The rain came with no warning.
Sheets of cold, stinging silver crashed against the tower walls, sweeping through the narrow windows and extinguishing most of the candles in Aerin's study. Thunder cracked above like an angry god dragging a sword across the sky.
She didn't flinch.
Aerin sat cross-legged on the rug, the torn page from the House Velas archive spread out before her. She traced the sigil at the bottom: a crow perched on a sword hilt, its wings half-unfurled.
Isolde Velas had worn the same symbol on her ring finger.
And now it was branded into Aerin's life like a curse come full circle.
She didn't believe in fate. But this—this pattern—was too deliberate.
Another Velas girl. Another marriage. Another betrayal.
But this time, she wouldn't end in a shallow grave.
This time, she would learn the rules before they buried her in them.
She had expected Cassius to be waiting outside the chamber door the next morning. He wasn't.
Instead, Thorne was there, arms folded, rainwater still dripping from his coat.
"You look like a man who's been bitten," she said, tightening her cloak.
"Three times," Thorne muttered. "Once by a feral, twice by your betrothed's temperament."
Aerin raised an eyebrow. "He's angry?"
"No. He's worried. That's worse."
"Let him worry."
Thorne handed her a pair of thin leather gloves. "You'll need these. Where we're going... the books have teeth."
The Restricted Archives of the Night Court were buried three floors below the east wing. No torchlight was allowed. The walls absorbed flame, magic, even sound. Each step Aerin took felt like falling into another century.
The moment the final door shut behind them, she felt it: the pull.
Knowledge here was alive.
Some books pulsed with faint, rhythmic heartbeats. Others twitched on their chains. One snarled quietly as Thorne passed by.
"Don't touch anything unless I tell you," he warned. "The Court doesn't take kindly to uninvited minds."
"Then how am I here?"
He stopped in front of a circular table surrounded by six black chairs. "Because you're not uninvited anymore. You're invested."
Aerin sat, still clutching the sigil rubbing she'd made of Isolde's emblem.
"I want to know who accused her," she said. "The names. The testimony. The whole trial."
Thorne pulled a thick volume from a high shelf and dropped it on the table with a thud.
"That," he said, "is the sanitized version. What they let survive."
Aerin flipped through it. Neat columns. Dates. A single statement of guilt.
"No defense. No cross-examination. Just—'she was tried and executed under Law IX.'" Her voice tightened. "A page and a half. That's all."
Thorne's eyes darkened. "That's not all. That's all they want you to read."
He pulled a second book from a hidden drawer in the wall, smaller, ragged, bound in weathered blue leather.
It hissed when opened.
Inside, the pages were written in three different inks. And between them, scribbled footnotes in the margins. Contradictions. Edits. One line was underlined twice:
"Testimony from Lord Veylin contradicts timeline established by Consul Mordane."
Aerin's stomach dropped. "Lord Veylin. He's still on the High Council, isn't he?"
"Oldest seat next to Cassius's."
She ran a finger over the ink. "If he lied about her… then she wasn't guilty. Then—Cassius killed her for nothing."
Thorne's expression shifted. "And if you prove that lie, you won't just be rewriting a page of history. You'll be declaring war."
Aerin stood slowly, fingers curling around the gloves.
"Then give me a sword."
The Court's upcoming Bloodfeast was the last place Aerin wanted to be.
It was the first event she'd be required to attend as the Prince's consort. A night of silk, masks, and sanctioned bloodletting—a reminder of the court's power, and the fragile threads holding its factions together.
But tonight, she had another goal.
Veylin.
She had studied his face in court portraits—balding, clean-shaven, with a long scar that split his chin. At parties, he wore an amethyst ring on his left hand that doubled as a seal for secret documents.
If she could get close enough, she could lift the ring and break into the restricted consular chamber before dawn.
It was reckless.
But not impossible.
The ballroom shimmered with illusions—floating orbs of starlight, golden wolves prowling through the mist, music that drifted from the ceiling like enchanted fog.
Cassius stood at the far end of the room, dressed in black and crimson, his collar high, his expression unreadable beneath a half-mask of silver. He looked like a king carved from winter.
When Aerin entered, every head turned.
She wore the deep green of House Velas, sleeves sheer, neckline sharp, hair twisted into a crown of raven feathers. Around her throat, a silver chain—the very one Isolde had once worn.
Cassius's eyes met hers across the room.
And something in his gaze cracked.
She walked past him without a word.
Lord Veylin was drunk by the second hour.
He stood beneath the shadow of a twisted glass sculpture, glass in one hand, the other gesturing wildly as he bragged to a group of lesser nobles.
Aerin approached quietly, smiling, laughing when necessary, letting herself drift into his orbit.
When she leaned in to refill his drink, her fingers grazed his. The ring slid off with surprising ease.
She was already gone before he noticed.
Cassius found her in the west hall minutes later, pacing like a caged wolf, the stolen ring burning in her palm.
He didn't speak at first.
Just stared at her.
And then, voice low: "What are you doing, Aerin?"
"Taking back a truth your court buried."
He stepped forward. "You're making enemies."
"I was born with them."
Cassius's expression shifted—anger, admiration, pain. "You don't understand. If you accuse Veylin, you don't get a second chance. There's no trial. There's only survival."
"Then I'll survive."
He closed the space between them. "You're playing a dangerous game."
She looked up at him, fierce and unflinching. "Good. So are you."
And then—without meaning to, without planning it—Cassius kissed her.
It wasn't gentle.
It was a question and a warning. A confession and a curse.
When they parted, both breathless, he whispered against her lips:
"Don't make me choose between saving you and protecting the court."
Aerin stared back.
"Then maybe it's time you decide who's worth saving."
And far below, in a hidden chamber beneath the Archives, the ink on Isolde's final letter began to bleed through its envelope—
her last words trembling toward the surface after nearly a century of silence.