Proof of Who She Is

"Proof of who I am," Eliora repeated. "What does that mean?"

Lucien glanced at Severin, as if asking permission. Severin gave a small nod.

"Open the necklace," Lucien said. "The back of the pendant. There's a seam, if you look closely."

Eliora's fingers went to her throat, unclasping the chain with hands that weren't quite steady. She turned the small oval pendant over in her palm, running her thumb along the edge until she felt it, a thin line she'd never noticed in seventeen years of wearing it.

"It opens?"

"Try it," Severin said.

She pressed gently, and the back panel clicked loose, revealing a hollow space no bigger than a fingernail. Inside sat a tiny piece of metal, half of some kind of symbol, cut cleanly down the middle like it had once been whole and someone had broken it in two.

"What is this?" she whispered.

"We don't know yet," Lucien said. "But whoever sent those men last night knew it was there. They didn't want your jewelry. They wanted this specifically."

Eliora stared at the small piece of metal, turning it toward the light. It looked old. Older than her, certainly. Some kind of crest, though only half of it remained, the rest lost to whoever held the other piece.

"My mother gave this to me," she said quietly. "Before the accident. I don't remember much from back then, but I remember that. She put it around my neck herself."

"Did she say anything?" Severin asked.

Eliora closed her eyes, trying to reach back through seventeen years of fog. "Follow the stars. That's what my father used to say to me. I don't know if it means anything."

Something shifted in Severin's expression, brief, controlled, but unmistakable.

"You know something," Eliora said.

"Your father used that phrase more than once. I remember it too." He didn't elaborate further, and she understood, from the tightness in his jaw, that this wasn't the moment he wanted to say more. "Lucien, who inside the Commission gave the order?"

"That's the problem." Lucien's voice dropped lower. "The man who talked didn't get a name. Only a phrase, passed along through an intermediary. Confirm the mark, retrieve it quietly. Whoever gave that order made sure there was no way to trace it back to them directly."

"Someone with real authority, then," Severin said. "Not a rival family acting alone."

"That's my read as well."

Eliora looked between them, feeling like she was standing at the edge of a conversation happening two steps ahead of her. "What does that mean? Real authority over what?"

Severin hesitated, and for a moment Eliora thought he might avoid the question the way he'd avoided so many others since she woke up in this house. Instead, he sat back down across from her, his voice quieter than before.

"There are five families that hold most of the power in this world," he said. "Together, we're called the Commission. We don't act against each other without reason. There are rules, older than any of us, that keep the peace between us."

"And you think one of these families ordered the attack on me?"

"I think it's possible. I don't know which one yet, or why." His eyes moved to the broken symbol still resting in her palm. "But whatever that mark is, someone wanted it enough to break the rules to get it back."

"Get it back," Eliora repeated. "You think it belonged to someone before it belonged to my mother?"

"I think your mother may have been protecting something that was never simply a keepsake." Severin's voice was careful now, weighing each word before he let it out. "I think your father may have hidden more than we realized, and this might be a piece of it."

Lucien cleared his throat. "There's one more thing."

"Say it," Severin said again.

"The man who talked. He's dead." Lucien's face stayed carefully blank, though something tight sat behind his eyes. "An hour after we finished questioning him. In custody. No one got near him."

The room went cold and silent.

"How is that possible?" Eliora asked. "You said he was in custody."

"He was," Lucien said. "Which means whoever is behind this reaches further than our own security. Further than I'd like to admit."

Severin's expression hardened into something Eliora hadn't seen from him yet, not anger exactly, but a kind of grim, focused stillness, like a man recalculating the size of a threat he'd underestimated.

"Double security on this house," he said. "No one in or out without my direct approval. And find out if the man had contact with anyone in the last twenty-four hours. Anyone at all."

"Already on it," Lucien said, and left without another word.

Eliora sat in the quiet that followed, the broken piece of metal still warm from her own palm, her mind spinning too fast to land anywhere solid.

"They killed him," she said slowly. "To keep him from saying more."

"It looks that way."

"Which means whatever this is, it's bigger than a jealous ex-fiancé, bigger than one wedding gone wrong, bigger than anything I understood about my own life yesterday morning." Her voice cracked on the last few words, exhaustion and fear finally breaking through the calm she'd been holding onto since the courtyard.

"Yes," Severin said quietly. "I'm sorry that's the truth of it."

"Stop apologizing." She wiped her eyes, frustrated with herself. "Just tell me what to do. You clearly know this world better than I do. What happens now?"

Severin studied her for a long moment, like he was deciding how much weight to put on her shoulders all at once.

"Now we find out who broke the rules to come after you," he said. "And we find out what the other half of that symbol means, and who's been looking for it for however many years it's been hidden."

"And until then?"

"Until then, you stay here. Not because I'm keeping you prisoner." His voice was steady, certain. "Because right now, this house is the only place in Europe where I know, for certain, who's watching you."

Eliora closed her fingers around the small piece of metal, feeling its jagged, broken edge press into her palm.

"There's something you're still not telling me," she said. "I can hear it in your voice every time you talk about my father."

Severin's jaw tightened. For a moment, she thought he might finally say it, whatever it was he kept circling but never quite reaching.

Instead, his phone buzzed on the desk between them. He glanced down at the screen, and whatever color remained in his face drained away entirely.

"What is it?" Eliora asked.

He turned the phone toward her without a word.

One line, from an unknown number: Tell her the truth, or we will.