Page 2 of The Vespertine Treaty

My mother glided forward, her gaze fixed, as if on a lifeline. She took the scroll but paused, her trembling fingers running over the official wax seal, a black sun over a white moon, the symbol of the cosmic balance, and our prized Dyadic emblem. The silence stretched, thick and painful, and I could hear nothing but the frantic pulse of my own blood for what felt like hours on end.

She finally broke the seal with a sharp tearing sound. She didn't read it silently. She read it with a sudden, echoing, triumphant voice, as if forcing the words to be true.

"Consortium of Aeternia... do hereby invoke the sacred rite of the Vespertine Treaty… we decree the Dyad pairing of Ophelia Josephine Ashworth of the fallen House of Ashworth, with..."

She drew a breath, savouring the moment, the sound like a razor dragged over silk.

"... Cain Alistair of the higher House of Alistair."

The words hung in the air—a final, undeniable truth that tasted of ash and frost. I didn't look at the walls; Ifeltthem. Thepartially exposed stone, raw and crumbling beneath the peeling remnants of our floral wallpaper, seemed to press inward, suffocating the last vestiges of air. Years of neglect had allowed the blight to become a grotesque architect; our manor, a physical manifestation of our punishment, was slowly surrendering to the Void.

I traced the jagged line where the velvet paper had been torn away, a gash in the wall's skin mirroring the wound in my own core. The cold, dusty scent of decay was the true Ashworth heirloom. Our home wasn't just old; it was activelyretreatingfrom existence, its very foundation marching in lockstep toward The Great Abyss. It was a beautiful, devastating metaphor: every crumbling stone, every shard of exposed wood, confirmed that our ruin was total, and that I was utterly alone in its magnificent collapse.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. The Prince of Death himself,”Poppy shrieked, her voice angry in my mind.“The Death Touch Heir! They’re matching the heir of Life to the monster who kills with a touch of his maleficent fingers! This is a joke! A sick, twisted, cosmic joke. Oh, Oph!”

My chest felt hollow, the silence inside my mind more suffocating than the cold, ashen air of the estate.Cain Alistair. My mind, smart and usually logical, immediately supplied the consequence. He was the Pain-Eater, the living Void who consumed all painful emotions, an abyss of trauma and power.

I was supposed to wield Life Touch... instead, I was an heir incapable of accessing her own primary magic due to the blight my own family had condemned me to. It wasn't entirely gone, which was almost worse. It would still flare in weak, dampened spasms—a cruel, flickering heat that served only as a constant, mocking reminder of the power I should have possessed. I wasa broken symbol of Life, forced to rely on my lesser gift of Empathy.

This wasn't balance. My mind spiralled, searching for the logic. Why me? Was this the Consortium's final, cruel calculation? A sacrifice meant to prove that even life's brightest spark could be consumed? It felt less like balance and more like the Consortium's final, logical sentence for my ancestor's crime: the Death-Toucher bonded to the very last heir of the cursed Life-Touch bloodline.

"This bond is decreed to begin at sunset on the fifth day of the next solar cycle,"

my mother finished, grabbing my hand with more force than I would have liked, her voice smooth and tranquil with relief.

"Failure to appear will cause the immediate and permanent revocation of your family’s magical core and the dissolution of your House."

I was the sacrifice.

“I’m going to throw up,”Poppy declared dramatically.

I pulled my hand from my mother’s triumphant grasp and turned, already moving for the door. "I need air." I had to escape the suffocating victory in her eyes, a look that celebrated my pain as the price of her comfort. To my mother, I was not a daughter. I was the final unblemished vase in a house that had already burned to the ground. She would sell me to rebuild the walls, and never once mourn the flower.

I didn't run. I walked, pulling the oppressive silence of the manor over me like a cloak of lead. I felt consumed by the weight of the secret I carried—a moment of exquisite, pathetic cowardice I could never confess.

I needed air. Air… my breaths quickened, my lungs failing to provide the amount of air I needed. Oh no, not again.

