Lucia's house smelled like vanilla and old spellbooks.
It always did-but tonight, it felt like a refuge.
After the festival, after the music, after the way my magic had nearly torn its way to the surface behind the stage... I couldn't go home and pretend everything was fine.
So we didn't go to the afterparty. We didn't split up. We came here-Ana, Reenie, and I-still in our festival clothes, our makeup smudged, our smiles faded.
Lucia didn't ask questions. She just pointed to the hallway closet and said, "Top shelf. Take the softest blankets."
We gathered in my bedroom, surrounded by pillows and old quilts that smelled like cinnamon and comfort. Candles glowed from the windowsill, flickering shadows across the walls like they were dancing to some hidden rhythm.
Reenie claimed the floor, wrapped in three layers of blankets like she was hiding from the world. Ana stretched out beside me in bed, her eyes wide open even in the dark.
For a long time, none of us said anything.
Then Ana broke the silence.
"So... your hands were glowing."
I exhaled slowly. "Yeah."
Reenie shifted under her blanket. "What did it feel like?"
"Like something inside me was trying to claw its way out," I whispered. "I couldn't stop it. Couldn't control it."
Ana turned onto her side to face me. "It was more than nerves. Your magic doesn't do that for nothing."
"I don't know what triggered it."
Reenie's voice came from the floor. "It happened right after Brett talked to that man. The one by the cider booth."
We all went quiet again.
I sat up, pressing my knees to my chest. "There was something wrong with him. The way the air felt when he looked at us. Like... I don't know. Like a curse."
"He wasn't human," Ana said, voice sure.
Reenie didn't speak for a moment. "I didn't get a good look at him. Just felt something strange. Like everything in me paused."
We all knew what that meant.
Ana reached for my hand under the blankets and squeezed. "We'll figure it out. Together."
I nodded slowly, unsure what to feel anymore.
The silence in the room wasn't empty.
It pulsed-with memory, magic, and the weight of a question none of us were ready to answer.
------
The town felt quieter the next morning.
Maybe it was the aftermath of the festival or the way the fog hung low over Thornhollow's cobblestone streets, softening every sound like the world was trying to sleep off a hangover.
We left Lucia's house bundled in oversized sweaters and shared a warm paper bag of leftover honey cakes from the bakery stand. The sugar helped. A little.
Ana looped her arm through mine. Reenie trailed behind us, sipping from a giant cup of hot cider with extra cinnamon.
"Okay," Ana said, her voice deliberately light. "No glowing. No cryptic glances. No mysterious strangers. Just fresh air and fall vibes."
"Agreed," I said. "And if someone tries to sell me a crystal that 'reveals my true fate,' I might throw it at them."
We laughed. It felt good. Normal.
We wandered through the market square, now quiet and half-dismantled. Only a few booths were still standing, offering hand-poured candles or old books. The town felt gentler without the crowds, like it had exhaled.
"I think I need to use the bathroom," Reenie said, glancing toward a small café tucked near the edge of the square. "Be right back."
Ana and I nodded, walking slowly toward a bench under a tree still clinging to orange leaves. We sat in silence, watching a few kids chase each other down the street and the distant shape of an old musician playing fiddle near the courthouse steps.
Then Reenie came back.
And her face said everything.
Pale. Tight-lipped. Her hands clenched around her paper cup.
"Reenie?" Ana asked, standing.
"I saw him," she said quietly.
My breath caught.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
Reenie nodded, voice sharper now. "It was him. The man from the festival. I saw his face this time. He was walking past the café window. Same coat. Same stillness. Same feeling."
"The one who bit you?" Ana asked, her voice low.
"Yes."
That single word shifted the whole day.
Ana grabbed my hand, grounding us both.
"He saw me too," Reenie added. "But he didn't stop. Just looked at me and kept walking. Like he was waiting for something."
My blood turned cold.
All the warmth from the bakery, the laughter, the pretend normal-it dissolved.
"He's connected to Brett," I whispered. "Somehow."
"We can't guess anymore," Ana said. "We need real answers."
Reenie looked between us. "Where do we even start?"
I already knew.
"The Silverthorne Manor."
-----
We hadn't been to the Manor in weeks.
The iron gates creaked open slowly as we stepped through, the stone path crunching underfoot with leaves that hadn't been swept since early fall. It felt different now-colder, quieter. Like it had been waiting for us to return.
The windows were dark. The air was still.
But it wasn't abandoned.
I could feel the magic still humming low in the walls, a quiet protection laid long ago.
"Are you sure we're allowed to just... walk in?" Reenie asked, peering at the tall double doors.
I nodded, reaching for the brass handle. "My family built this place. It remembers me."
The door opened with a heavy groan.
Inside, the Manor smelled like old books, pinewood, and fire long gone cold. Dust clung to every surface, but there was still power here-woven into the floorboards, tucked behind paintings, stitched into the walls.
Ana shivered. "It's like time stopped."
The floorboards creaked beneath our feet as we stepped into Cassian Silverthorne's study.
I hadn't been in here since I was a child. Even then, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. My father had been meticulous-papers filed, books aligned with eerie precision, everything always sealed behind heavy glass or ancient locks.
But tonight, the door had opened without resistance. Almost like it was waiting for us.
"This feels illegal," Reenie muttered as she stepped inside behind me.
"Good," Ana said. "Maybe that means we're getting close."
The room smelled like dust, dried herbs, and old parchment. Bookshelves lined every wall-some still marked with my father's sigil, a flame etched in silver. A long desk sat beneath the window, its surface mostly clear except for a few stacked volumes and one locked drawer.
"I'll check the shelves," Ana said.
"I've got the desk," I offered.
Reenie wandered to the far corner, running her fingers along a wall-mounted map of Thornhollow, its edges cracked and yellowing.
It didn't take long. The second I tried the bottom drawer of the desk, it slid open.
Inside sat a single black leather-bound journal. Worn but intact.
Embossed in fading gold letters across the cover:
Daelen Vera
"Got something," I said.
Ana and Reenie gathered beside me as I flipped it open.
The entries were brief. Dated. Most of them too cryptic to understand-lines about bloodlines, magic, veils, and consequences.
But the back half of the journal... contained photographs.
I pulled them out one by one.
The man from the festival. His face sharp and cold, captured in different decades.
Sometimes standing beside Alec.
Sometimes beside a boy who had to be Brett.
And in one photo-his arms wrapped around an infant swaddled in pale cloth. No label. No context. Just that same unsettling gaze, directed right at the camera.
"This is him," I whispered. "The man from the festival. He was part of all this."
"Daelen Vera," Ana murmured. "Who is he?"
Reenie stared at the photos, her expression clouding. "Wait... I don't think that's what he goes by anymore."
We turned to her.
"When I saw him in town-earlier today-he was talking to someone. I couldn't hear much, but they didn't call him Daelen."
"What did they call him?" I asked.
Reenie's eyes darkened. "Drake. They called him Drake."
The name hit like ice water.
A new name. A hidden identity. And a pattern of secrets that stretched from Silverthorne walls to the streets of Thornhollow.
I looked back at the journal in my hands.
If Daelen was Drake...
And Drake was connected to Alec, to Brett, to the baby in the photograph-
Then none of this was coincidence.
And we had no idea who we could trust.