The mirror flared as I stepped through, trailing residual ballroom glamour like perfume behind me. It sputtered out the moment my boots hit the hex-sealed rug in my foyer.
I was home.
Not the manor. Not the café. Not the mess aboveground that passed for my legitimate business front. This was the vault—my real home. The hidden one. The place I'd bled for.
It smelled like sigils and old paper. Faint ozone. Candle wax. Maybe a little regret.
The moment the door hissed shut behind me, the wards recognized me and relaxed, humming back to their low, ever-vigilant buzz. The crystals in the chandelier above flickered approvingly. My security system—a knot of minor spirits living in the vents—rattled in greeting.
"Missed you too," I muttered.
I didn't stop to take off my jacket. I didn't need tea, or chocolate, or even a scream into a pillow, though all three were tempting.
I needed answers.
My boots thudded against the tile as I moved into the deeper archive—past the collection room, past the curse vault, past the shelf where I kept all the things too dangerous or too stupid to sell. I reached the last door. The locked one.
Warded nine ways.
I pressed my palm to the sigil plate and muttered, "Aperi."
It pulsed once. Scanned.
Accepted.
The door slid open with the sound of old stone grating against memory.
Inside, the vault was colder. Dry, like the breath of an ancient tomb. Dust hung heavy in the air. No one came in here but me. No one could—not unless they wanted to accidentally ignite their lungs.
This was where I kept the things I'd stolen from fate.
And there, in the center, under layers of hex-locked glass and null fields, was the object I'd come for.
A single piece of bone. Smooth. Unmarked. The length of a finger. Harmless-looking.
But I knew better.
This was the spine fragment of the First Oracle.
The one who'd first spoken the Prophecy of the Beloved.
I'd traded a year of my life and a sliver of my soul to get it back before the timeline reset.
And now, finally, it was time to use it.
I knelt, unspooling the binding circle in slow, deliberate motions. Not too fast. Not too greedy. This thing had teeth, and if you tried to bite back, it bit first.
I placed my hands on the glass. Whispered the activation phrase.
"Veritas in umbra. Ostende mihi."
Truth in shadow. Show me.
The lights in the room dimmed.
The glass cracked.
And the bone spoke.
Not in words. Not at first. In sound. In pulse. In memory.
Images flashed through my head like lightning through old film—scenes from the old timeline. Diana's first mate, second mate, the third. The war. The death. My body, broken in a crater of cursed earth. The devil laughing.
And then—
The prophecy.
Not as it had been recorded in the Council's vaults. Not as it had been sung in courts or etched into spellbooks.
This was the uncut version.
I heard the voice. Female. Uncertain. Afraid.
"And the Beloved shall rise, adorned in hearts not hers to keep…"
"Six shall burn, and five shall die…"
"The world shall follow the one she loves most…"
"And all shall fall, unless the hand that guards her wears the mark of the broken flame…"
I looked down at my hand.
My ring.
The broken flame.
I'd carved the sigil into my soul at the end of the world and never understood why.
Until now.
I sank back onto the cool floor of the vault, breath shallow, the sound of the bone's echo still lingering in my head like the trailing scream of a dying star. The prophecy spiraled around my skull, every word sharper now—etched into the cracks of my mind like a second spine.
"Six shall burn, and five shall die…"
I remembered them.
Not all at once—but like shards of glass catching light, the memories came slashing through.
The first was Peter—sweet, stupid Peter, the boy who had grown up beside Diana, who loved her like a sun loves a flower. Loyal. Mortal. He bonded to her in secret, thinking it would make her safe. Instead, it made him vulnerable.
A djinn killed him. Drained his life force in seconds.
He died still calling her name.
The second was Roy, the werewolf heir. Funny. Brash. Too good at pretending he wasn't falling apart.
He died protecting Diana during the siege of Morthal Ridge. Torn apart. His last act was to throw her into a shielded room and lock the door. She screamed until she lost her voice.
The third was Laziel.
Yes, that Laziel.
He'd fallen for her long before he realized it. Their bond had been forged in desperation—during the third year of the war, when Diana nearly died holding back a cursed army.
He gave her his power.
She gave him her soul.
And when the Council demanded a sacrifice to restore the ley lines, he offered himself.
Without hesitation.
He burned. Slowly. Gloriously. And the land healed.
The fourth—
I winced.
The fourth was Alaric, the vampire prince. Cruel. Cold. Brilliant. He was never supposed to fall in love. But Diana cracked him open with kindness, and something ancient and terrible latched onto her aura and called it home.
He betrayed his bloodline for her. Killed his own sire.
And when they came for her—when the infernal pact finally came to collect—Alaric made a deal.
His immortality for her freedom.
She never knew the cost.
The fifth was the mage. I couldn't remember his name—only his death. Slow. Painful. In front of her.
