LOGINRowan's POVMira found me two evenings later, settling onto the same garden bench without needing to ask whether I intended to join her, the particular ease between us now assumed rather than uncertain."Can I tell you something?" she said, echoing my own question from days earlier, and I understood, from the deliberate way she offered it, that she had been considering this conversation for a while."Always."She was quiet for a moment, gathering herself the same way I had before sharing my own difficult history, and I waited patiently, understanding this particular vulnerability would arrive at whatever pace she needed."I don't remember my parents at all," she said finally. "Not even fragments. Grandma always told me they died when I was very young, though she was careful about the details, the same particular vagueness I've since realized probably hid considerably more than simple loss."I remained quiet, giving her the space to continue."Growing up without knowing them left a spe
Mira's POVThe journals eventually reached a point where I needed to stop, not because I had exhausted the collection, but because my mind had grown too crowded with accumulated fragments to properly absorb anything further without some kind of pause. Rowan noticed before I fully admitted it to myself, appearing one evening with a tray and a suggestion that carried none of his usual careful restraint."Come outside," he said. "Just for tonight. The journals will still be here tomorrow."I agreed, mostly because some part of me recognized the wisdom in the suggestion even as another part resisted leaving the work unfinished.We walked out to the same garden bench where we had once sat beneath the stars, months earlier now, back when everything between us still carried the particular uncertain charge of feelings neither of us had properly voiced yet. The night air felt considerably cooler than I remembered from that first evening, autumn settling steadily over Blackwood's grounds, thoug
Rowan's POVI watched her change over the course of that week, gradually and then all at once, the particular restless energy she carried into the hidden room each morning shifting steadily into something closer to genuine obsession.I understood the pull, having felt something similar myself during my own long nights working through the observatory's star charts, though watching it consume Mira the way it had begun to worried me more than I initially expected. She stopped joining Elias for his usual afternoon teasing. She skipped meals entirely some days, the trays I brought each evening the only proper food she consumed at all. She stayed later and later, the candle burning low beside her hunched, focused figure long after most of the pack house had settled into sleep.I did not tell her to stop.Part of that restraint came from the promise I had made to her, the genuine commitment to stop deciding, on her behalf, what she could or could not properly handle. But part of it, I unders
Mira's POVI spent the following days buried in the hidden room, working through journal after journal with a focus that gradually pulled me away from almost everything else. Meals. Sleep. Conversations that used to fill my mornings at the infirmary. All of it faded into the background as I worked steadily through generations of careful, accumulated record keeping, searching for whatever pattern might finally explain the accelerating danger circling both of us.The entries came from considerably more voices than I initially expected. Some belonged to Alphas, their handwriting formal and precise, clearly written with the understanding that future generations would eventually need to read them. Others belonged to witches, their notes considerably more chaotic, scattered with symbols and half finished theories that took me hours to properly untangle. A few belonged to people whose names appeared nowhere else in any record I had access to, individuals who had apparently disappeared centur
Mira's POVI spent the following hours working through the oldest journal in the collection, its leather binding cracked so severely that I turned each page with considerable care, worried the brittle material might crumble entirely under normal handling.The entries themselves proved difficult to fully decipher, the handwriting formal and archaic in ways that required me to work slowly, sounding out unfamiliar phrasings until their meaning gradually settled into place. Rowan sat across the room, working through a separate set of sealed maps, and for a while we existed together in comfortable, focused quiet, both of us genuinely absorbed in the considerable work ahead.I turned another page carefully, and something slipped loose from between the journal's brittle leaves, fluttering down onto the table before I could catch it properly.I set the journal aside and picked up the fallen page, and felt my breath catch immediately.It was not a photograph. The material felt considerably dif
Mira's POVRowan knocked on my door the next morning, early enough that pale light had barely finished spreading across the floor beneath my window.I opened it to find him standing there without the careful, composed expression he usually wore, dressed simply, no formal bearing, no particular authority in his posture beyond quiet, steady resolve.He did not give me an order. He did not command me to follow him the way I half expected, given how tense things had felt between us the night before."Come with me," he said instead.I hesitated, still carrying some of yesterday's disappointment, uncertain whether I wanted to extend trust again this quickly after everything that had already happened.Then I noticed something in his expression, a particular vulnerability he was not bothering to hide, and something in that honesty made me decide, despite my lingering reservations, to follow him regardless.He led me down through the pack house's quiet corridors, past the archive, toward the h







