He was gone. Just gone.
I stood rigid, breath rasping my throat. The static faded, leaving only dust and old paper in the silence. More than a confrontation. A collision. My hands curled into fists. He had the book. And he just walked away with it.
“You find anything?” Dane’s voice echoed down the aisle, solid and grounding after the ghost Riven left behind.
“He was here,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “Riven Ashborne. He walked off with the book Ineeded.”
Dane reached me, eyes scanning the empty aisle. “I figured. Felt him on the edge of things. What was he after?”
“Same thing we are,” I muttered. “Silverite. The book he had was calledThe Echoes of Shattered Dawn.”
Dane frowned. “Brightleaf, right? Funny—I just found something by her too.” He gestured down the aisle. “The Last Celestial Dawn. Sounds myth-heavy, but maybe connected?”
I took the book from him. Dense. Thick. I flipped it open to the back leaf, expecting a biography of some long-dead scholar. Instead, a full-page author portrait stared back at me.
It was a black-and-white drawing, crisp and very detailed. A woman with bright, intelligent eyes and a smile that tilted slightly to the left.
Ice pooled in my stomach. I knew that face. It was the face from the few framed photos my father kept on the mantle. The face I had lost when I was five years old.
“Liora,” I breathed.
It was my mother. Younger, her hair braided in a style I didn’t recognise, but unmistakably her.
My eyes darted to the caption printed in bold beneath the photo: Arin Brightleaf.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. My hands shook, the volume trembling in my grip. I flipped frantically to the copyright page, desperate for logic to reassert itself. I needed this to be a reprint, a tribute, a mistake.
The ink was faded, but the numbers were damning.
First Edition.
I stared at the year printed next to it. This book—and the image inside it—had been printed over three centuries ago.
“How?” The word tore out of my throat.
My mother was supposed to have been born, lived, and died in this century. But the woman in the photo was staring at me from a past that predated her own birth by three hundred years.
I looked at the face again—the stranger wearing my mother’s skin. The silence of the Archives pressed in, suffocating and complete. Everything I thought I knew about my mother was a lie.
SEVEN
Dane’s car turned the corner, the red blur of taillights vanishing into the mist.
I stood alone on the wet concrete of the stoop, the key digging into my palm, but I didn’t move to unlock the door. Dane had offered to come in—a low, rough question asked through the open window—but I had sent him away. I couldn’t handle his concern. I couldn’t handle the questions I knew were waiting behind his eyes.
I clutched the volume against my chest. The leather felt slick under my fingers, yet the weight of it pressed against my ribs like a hot coal. A three-hundred-year-old book. A lie bound in leather.
Rain dripped from the gutter above, tapping a steady, maddening cadence against the stone. I stared at the dark wood of the door, a cold knot of dread already pulling tight in my stomach.
I shoved the key into the lock. The mechanism clicked, a distinct sound in the damp air. I pushed the door open and stepped into the dark hallway.
Eamon stood at the stove, stirring a pot of tomato soup—my favourite, the one he only made when he knew I’d had a hell of a week. He’d even set out the bread for toasties.
It was safe. It was domestic. It was a lie.
He turned, a tired smile forming on his lips, but it died the moment he saw my face. He saw the book in my hands, and his posture changed instantly. The warmth vanished. He went still, waiting for the blow.
I marched forward and dropped the volume onto the table. It landed with a crack. I flipped it open to the author portrait. To her face.