Six years ago, when the weight of the Ashworth name became a physical impossibility, the madness had peaked. The shame of the lineage, the cold terror of the creeping blight, the constant sting of my mother’s gaze, the terrorising memories of my father's cruelty—it all became too much. I had sought sanctuary in the least likely of places: the chipped, cracked porcelain tub in the north wing. I had filled it to the brim with warm water, watching the distorted reflection of the ceiling shatter in the shallow ripples.

I lowered myself in, allowing the water to swallow the heavy velvet of my dress. I sank beneath the surface, the thick liquid closing over my head. The sound of the withering manor—the wind, the sighing stone, the hum of failure—vanished, replaced by a profound, muffled quiet. For a terrifying, agonising minute, I held my breath, gripping the cold porcelain edges, staring up at the wavering distortion of the ceiling. It was the deepest peace I had ever known: the final, silent illusion of oblivion. I held on until the crushing need for air became a fire in my chest, until my lungs screamed a betrayal that my mind had sought to ignore. My body, the same body that had failed the Ashworth line, violently rebelled against the peace I ultimately desired.

I rocketed upwards, sputtering and coughing, remnants of water flying from my mouth as I gasped for the painful, cold shock of my disappointing life. I clambered out, slick and gasping,leaving a puddle on the cold floor, the profound guilt of that failed attempt staining me far deeper than the water ever could.

The memory flickered and died, replaced by the sharp, real-world scent of damp earth. I forced the phantom weight of the water from my lungs, ignoring my mother’s satisfied humming as I pushed through the final rusted gate. I didn't stop until I reached my happy place, or what was left of it… The hidden garden was the only place on the estate where the blight hadn't withered everything, a space of stolen, still clinging, fragile life. The air here was warm, scented with the rare perfume of blossoms, a perfect, jarring contrast to the deathly dust of the manor.

Caspian was already there.Valor, his falcon familiar already flying in circles around him, he too, unsettled by today’s events.

His aura, usually a beacon of brilliant, shimmering gold, was clouded with a desperate fury that made my skin crawl. I looked at his face, etching the details into my memory for the long years of coldness ahead. The soft, bewitching smile he always reserved for me was entirely gone, replaced by the taut anxiety that creased the corners of his amber-coloured eyes. His honeyed, golden hair fell in small, lovely waves, shadowing his forehead like a discarded crown. He was a Valerius, the heir to the House of Light, everything the Ashworths were not.He should have been my future.

He saw the anguish on my face and came to me, his hands on my cheeks, touching me as if checking that I was real. "What is it, Lia?" Lia.HisLia. The girl, who was already a ghost, had her soul earmarked for consumption by the realm's great, demanding balance. He saw a moment that could be mended, but I only saw the terrifying, silver thread of my fate—a thread that stretcheddirectly into the cold, armoured hand of the monster waiting for me at the end of this cursed treaty.

I didn’t need to speak. My Empathy was a raw signal of pure despair. His aura immediately flared with a possessive, furious jealousy. A cold wave of his anger washed over me, making my teeth ache. The air crackled with his raw, uncontrolled Light Matter power.His beautiful power.

“Someone from the Consortium,” he ground out, the name a curse on his tongue. “They sent an official letter to my father to inform him that the vote was concluded, and the Ashworth House was the Aenite choice for the Treaty.” His eyes were wide with a devastating, final comprehension. “It's like they want to humiliate the Heir to the House of Light... They want to parade you in front of the Consortium... In front of me,” he jabbed his finger against his own chest with a sickening disregard for his body, the raw anguish of the gesture forcing a sharp wince that sliced through my Empathy. His fear wasn't just losing me; it was the public, political affront to the Consortium supremacy. He knew I was bound to a potentially powerful Cenite, but he didn't yet know to whom. That knowledge— the cruelest detail— was a secret even his own father was keeping from him, since he was a prominent member of the Consortium. He had to know. They were all behind this pairing.

I pushed down my grief, finding the voice for the final, heartbreaking lie.

"It won’t be him, Caspian," I said, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth. “Surely, it’s a matching House. Just a formality. It won’t change anything. It's not Alistair."