Page 69 of Unravelled
The heavy oak doors of the library loomed before her. Mira’s hand curled around the worn iron handle, cool beneath her fingers, and she paused, not out of hesitation, but to savor the moment.
For the first time since her punishment, the day was hers.
No duty to shoulder. Her relegation was over.
She pushed open the door. The hinges groaned, but even that sound felt comforting now, familiar.
The scent of old parchment and ink greeted her like an old friend.
Her heart swelled in her chest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this, the hush of the library, the stillness.
A quiet invitation to lose herself in stories, just for the joy of it.
The mid-morning light filtered through the high arched windows, turning the dust motes into flecks of gold. They floated lazily in the air, caught in sunbeams like suspended stars. Mira stepped inside, letting the door swing quietly shut behind her.
She didn’t rush. Her feet knew the way, guiding her down familiar aisles, past towering shelves and ancient spines. Her fingers trailed along the books as she passed, touching each one like a small blessing.
Ren would be deep in council matters. That whole hall would be knotted with politics and tension.
And Tharion... Tharion needed his own space after their confessions.
Just as she did. Mira knew she couldn’t hold the weight of that closeness right now, not when her heart was still mending from the truths they had finally spoken. No, the library was all she needed.
She rounded a corner into the back alcove, her favorite. The oldest texts lived here, wrapped in leather and time, their pages softened by generations of hands. Mira’s breath deepened, and something inside her settled.
She scanned the shelf until her gaze caught on a familiar title, Legends of the Navigators. Her pulse leapt. The same book Ren had shown her, back when everything between them had been uncertain and delicate. The one with soft illustrations and myth drawn with reverence, not certainty.
Her fingers brushed the spine, but the leather was too smooth. The gold leaf, too sharp. She pulled it from the shelf and opened it carefully. The pages were uniform, pristine. A newer edition. Not the one he’d shown her.
Still, she lowered herself onto the cushioned window seat, cradling the book in her lap. It wasn’t the one she remembered, but it was close. Sunlight streamed in, warming the side of her face. Mira tilted her head back and closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the silence.
Mira opened the book slowly, the spine creaking faintly in her hands. The parchment was smooth, untouched, the ink still crisp. She flipped past the prologue, past the familiar names she’d seen a dozen times before. The illustrations were gone, replaced by precise columns of text.
Each legend felt flattened, its wildness trimmed away, its edges dulled by order and clarity. The silence of the library seemed to echo with it, the absence of wonder humming too loud in the stillness. And then, tucked between the lines of catalogued myths and navigators, she saw a title.
Lyren of the Tide-Worn Shore.
They say he was born beneath storm light, his first breath drawn as thunder broke, waves striking stone like a war drum's call, salt on his skin before air touched his lungs.
He was not loud, not the strongest. But stillness lived in his bones, His hands knew sail and tiller, his voice rarely used, but when it rose, it carried the hush of deep waters, a calm that felt like knowing.
They fled in silence across black waves, leaving smoke and chains behind. The boats, unsteady. The stars above watched, but the sea below grew restless. The wind soured. The currents turned. Rain fell sharp as teeth, and the sea demanded something. Not possessions. Not gold. A deeper sacrifice.
The boats began to struggle. Oars snapped. The horizon vanished in mist. Despair crept in with every rising swell.
Until Lyren rose. He stood upon the railing, his figure small against the dark sky and rising waves. The seas had named its price.
Lyren, born against the waves and storms, was taken in payment. Dragged down by the ocean's cold, closing hand.
He drowned so others might continue. His name was not lost, but kept in the mouths of the ancestors. A lullaby beneath the waves.
Mira sat in the pool of quiet sunlight, the book still open on her lap. The final lines of Lyren’s story echoing softly in her mind.
Lyren had given himself over not with fury or fight, but with quiet resolve.
He had been taken into the sea knowing it would kill him, knowing that his voice would be carried beneath the surface so others might rise.
It was a story passed down to remind them not just of sacrifice, but of grace. Of power that lived in surrender.
Mira’s hand hovered over the page, fingertips brushing the page like she might absorb more if she just stayed a little longer. The ache in her chest wasn’t sadness. Not exactly. It was recognition. A resonance that ran deeper than memory.
She saw herself, in the hush of Lyren’s steps, in the weight of his quiet. She wasn’t drowning, but she understood the feeling of being carried by currents she hadn’t chosen. She had given up parts of herself to silence and duty. To bonds that had frayed, to false truths.
That was what the Navigators’ stories had always been. Not perfect histories. Not bright fables with happy endings. But mirrors. Ways to see themselves in the shadows of the past. Mira traced the final line again with her thumb.
Footsteps. Sharp. Hurried. They echoed against the stone like strikes of iron. Mira stilled. She was tucked into the shadowed alcove between two shelves, hidden by centuries of dusty pages and stained glass light. But the voices carried. Brahn and Torvyn.
“You think keeping me in the dark makes you right?” Torvyn’s voice came sharp and sudden.
Mira pressed herself deeper into the chair’s worn curve, heart thudding loud in her chest.
“You are reckless. You move without my orders, make choices that put all of us at risk.”Brahn spoke quietly, but the anger in his voice was unmistakable.
His boots struck the floor hard, measured. Cold. “Your little stunt last night was the last straw, Torvyn. I needed everything in place. And now?”
Mira’s stomach twisted. That tone, Brahn didn’t sound like a man worried for allies or the kingdom. He sounded like someone who had been denied a prize. Someone used to control, furious at its loss.
“In place? You mean beaten down and ripe for the taking?” Torvyn barked a bitter laugh. “I’ve helped you, Brahn.”
