No one moves.
The air inside the Ritual Chamber feels frozen, but it's not from fear. It's from calculation.
I'm the only one breathing like this might still be real.
Freyr stands tall, hands clasped behind his back, his voice calm but sharp. "She is not yours to claim."
The masked UnSeelie in front, Glendora, tilts her head, a slow, deliberate motion. "She was never yours to keep."
They don't look at Freyr when they say it.
They look at me.
It's not a threat.
Not a plea.
Just a fact.
And I hate that I don't know what it means.
Another voice cuts through the tension——a younger fae at the edge of the group. Their tone is softer, but ni less steady.
"Your father once stood with us," they say quietly. "He believed the Seelie would destroy what they couldn't control. That includes you."
I blink.
Freyr stiffens beside me.
"You don't know anything about my father," I say, but it comes out too soft. Too late.
The younger one steps forward, and the others let them. "You're right. But we know what he died protecting."
That hits harder than I expect.
Freyr's voice cuts through again——low, barely controlled.. "Enough."
They ignore him.
Glendora nods toward me, eyes unreadable behind the half-mask. "You've already gone further than we planned. You've seen too much."
"Planned?" I echo.
"Don't pretend she wasn't meant to be sorted, not saved," Glendora says, now turning back to Freyr. "You gave her trials to divide her. Not to awake her."
Freyr doesn't deny it.
And that silence says more than anything else in the room.
I step forward.
Not because I know what I'm doing.
But because I'm done letting them talk about me like I'm not here.
"I don't belong to either of you."
They go still.
Even Freyr.
And that's when I realize——
They weren't expecting me to speak.
********
Justin's POV
My father is already waiting when I walk into the study.
He doesn't look surprised.
The curtains are drawn. The hearth is cold. There's no mask of warmth today. Just him, sitting behind the desk like this is business.
"I take it that you've made a decision," he says.
I don't answer right away. I just close the door behind me.
He watches me——measured, not angry. He never raises his voice. He doesn't need to.
"You were supposed to gain her trust," he continues. "That was the mission. That was your only job, son."
"And when I did?"
That stops him.
Only for a breath.
He leans back, folding his hands like he's rehearsed this a hundred times.
"We expected you to be pragmatic. You weren't."
"Because I didn't want to break her."
He exhales through his nose, a faint shake of his head. "Then you failed."
"No," I say. "I just stopped lying to myself."
He rises slowly. "If you walk away from this, from us——you walk away from everything we've protected. Everything your uncle died for."
I look him in the eye. "You keep saying you're protecting me. But all you've ever done is use me."
Silence.
"You've already chosen your side," I say. "Now I'm choosing mine."
I leave before he can stop me.
********
Freyr's POV
They haven't responded.
Not the Seelie.
Not even the remnants of the UnSeelie who once whispered loyalt into my hand.
Cowards.
All of them.
Waiting to see if I fall before they pick my bones clean.
I pace the length of the chamber once used for judgement. The air is stale. The magic here no longer answers me the way it used to.
It waits.
For her.
I reach for the glass altar embedded in the wall——faintly veined with gold and red. It flickers, resisting my call.
The realm can feel it too.
I am not the one it serves anymore.
I close my eyes and exhale.
Then I say the name I swore I'd never speak again.
The room goes cold.
A breeze sweep in that doesn't belong here——-sour and still.
And then he steps from the shadows. Cloaked in color that the light won't hold.
The only favor I never intended to call.
"You've run out of time," he says simply.
"I need her silenced," I answer.
"She's already louder than you."
He steps forward, circling me like a dog that's lost interest in pretending it's tame.
"If you want to undo what's coming," he continues, "you'd need to break the threads binding this realm. Shatter what the fates have already named."
"I'm not afraid of her," I lie.
He smiles beneath the hood.
"Yes, you are."
I clench my jaw. "Then tell me how to unmake her."
He stops walking.
And for the first time, his tone changes.
"If you unmake her...."
He raises on gloved hand.
"You'll have to survive her first."
Then he's gone.
And I'm alone with the truth I already knew:
Trying to control her only delayed the inevitable.
Now I may lose everything to win it all.
But time for that is almost gone.
********
I don't go looking for it.
I just need space.
A moment to breathe.
To think without eyes on me.
The Ritual Chamber is too full of what I can't name yet.
So I go back to my room.
And that's where I find it.
Not in the open.
Not left as a gift.
Hidden.
The corner of the rug is curled back, like something beneath it shifted just enough to be seen.
I pull it aside.
Etched into the stone beneath is a nap—--or what looks like one.
Not of Nox.
Not of any Court I recognize.
It's threaded.
Alive with faint gold lines that pulse under my hand.
Lines that form constellations.
Paths.
Name.
At the center is my mark.
Surrounded by three others.
My mother.
My father.
Cassie.
All marked.
All glowing.
But faint.
Below them, four more names—-scratched out, violently.
One of them is mine.
I run my finger over it.
The scratch is shallow.
Incomplete.
Like someone tried to erase me before they were sure they could.
I press my palm flat against the center of the map.
The stone answers.
Not with sound.
With a pulse.
A vibration through the ground. A flicker through the walls.
For one impossible breath—-
Nox changes.
The walls ripple.
The air warps.
And I see—--
Ruin.
This place.
Collapsed.
Burned.
Torn apart from within.
Ash falls like snow.
The sky above the tower is cracked open like glass.
And a voice—-calm, unhurried, terrible—--says:
"This is what comes if you don't choose."
Then it's gone.
The room stills.
The stone is cold again beneath my hand.
But the map glows brighter now.
And from its center, a golden thread begins to unravel—--moving toward the far wall, curling through the cracks like it's searching for something it already knows is there.