Vasilios
The torches outside her room burned blue.
That wasn't possible.
They hadn't flared that color in over a century—since the last time a marked one came into full awakening. Since the last one died.
No one else in the Court would notice yet. Not Shiva, not Marek, not even Malenthros.
But I saw it immediately.
And I knew what it meant.
Maryna had passed the threshold.
Not of obedience. Not of submission.
But of remembrance.
And the House—my House—was responding.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard, half-shadowed by the columned archway, watching the flames curl unnaturally along the wall. Their color flickered more like moonlight than fire—silver-blue, cold and bright.
It was a signal.
Not to her.
To us.
The ones who had bound this place in magic and bone. The ones who knew how to read the signs that others mistook for weather or whim.
She had touched something.
Something old.
Something hidden.
And the House had answered.
When I closed my eyes, I could feel her.
Not in the way a man feels the woman he's marked—but deeper. Sharper. More like the first breath of winter after autumn forgets to let go.
Her pulse beat in the walls.
Her scent clung to the air even when she wasn't present—salt, sweet, flame, and shadow. Her dreams bled into the garden paths. Her questions vibrated through the closed halls.
She had begun to resonate.
And I knew what came next.
She would start seeing more than dreams.
She would see truth.
And when she did…
She would no longer be mine.
The Court had begun to shift, though they didn't know why.
The servants moved differently.
The wind stopped curling through the western balconies.
Even Elira—fractured and forgotten—had begun to speak in full sentences again. She'd whispered her name last night through the tower bars.
"Mariposa," she said. "She's waking."
It hadn't been a question.
It had been a reverence.
I returned to the library.
The true one—hidden beneath the estate, protected by enchantments only three of us could break.
The staircase unfolded beneath my steps.
The chamber was cold. Silent. Walls of stone and iron, lined with parchment too volatile to be stored in the open halls.
I found the book I hadn't touched since before she arrived.
The same one I'd shown her briefly.
Seductio Tenebris.
She had never read it.
Not truly.
I hadn't let her.
But she didn't need to.
Because she was living it.
I ran my hand across the old script, feeling the familiar weight of fate pressing in around me.
Initiation.
The chapter was sealed with wax.
I broke it.
Beneath, a warning etched in silver ink:
"She who awakens the House must be bound in flame or swallowed by it."
I closed the book.
That had always been the truth.
The marked ones either bent to the fire—or were consumed by it.
And Maryna?
She didn't bend.
I stood in the library for a long time.
Alone.
Listening.
Somewhere above me, I could feel her pacing. Asking. Touching.
The House trembled with her need.
And I realized something terrible:
I didn't know if I was here to protect her…
Or prepare her.
She was not the same as the others.
She wasn't Elira.
Wasn't a sacrifice.
Wasn't a plaything for the Court's hunger.
She was the reason the hunger existed.
The one the flame called to.
And the one the flame might burn if we weren't careful.
"Mariposa," I whispered to the dark.
"Don't go too far."
But I knew she would.
Because she always had.
And I—fool that I am—had let her.