The fire crackled low in the hearth, but Seraphina couldn't tear her eyes away from the window.
The figure beneath the willow was gone.
Had it ever truly been there?
She pulled her robe tighter around her shoulders. Something inside her whispered that it had. That whatever haunted Nightspire was no longer just lurking.
It was watching. Testing.
And it had started with her.
The next morning, Lucien was gone.
Mira informed her curtly, "His Grace has business in the lower towns. He will return before dusk."
Seraphina didn't press further.
Instead, she returned to the library.
This time, her fingers trembled as she touched the spine of Isolde Nightbane's journal. Not out of fear—but anticipation.
Something inside her was shifting. Changing.
Nightspire was waking something up in her.
A part of her that had long been buried beneath polite smiles and noble expectations.
She flipped through the worn pages again—until one fell free.
A loose sheet, folded and pressed between entries.
She stared at it.
This wasn't Isolde's handwriting.
This was far more elegant.
Delicate loops and sharp hooks formed every letter with precision.
She unfolded it carefully.
To the girl who is not yet broken—
If you've found this, it means the house has accepted you enough to lead you here. But don't let that fool you. Nightspire only welcomes what it wants to feed upon.
You must understand: the curse is not just bound to Lucien's bloodline.
It is tied to yours.
Seraphina's breath caught.
Her fingers tightened around the parchment.
She kept reading.
I don't know your name, but I know your kind. The blood that sings in your veins is not as noble as you were told. There is power in your line. Old power. Stolen power.
And Nightspire remembers it.
You were brought here to awaken something. Or perhaps... to finish what was once begun and never completed.
Whatever you do—do not trust the mirror in the chapel. That is where it first began.
—E.D.
Her heartbeat thundered in her chest.
E.D.?
Evelyne D'Ambrose.
Lucien's mother.
Dead. Or missing.
Either way, her voice had survived.
And it knew her.
Seraphina carried the letter back to her chamber. She paced before the fire, rereading it again and again.
Her blood.
It wasn't just about marrying into a cursed house.
It was her own past that bound her here.
But how?
Her family had never spoken of magic or bloodlines. She'd been raised in the capital, among scholars and senators.
Yet, she'd always felt… different.
As a child, she would see faces in smoke. Hear her name whispered in the wind. Once, during a fever, she claimed to speak with a woman in black who promised her protection.
Her parents had dismissed it all as childish fantasy.
Had they known?
Did someone send her here not just as a bride, but as a key?
Her fingers clenched.
She turned to toss the letter into the fire—
And stopped.
Behind the iron grate, something moved in the embers.
A shape. A symbol.
Ω.
The same symbol carved into the stone beneath the willow tree.
She gasped and stepped back, nearly dropping the letter.
The fire hissed, and the symbol faded.
That night, Mira came to draw her a bath.
As the maid prepared lavender oils, Seraphina finally asked, "Do you know who Evelyne D'Ambrose was?"
Mira's hand paused midair.
"She was the lady of the house," Mira said slowly. "And she was… beloved."
"By the Duke?"
"No," Mira said quietly. "By the castle."
Seraphina turned sharply. "What does that mean?"
Mira placed the oils down gently. "Some people become part of Nightspire. Others are merely passing through. Evelyne… she never left."
"She disappeared."
"Her body did," Mira said. "But she remains."
Seraphina shivered despite the steam rising from the water.
"Did she leave behind anything? Letters? Journals?"
Mira hesitated again. Then, almost as if in a trance, she said, "She used to sit in the old chapel. Every dusk. Talking to the mirror."
Seraphina swallowed hard. "The same mirror mentioned in this?"
She held up the letter.
Mira's eyes widened. "Burn that."
"She wrote it."
"Then she's watching you now."
Later, long after Mira had left and the fire burned low, Seraphina stood at her window again.
The dead willow tree was still.
But she knew something had changed.
The curse wasn't waiting for her to die.
It was waiting for her to remember.