Page 38

Dahlia

It started with a fold in the page.

Not a dramatic ancient sigil. Not a glowing rune or a cursed whisper from a haunted text. Just a page—stuck to the next one, unassuming.

I smoothed it open gently, eyes scanning the dense, faded ink.

The book was older than most of the ones I’d touched so far, the pages brittle, the spine delicate.

But something about this one had drawn me in—titled Veils and Vows: Secret Orders Through the Ages.

Sounds romantic, right? It wasn’t. Half of it was about blood rites and ideological schisms.

Still, that page.

“Kieran,” I said, my voice a little breathless. “Look at this.”

He was half-reclined in the chair beside me, long legs stretched out, flipping through a book on ritual binding. But he looked up instantly, eyes sharp.

I turned the book toward him and tapped a section near the middle.

“...Known meeting points of the Order’s remnants are most often located in isolated structures with a triptych of protective layers: a perimeter ward of silence, an internal obscuring sigil, and a blood-tied binding rune.

The most consistent location recorded—though disputed—is a mountain monastery, abandoned since the 1600s, known locally as Eidothea’s Hollow. ”

My heart kicked.

“That name,” I said. “ Eidothea’s Hollow. It’s not mentioned anywhere else in the book. Not in the index. Not in the margin notes. Nothing.”

Kieran leaned forward, scanning the text with that focused look I’d come to recognize—the one that meant something old and dangerous had stirred.

He murmured the name again under his breath. “Eidothea was a sea nymph. Daughter of Proteus. A shapeshifter.”

“So a hiding place named after a being who never stayed in one form,” I said. “Fitting for a cult that vanished off the face of the earth.”

Kieran’s jaw tightened. “Could be real. Could be a planted story. But either way—it’s a stronger lead than we’ve had in weeks.”

I looked at him. “We should take it to Silas.”

Kieran didn’t move. “You trust him to help?”

I hesitated. “No. But I trust him to be pissed he didn’t find it first.”

That earned me the ghost of a grin.

We packed the book and the notes quickly—carefully—and I followed Kieran down the corridor with the same sort of buzz I felt right before a storm. Not fear exactly. Not excitement either. Just that prickling at the edge of something about to shift.

Silas was in the dining room, of all places. Shirt half-unbuttoned again, sitting at the long stone table with a glass of wine in front of him and an open journal beside it. He looked up when we entered, his expression unreadable.

“We found something,” I said without preamble, setting the book down in front of him and flipping to the marked page.

Kieran crossed his arms beside me, every line of his body taut and wary.

Silas read the page silently. Then again. Then looked up.

His voice was low. “I’ve read this book a dozen times. I never saw this.”

“That page was stuck to another,” I said. “Easy to miss.”

“Or easy to hide,” Silas muttered. “Eidothea’s Hollow. If it’s real… it was never documented clearly. But there are actual coordinates here. I thought it was a myth layered on top of other myths. Like El Dorado, if El Dorado also had blood rites.”

“But if it’s not…” I said.

Silas leaned back slowly, fingers steepled. “Then we may have just found the Order’s last footprint.”

The silence that followed stretched long and sharp.

Finally, Kieran spoke. “If it’s real, it’s buried in magic. We’ll need more than just a location.”

Silas nodded, eyes flicking to me. “And we’ll need her.”

The room went very, very still.

I swallowed. “You think this place is tied to the locket?”

“I think,” Silas said carefully, “that if the Order had a sanctuary, it would’ve held records. Instructions. Maybe even the source of the Rite itself. And if we want to end this—really end it—we need to go to the root.”

I looked at Kieran.

He was already watching me.

Not pushing. Not pulling. Just waiting —like whatever came next, he wouldn’t go without me.

I took a slow breath. “Then we find it.”

Silas was leaving.

Not for good—he claimed it would be a day or two, three at most—but the way he moved through the villa, quiet and focused, didn’t feel temporary. It felt like preparation. Like the calm before something broke.

I found him in one of the side rooms off the courtyard, checking the contents of a leather satchel with far more care than I was used to seeing from him. The room smelled like citrus and dust, warm sun pouring through the shutters and lighting up the fine dust motes in the air like sparks.

“You’re really going alone?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe.

Silas didn’t glance up. “My contacts are… delicate. And prone to disappearing when spooked. It’s easier this way.”

“Delicate and dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive.”

He smiled faintly. “That’s the fun of it.”

I folded my arms. “You’re being deliberately vague.”

“It’s a skill,” he said, buckling the satchel closed with a sharp click. “But if it helps ease your nerves, I’m not doing anything reckless. Just meeting with some old acquaintances. Scribes. Ex-Order scholars. People who know how to read between the blood and the stories.”

“And you think they’ll talk?”

“I think,” he said, adjusting the strap over his shoulder, “they’ll talk to me. If not because they trust me, then because they owe me.”

I didn’t like it. Not the way he was smoothing his cuffs or the careful way he avoided looking at me too long. He was hiding something. Not maliciously. Just... instinctively. Like someone who’d learned too often that truth got you hurt.

“I get the feeling,” I said slowly, “this is more dangerous than you’re letting on.”

That made him pause.

Silas looked at me then—really looked. The shift was small but startling. The performative edge fell away, just for a moment, and beneath it I saw the man who’d survived centuries of failure and still kept digging through the ash.

“I don’t like unknowns,” he said. “And Eidothea’s Hollow is a massive one. If I’m sending you and my brother into something that might wake the dead, I need to know what exactly you’re walking into.”

You. Not we .

I didn’t correct him. Because that choice had already been made.

Kieran and I were going. Whether the path was clean or cursed or covered in runes that wanted to eat us whole, we were going.

“Then let us help,” I said. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

He gave me a long, unreadable look. “That’s kind of you, Dahlia. But if this goes wrong, I’d rather you two be alive to deal with it.”

I bristled. “That’s not your decision to make.”

“It is,” he said quietly, “if I care about you.”

And just like that, I didn’t know what to say.

After a beat, he softened the moment—of course he did—with a familiar grin. “Besides, I’ve seen the way you look at my library. I figured this was the best way to ensure the place stays standing.”

I rolled my eyes. “If anyone burns this place down, it’ll be Kieran. Probably trying to light a stove.”

Silas chuckled and walked past me toward the front hall, boots echoing on the stone floor.

I followed, slower.

At the door, he paused to pull on a linen coat and glance out toward the winding drive beyond the trees. The sun was just beginning to lower in the sky, painting everything in gold and shadow.

He turned to me, brows lifted. “You’ll keep him in check while I’m gone?”

“I always do.”

He smiled again, smaller this time. “Then I’ll be back before nightfall in two days. Three if I need to threaten anyone.”

“Be careful,” I said.

Something in his eyes flickered. “Always.”

And then he was gone—out the door, down the stairs, swallowed by olive trees and silence.

I stood in the threshold for a while, the breeze catching the hem of my sweater, the weight of his absence settling deeper than I expected.

Behind me, I heard the familiar tread of boots on tile—Kieran, always knowing when the air changed.

“He left?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I turned toward him. “He’s trying to protect us.”

Kieran’s jaw tightened. “He should know better by now.”

“Maybe he does,” I said. “But he’s going anyway.”

And somehow, that scared me more than anything.