It was the kind of rule-bending Titus practiced whenever it benefited him, and for the first time in a long while I felt an urge to return the favor, to do something small, sharp, and private simply because he’d earned my contempt. If I was being honest with myself, the last thread of my loyalty to Titus had snapped the moment my wrist did.
“Very well,” I said evenly. “You will remain outside the wards.”
“Marvelous,” Folliade replied, pleased with himself, and I hated that he sounded like a male who expected the world to obey. I despised High Lords.
The vault lay in the lowest level of the castle. We descended into a damp corridor lined with warded doors and Everburn torches whose flames didn’t flicker no matter how the air shifted. The farther down we went, the more the air changed; it carried a faint metallic bite and a steady hum of power, subtle at first, then louder, until the magic felt like a vibration in my teeth.
As we neared the vault, the hum intensified into a buzzing thrum, and a translucent wall of blue magic sealed the arched entrance like a living barrier.
“This is it,” I said.
Folliade waited beyond the shimmer as I stepped forward, letting the wards slide through me, scanning bone, blood, and breath as if the magic were reading every part of my body to confirm my identity. Inside stood a single iron safe, plain, heavy, and ancient, as if it had been built to outlast time.
I pricked my finger and let the blood drip onto the lock, and it spun open with a quiet, obedient click.
I sifted through documents—border patrol schedules, dragon inventories, weapon counts—each page more classified than the last, each one proof of a kingdom that survived by locking its secrets away.
Nothing about new citizens.
“What exactly am I looking for?” I asked, irritation thinning my patience.
“New citizen records. Year 5,673 After Divide.” “I see nothing.”
“Wait—what’s that?” He asked.
He pointed to a notch at the base of the safe, and I crouched, vision narrowing.
A false bottom.
Guardians, what did I get myself into? I highly doubted that Titus and Cercies knew of the false bottom because no one ever came down here. Whatever was hidden, I knew it wasn’t good.
I slid my blade into the seam and lifted carefully, and beneath it lay a single piece of parchment, and a book of forbidden spells. The parchment was folded as if whoever hid it had taken their time.
I unfolded it.
CLASSIFIED BLOOD REPORT
Name: Aurelius, son of Aiddos Markers: High Lord
Blood Magic Level: 998 / 1000 Lineage: Ancient
Designation: Highest recorded blood level in the Kingdom of Flame
The numbers didn’t register at first. I read them once, then again, as if my eyes were the problem—nine hundred ninety-eight out of a thousand, magical markers of a High Lord, indication of Ancient lineage, decree:Aurelius, son of Aiddos, most powerful Fae recorded to date in the entire Kingdom of Flame.
For a moment, the vault felt too small to hold air. My grip tightened until the paper creased, and my pulse climbed sohigh I could hear it in my ears, but it wasn’t panic that flooded me—it was the sick, dizzying sensation of the world shifting under my feet, because I had just realized I had been living inside someone else’s story. I was younger than Titus by two years, which meant, I was the most powerful Fae ever recorded.
All my life I had stood beside Titus and told myself the order of things was natural. He was stronger. He was chosen. He was meant for the throne, and I was meant to support it. I had swallowed every joke about being sensitive, every glance that saidsoftandsecond, every condescending smile when I showed restraint instead of aggression, and I had convinced myself that was virtue instead of survival. Even when my blood burned with the feeling that my magic was wrongfully measured, even when something in me whispered that I was more than what they allowed me to be, I had kept it contained—polite, loyal and useful.
And then Delilah arrived, and I made the mistake of thinking she might see me.
I had wanted to show her the sky the way I saw it, to give her something beautiful, wild, and honest, and I told myself I could want her without needing to own her because I was not Titus; I did not crave the throne, I did not crave worship, I did not crave to be obeyed. I craved to be chosen. I craved to be enough. And she looked at me with wonder when the bond surged through Zephyros, when she felt that circuit of breath, magic, and longing, and for a heartbeat I believed the Guardians had finally placed something in my hands that Titus could not take.
Then he did anyway.
He marked her. He claimed her. He broke my wrist like it was nothing—like I was nothing—and he did it with the confidence of a male who had never once questioned whether the world belonged to him. Delilah said no to me, and I told myself it had to be his title, his power, his throne, because there was no other explanation that didn’tmake me a fool; there was no other explanation that didn’t make her devotion feel like an insult, a betrayal I couldn’t understand.
But now the paper was in my hand, and the truth was printed in cold ink:Titus was not the strongest.Titus was not the most powerful High Lord in Flame history. Titus was simply the one everyone bowed to—because his father had decided it, because the kingdom had accepted it, because I had allowed it.
