give him the chance to find us,” I said.
I reached into my bag. I retrieved the first book—The Echoes of Shattered Dawn—and placed it on the stone table. Then I removed the second item: the thick, hand-bound ledger I had snatched from the Manor desk.
Scrawled across the worn leather cover in fading silver ink was a handwritten title:Explanation of the Dawn.
I placed them side-by-side. The history and the mechanics. The Why and the How.
“My mother wrote these,” I said, running my hand over the covers. “She left them for us to find. We came here for help with a translation.”
I tapped the ledger.