And suddenly Mira wasn’t in the library at all.
She was back in Danlea’s vision. The throne room in ruin.
The banners of Bharalyn torn and curling like embers.
Brahn at the center, crowned in silver and blue, seated on a throne.
Like it had been waiting. Like he had always known.
The smile that did not reach his eyes. The way his fingers tapped, slow and patient.
As if every moment had unfolded according to plan.
“We're bonded, which makes your recklessness mine to deal with” Brahn muttered.
The door creaked. She heard Brahn’s steps retreating, clipped and smooth. Torvyn followed, slower. The door thudded shut and the lock clicked into place. Only then did Mira breathe.
She looked down at the book still resting in her lap. Lyren’s sacrifice. Brahn was moving pieces into place and Torvyn was caught in the current. She needed to warn Ren. Mira rose from the alcove, setting the book aside. She stepped into the afternoon light and slipped from the library.
???
The corridors stretched endlessly before Mira, each step weighed down by the burden of what she had overheard. She quickened her pace, her pulse a steady drumbeat in her ears as she approached Ren’s quarters.
The door was shut, the room beyond eerily silent.
She knocked once. No answer. A second time.
Nothing. The emptiness on the other side sent unease crawling up her spine.
The stillness felt wrong, thick with tension, with waiting.
The observatory. If the council was still in session, he would be there.
She had barely made it halfway when the first warning bell shattered the afternoon.
A deep, resonant chime rolled through the halls, reverberating through stone.
Then another. And another. Mira had never heard the bell before, but she knew, deep down, what it warned.
The palace stood on the brink of an attack.
Mira turned a corner, barely processing what she saw before she collided.
A pair of steady hands caught her just in time.
When she looked up, Ren’s gaze met hers, dark and urgent.
Outside the open corridor windows, the sun had begun its descent, streaked with the first embers of sunlit amber, swallowed by rolling clouds.
“Mira?” His brows furrowed in surprise. “I was looking for you,” she breathed, catching her balance.
“I heard the bell, ”
He cut in, “There’s no time,” his voice firm but not unkind. “Kharadors have crossed the border”
The words struck like a blade to the chest. Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms as she swallowed the tremor rising in her throat. Ren’s eyes flicked down the corridor, scanning. Then, in a heartbeat, he turned back to her and pulled her close.
His hands cupped her face first, reverent, his thumbs brushing along her cheekbones like he was trying to memorize her.
His lips met hers in a kiss that held all the things neither of them had the luxury of saying: love, longing, the quiet desperation of two souls caught in the storm.Mira’s fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, gripping tight and anchoring herself.
Her hands trembled slightly. Ren moved his hand from her face to her back and pulled her in.
He held her like he’d done it a hundred times in dreams. It was as if his body had been molded to meet hers.
She felt the rise and fall of his chest against hers, the shallow breaths uneven and syncing to her own.
His heartbeat thundered beneath her hand, pressed flat against his ribs, fast and unhidden.
Despite the cold seeping through the archways, his warmth enveloped her. There was no barrier at that moment. Not war. Not history. Not the silence they had once let stretch too far. Just them, reaching, orbiting, pulled in by something inevitable.
Too soon, he pulled away. His forehead brushed hers for the briefest second, grounding them both for one heartbeat more.
“You’re the best aim we’ve got. Meet me at the palace steps as soon as you can.”
She nodded once, sure and silent, and then she ran. Mira wanted to stop him. To tell him about the vision, but the warning bells rang through the corridors, low and relentless, urgency carving out every second.
When Mira pushed open the door to her quarters, she found Tharion already inside. He turned as she entered, a bundle in his hands, her leather armor from Brahn and her crossbow.
“I figured you’d come back here first,” he said simply, stepping aside to make space for her.
Mira nodded, closing the door behind her. “Good guess.”
She moved toward him, taking the items without ceremony, her fingers brushing his in passing. The touch didn’t spark tension the way it might have weeks ago. Whatever weight had once stretched between them had shifted into something simpler. Friendship.
“Thank you,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Tharion only nodded, already turning away to shrug off his outer layers. She tossed her crossbow onto a nearby chair as they dressed in silence.
“The resistance is mobilizing and marching on the palace” Tharion said as he strapped on his greaves. “Scouts say we’ve got less than an hour.”
Mira paused, her hand halfway to the buckle on her vambrace. The words didn’t sit right. Cold slipped down her spine like a premonition.
“No,” she murmured, half to herself. “That’s not who this is.”
Tharion looked over, frowning. “What?”
She shook her head, finishing the strap with more force than necessary. “It’s not the resistance. It’s the Kharadors.”
Tharion adjusted the last strap. "Are sure?"
Mira met his eyes, "They've crossed the border." His brows drew together, sharp and uncertain.
When she moved to retrieve her crossbow, his voice came again, quiet but firm. “I'll go with you.”
Mira slung the strap over her shoulder, turning toward him. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”
Tharion gave a smile. “I wasn’t offering to be one.” She blinked. “I’m offering an ally,” he added, voice steady. “I'll watch your back, if you watch mine.”
She held his gaze for a beat longer as she tucked a knife into her belt. Then she offered her hand. Tharion clasped it without hesitation.
“Deal.” she said quietly.
There was warmth in her tone, trust, quiet and steady.
They stood in the center of the room, the setting sun slanting through the windows, catching on the worn edges of their leather armor.
Not friends clinging to the past. Not lovers mourning what might have been.
Just two warriors, standing side by side, ready to face whatever came next, together.
Mira let out a breath, low and even. “Let’s go.”