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TWENTY-SIX

EVRYN

T he morning mist clung to the marsh like memory.

Evryn moved through it in silence, boots sinking into soft moss, her breath fogging in the cool air. Lucien trailed just behind her—close, not crowding. He hadn’t spoken much since they broke camp.

Neither had she.

Not because she was angry. Not even because she was grieving.

Because something inside her was stirring. Not power. Not quite. It was older than that.

Older than the shadows, older than her dreams. Like a thread had pulled taut inside her chest, humming with recognition.

She hadn’t told Lucien yet. That she felt watched. Not by enemies. By something that remembered her name before she was born.

They crossed into the crumbled ruins of a watchtower long swallowed by the marsh trees. It was the place Seraphine’s raven had told them to meet. But Seraphine hadn’t come.

Someone else had.

He stepped from the shadows with wings tucked like blades— Malrik Sablewing .

Evryn had never met a Sablewing before. She wasn’t sure anyone had in generations. But he looked exactly as whispered: tall, pale bronze skin, with black dragon wings laced with veins of silver. His eyes were obsidian. Not black. Obsidian . Ancient. Sharp.

“You’re late,” he said, voice like gravel soaked in wind.

Evryn tilted her chin. “We weren’t expected.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Malrik said, stepping forward. “She sent you to me for a reason.”

Lucien tensed beside her. “Why?”

“Because the blood in her veins just shifted the balance of the realm,” Malrik said, eyes never leaving Evryn. “And someone has to help her survive what comes next.”

Evryn’s throat dried. “What are you talking about?”

Malrik stopped three feet from her. “You aren’t just Veil-born. You aren’t just royal. You’re not a scion of a house. You are legacy made flesh.”

He stepped closer.

Evryn’s hands trembled. “So what does that make me? A target? A weapon?”

Malrik’s expression didn’t change. “A queen—if you survive long enough to claim it.”

The air stilled.

Lucien stepped beside her, tension radiating from every inch of him. “Why you?”

Malrik finally turned to him, wings rustling like leather scraping stone.

“Because there are only a handful of us left who remember what the First Queen was capable of. Who were trained to sense the root lines buried in blood and shadow. The magic in her name wasn’t just tied to power—it was identity .

Memory woven into bone and soul. And I..

. was sworn to protect the last of her line if it ever surfaced. ”

Evryn’s voice dropped. “You’re a memory-weaver.”

Malrik nodded once. “I don’t just erase or restore memories. I read them. I thread through bloodlines. I see the echoes of who someone was before they were told who to become.”

He took a slow step toward her, his voice almost reverent.

“You carry ancestral dominion—power tied not to a House, but to the source of shifter royalty. Before the Houses fractured. Before the treaties. When one line ruled, not with council, but with right.”

Evryn’s breath caught. “Why now? Why me?”

“Because you were hidden well. Too well. Buried beneath lesser lineage, cloaked by stasis and secrecy. Whoever left you with Eamon didn’t want you found .

But when you crossed the Veil, when you bled into the stones during the Hollow rite—that power woke.

And when it woke, it called to everything old enough to remember. ”

Lucien looked at Malrik sharply. “And Seraphine sent you because she couldn’t afford to ignore that call.”

Malrik smiled faintly. “She doesn’t like prophecy. But she respects it .”

Evryn swallowed. “What does this mean? What do I do now?”

Malrik’s gaze was piercing. “The Houses will come for you. The Queen will escalate. Cassian will move soon. But more than that… you’ll begin to feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“The pull,” he said. “To reclaim what was lost. Your dreams will shift. Your shadows will grow bolder. And the Sight… it will show you more than you want to see.”

He hesitated then. And that was what chilled her the most—because Malrik didn’t strike her as a man who hesitated for anything.

“You’ll remember things that never happened to you,” he said softly. “Because you’re not just her heir. You’re her echo. ”

Evryn’s mouth went dry.

Lucien reached for her hand. She didn’t realize she’d reached for his too until their fingers found each other.

“Why me?” she whispered again.

Malrik’s obsidian eyes glittered. “Because fate doesn’t choose who’s ready. Just who’s needed. ”

They made camp again hours later, further from the ruins, under the arched roots of a dead tree curled like a crown of claws. Lucien had barely spoken since Malrik left them.

Evryn sat beside the fire, staring into it like it might give her answers.

“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered.

Lucien stirred. “No one ever is.”

Evryn looked at him, eyes too tired for anger.

“They’re going to come for me now, aren’t they? Not just the Queen. Everyone. Every House. Every loyalist who thinks power belongs to them.”

Lucien nodded. “Yeah.”

She swallowed. “What if I don’t want it?”

Lucien leaned toward her, brushing his knuckles along her jaw. “Then we burn anyone who tries to take it.”

In the firelight, as her world shifted again, she knew something else for certain: She wasn’t just becoming the girl fate tried to erase.

She was becoming the reason they’d never forget her name again.