She had loved him most. I remembered that.
And when he died, she broke.
The sixth—
My hand curled into a fist.
I couldn't remember.
Every time I tried, something twisted in my mind. A block. A wound. A blank space where memory should live. I'd sacrificed something vital to come back through the timelines—ripped it from myself like a limb—and that piece, that final bond, was part of the price.
I didn't know who he was.
I only knew he never died.
Because he didn't have to.
Because he was the one she chose in the end.
The one she called her beloved.
And he was the reason the world fell.
My head throbbed. I pressed trembling fingers to my temple.
The mark on my palm—the broken flame—glowed faintly, as if the vault itself agreed.
"Unless the hand that guards her…"
The prophecy wasn't just a warning.
It was a sentence.
I was the hand.
I was the one left to stop it.
But how do you stop something when you're missing the last piece?
A memory twitched. A shape. A voice, distorted by time.
Midnight-blue eyes. A crooked smile.
Knight.
Something about him—it tugged at the edge of that blankness. Like a door with a rusted lock, the image resisted. But it pulled.
Knight.
Was he the sixth?
Was he the one she chose?
The thought made my stomach twist. Not from fear. From something worse.
Recognition.
And regret.
I stood slowly, brushing dust from my knees. My wards buzzed with unease. The vault didn't like that thought either.
Knight had looked at me like he knew.
And when our magic had collided in that too-brief moment at the gala, he'd flinched like something ancient inside him had remembered me.
I hadn't forgotten him naturally. I'd torn him out. Ripped the memory from my soul like a weed I couldn't bear to see bloom again.
But now, I had no choice.
The feeling was too strong—like a thread winding tighter around my ribs every time I thought of him. My body remembered what my mind refused to hold.
So I reached for a tool I hadn't used in years.
Hidden beneath a loose floor tile, wrapped in lead-ink cloth and layered with a null field that made the skin on my arms buzz, was an object I had sworn never to touch again.
A shard of obsidian, veined with red light.
The Mirror Thorn.
An artifact so old that even my aunts argued over who had made it. Some said it was crafted in the Age of Nine Moons. Others claimed it was a piece of Time's own eye.
All I knew was what it did.
It could show you what your soul had seen—stripped bare of conscious memory. No illusions. No edits. Just truth.
I set it on the table in the vault's inner sanctum and carved the binding circle around it. Not the full circle. That would require blood. I wasn't feeling masochistic enough for that.
Just the edge. Just enough to glimpse.
I placed my hand over the surface.
And I whispered, "Show me what I lost."
The pain hit instantly.
Like claws through my spine.
My head jerked back. My breath caught. The world fell away.
And the visions came.
We were standing on a balcony overlooking a ruined city. Fires burned below. The sky was wrong—too red, too loud. Knight was beside me, bruised and bloody. He gripped my hand like I was the last thing keeping him from breaking.
"You should have left me," I said. My voice was cracked. Older. Raw with magic.
"I never do," he answered.
And then he kissed me like he meant it.
Another flash.
A different timeline.
Knight on one knee, his sword stabbed into the ground, blood pouring from his shoulder. I was shouting spells. My aunts were fighting something huge behind me.
He looked up at me and said, "You're going to do it again, aren't you?"
I choked. "If I don't, the world burns."
"And if you do—we burn."
Flash.
Me. Collapsing in a spell circle, coughing up blood. My soul unraveling.
Knight dragging me back, holding my body together with raw magic, screaming my name like it meant something.
Like I meant everything.
I gasped and ripped my hand back from the shard.
Sweat dripped down my neck. My vision swam. I staggered, breath tearing from my lungs like fire.
We'd been lovers.
In one timeline—maybe more.
And then in another… he'd bonded with Diana.
Which meant I wasn't just fighting fate.
I was fighting versions of fate I had already lived and already lost.
Each timeline, a different path.
In some, Diana died.
In some, I did.
In one, I became something unrecognizable. A being of pure magic and bone, cursed to float between broken timelines looking for the right tether.
In most… the world still burned.
Even when I changed things. Even when I tried.
And the worst part?
I didn't even know how many times I'd done this.
The memory was full of holes. Gaps. Places where time bled together like ink on wet paper.
But now I knew two things.
First—Knight had been mine. Maybe once. Maybe only in passing. Maybe never completely. But something in him belonged to me.
And second—every time I'd tried to stop this, I'd failed.
Every. Damn. Time.
I sank down to the cold floor, pulling my knees up to my chest. My pulse was still erratic. My magic was buzzing wrong.
But I wasn't done.
Not yet.
Because this time, I remembered more than before.
This time, I had allies—maybe not many, maybe not powerful, but mine.
And this time… I knew Knight was the variable.
The key.
And maybe—just maybe—the only one who remembered me too.