Page 189

Silas grins. “No. I regret letting herlive.”

Luna doesn’t smile. But her shoulder brushes mine—on purpose. A touch that saysthank youanddon’t leavein the same breath. I won’t let her face these dead things alone. Not the pillars. Not the sins we left behind in the bodies of women who should’ve never carried our names. I’ll burn every one of them down before I let them touch her.

I drift from the others, not because I’m avoiding them—though gods know, I’m used to that by now—but because something in the light is shifting. The closer I get to the nearest pillar, the more it feels like the world’s narrowing. Like the rest of the room is just a whisper andthis—this is the part that was waiting for me.

The pillar is taller than me, carved from something I can’t name. Obsidian threaded with a crimson so deep it almost looks black. It glows in slow pulses, not like breath, but like blood pushed through old veins. I don’t reach for it. I don’t need to.

Because right there, near the base, just above the line where the stone vanishes into the floor—there it is.

My crest.

Or at least, it’s supposed to be.

I crouch, let my eyes adjust to the pulsing light, and study it.

It's my emblem, the one branded into the base of every ritual we ever cast, burned into Academy scrolls and sheets, stitched into tunics I’ve long since torn apart. Lust. Mine. The whips curling in elegant arcs. The sigil flanked by obsidian thorns. The empty ring in the center that was always meant to be broken. Except...

Except it’s wrong.

The thorns—there are too many. And the curling ends of the whips? They’re laced through with something that doesn’t belong.Branches.Delicate, almost beautiful. Veins of life where there should bepain.

“No,” I murmur, and I move on.

The next pillar is made of something clearer, crystalline, almost fragile in the way it reflects every other glow in the chamber. I find my crest again. Another mistake. The whips are reversed. Curled inward instead of out. Submissive. Soft. They were never meant to besoft.

I rise, heart starting to hammer with something that feels like realization—but heavier.

I turn toward the others, voice sharp. “The crests,” I call out. “They’re on the pillars.”

Orin’s head lifts instantly. Elias stops whatever commentary he was mid-ramble. Even Luna’s gaze snaps to me, brows narrowing.

“I’m serious,” I say, stepping back from the flawed stone. “Each pillar has our mark on it.Ours.The crests. From the original bonding rites. Branwen used them. Maybe when she built this, maybe after, I don’t know. But they’re all here.”

Silas skips past two glowing pillars before doubling back. “Wait, you mean like our personalized magical death signatures? That thing we weren’t supposed to tattoo into furniture but Idefinitelydid?”

“Yes,” I snap, sharper than intended. “But listen. They’re notright.Mine—there’s something off. Subtle, but there. The shape is wrong. A single branch added. The whips coiled inward instead of out.”

“Maybe it’s a glitch,” Elias offers, wandering to the closest column. “Like... old magic with a bad memory. Or Branwen took some liberties with the aesthetics. She alwaysdidlove dramatics.”

“No,” Orin says before I can. His voice is quiet, but not soft. It never is when he’s right. “She didn’t forget. Branwen was obsessed with accuracy. She wouldn’t have risked any variance in the ritual architecture. Not if this chamber was designed to anchor a path out.”

I nod once, the dread curling cold behind my ribs. “Which means the incorrect crests aren’t a flaw. They’re afilter.”

Lucien straightens, eyes narrowing. “She created decoys.”

“Or something worse,” I say, and the words feel sour in my mouth. “Each wrong crest might not just lead to nowhere. It could be tailored to fracture us. Split us. Trap us in versions of ourselves we can’t survive.”

Elias lets out a low whistle, then shifts his stance in front of the nearest pillar. “Well that’s sufficiently horrifying. Alright. Who wants to playMatch the Sigilbefore the vengeful exes arrive and claw our faces off?”

Luna doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile. She just moves to the next pillar, eyes scanning with focus so intense it sharpens the air around her. Riven trails after her like a shadow, hands loose but ready. He doesn’t speak, but his presence anchors her. It always has.

One by one, the others spread out. Orin slower, more deliberate, dragging a fingertip down the face of each pillar like he’s communing with the dead. Silas flits between columns with too much excitement, muttering to himself, then letting out occasional frustrated sighs when he finds something wrong—an angle, a fracture, a line missing from his sigil that shouldn’t be.

This chamber was never about offering freedom.

It was built to testrecognition.

To see if we remember who we were before all this.