Florence, one night later
The air smelled like blood and lavender.
Fiora was the first to feel it—an ache behind her eyes, as if her thoughts had been pushed too far inward. She stumbled into the workshop just after midnight, her face pale, lips cracked.
"She's coming," she whispered before collapsing.
———————————————————
Esmé barely slept.
She sat beside her friend with a wet cloth on her brow, whispering quiet reassurances neither of them fully believed. Fiora's breathing was shallow, her words lost in fractured fragments.
"Red… white doors… Luca… not Luca…"
That last part sent a chill through Esmé.
She turned to the window.
The shadows outside were too still.
————————————————————
Luca found her at dawn.
His expression was grim, cloak wet with mist.
"She's using your memories," he said. "Twisting them. Caedra's gift isn't just binding—it's rewriting."
Esmé's jaw tightened. "She wants to unmake me."
"She wants to hollow you the way she hollows everyone."
"Let her try."
Luca stared at her, dark eyes flickering with something unspoken.
"You can't face her alone this time."
"I didn't plan to."
———————————————————
That night, the streets of Florence bent strangely.
Luca and Esmé moved as shadows under hoods, their path leading them not through alleys but through places once lost to time—abandoned libraries, forgotten shrines, catacombs no longer on maps.
"She's trying to trap us in memory," Luca warned.
"How do I know what's real?" Esmé asked.
"Don't trust the world. Trust your pain. That's the part she can't fake."
They reached the old scriptorium beneath Santa Verdiana at the hour when bells should have rung—but didn't.
Inside, dozens of pages fluttered in a wind that didn't exist.
The walls bled ink.
At the center, bound to a throne of spines and vines, sat Caedra.
Esmé stopped breathing.
The woman's eyes were empty. Black. Her hair floated as if underwater. And beside her—
A mirror.
One that showed not reflection, but memories.
In it, Esmé saw her mother's face. Her father's laughter. Luca's first warning. Her own first spell.
"Give them to me," Caedra said, voice like silk sliding over steel.
"No," Esmé said.
Caedra smiled.
Then screamed.
————————————————————
The chamber warped.
Luca vanished.
Esmé stood in her bedroom at age ten. Her mother hummed outside. Her hands were smaller.
No magic.
No war.
Just safety.
She almost fell for it.
But then she whispered, "I remember losing this."
The scene cracked.
She stabbed the mirror with the obsidian pendant.
The world shattered.
————————————————————
She awoke with Luca pulling her to her feet.
Her breath came in gasps.
"You're bleeding," he said.
"It's not mine."
Caedra lay across the stone dais, shadows leaking from her mouth.
Esmé knelt beside her.
"Why?" she asked. "Why do you do this?"
Caedra's voice was soft. "Because memory hurts. I wanted to give the world peace."
Esmé looked down.
"Then you should have asked before stealing it."
They didn't kill her.
They bound her instead—sealed with glyphs and obsidian.
Not mercy.
Justice.
————————————————————
Back at the Palazzo, the Council said nothing at first.
Then the Matron rose.
"You've taken your first enemy."
Esmé's voice was steady. "She was never mine. She made herself one."
And behind her, Luca watched—eyes shadowed not with doubt, but something heavier.
Fear.
Not of her weakness.
Of what she was becoming.