Page 207

Four hours until the trial begins.

Four hours to discover whether love means making desperate gestures...

Or trusting someone to fight battles you can’t see coming.

Outside the windows, morning light paints everything deceptive and beautiful, frost patterns on glass spelling out secrets in languages I’m only beginning to understand.

And somewhere in crystal chambers, she prepares for something none of us can fathom.

The unsigned letter trembles in the growing wind, waiting for a choice that might change everything.

Or destroy it all.

41

FINNIAN

“I’m going to see Amarantha.”

The words drop into the archive’s stale air like stones into still water. Kieran looks up from the unsigned letter he’s been staring at, shadows coiling with alarm. Orion tries to push himself upright despite guardian tattoos that now cover half his face in permanent testament to failure.

“Absolutely not,” Kieran says with ice-cold authority. “She’s working with my father. It’s a trap.”

“Everything is a trap.” I stare at the ancient tome in my hands—leather binding worn smooth by centuries of desperate scholars seeking answers that don’t exist. The pages mock me with their elegant script, thousands of words that should hold salvation but taste like ash on my tongue.

My fingers trace the useless text, and something breaks open in my chest. Not the Crown’s burn, but something rawer. Human.

Three hundred years of accumulated wisdom, and I can’t save the woman I love.

“Guardian magic failed. Political rebellion is anticipated. None of it matters when the woman I love faces execution.”

“Finnian—” Orion starts, his voice rough with exhaustion.

“She’s my cousin.” I slam the tome shut, the sound cracking through the archive like breaking bones. “Before she was Lady Amarantha of the Seelie Court, before she became a political asset in someone else’s game, she was family. Maybe there’s still enough of the girl I grew up with to give me something—anything—that might help.”

I’ve read thousands of books.

Memorized every clause, exception, and arcane law.

And not one of them tells me what to do when love becomes treason.

The Crown pulses against my chest—not with power or ancient knowledge, but with the acid recognition that some problems devour knowledge whole.

But maybe—just maybe—it can buy her one more day.

“You don’t know what she’s become,” Kieran warns. “Power changes people. Court politics destroy family bonds.”

“Then at least I’ll know.” I move toward the archive door, hands trembling with frustrated energy that has nowhere to go. “At least I’ll have tried something other than sitting here watching everything I care about burn while I catalog the fucking flames.”

“Two hours,” I say before either of them can stop me. “If I’m not back in two hours, assume family meant less than politics.”

The Academy corridors feel different in the morning light—emptier, more dangerous, like the walls themselves are holding their breath. My footsteps echo across marble that should be familiar but feels alien now that I’m walking toward potential treason.

The Seelie wing exists in perpetual golden twilight, ancient magic that makes every surface gleam like captured sunlight. Beautiful and serene and absolutely fucking terrifying when you’re approaching someone who might offer help that comes with strings attached to your soul.

Lady Amarantha’s private study door recognizes my magical signature immediately, unlocking with the whisper-soft click of family bonds that transcend court loyalties.

The door knows me.