Chapter 7: What The Records Say

Lucian returned with a folder under one arm and two cups of something hot that smelled of bitter herbs.

Sera had not slept, though she had lain still with her eyes closed long enough to lose track of the hours. She sat up as he entered, accepting the cup without asking what was in it. The liquid was strong and earthy. Heat spread through her chest after the first swallow.

“Blackthorn pulled back to their border at dawn,” Lucian said, taking the chair across from the cot. “They will regroup. It buys us a day, maybe two.”

“And then?”

“And then we are not here when they come back.”

He set the folder on the table between them but did not open it yet. Sera watched his hands. They were steady, the same hands that had cut the rope from her wrists and later examined the burns Isolde’s men had left.

“Your bloodline is called the silver line,” he said. “It has not surfaced in a confirmed carrier in six generations. Most packs believe it died out entirely. I did not believe that.”

“How did you know it had not?”

“Records. Fragments. A pattern in the old rituals certain packs still practice, rituals that only make sense if they believe the line could return.” He opened the folder. Inside were photographs of old documents, hand-copied diagrams, names crossed through in different inks across what looked like decades. Some of the pages were stained. Others had edges burned away. “I have spent years tracing where it might resurface.”

Sera leaned forward. The names meant nothing to her, but the diagrams showed sequences of marks and moon phases that made the hair on her arms rise.

“And you decided it was me.”

“I suspected. Six years ago, a healer in Blackthorn territory treated a child for a fever that should have killed her. The healer noted the child’s temperature dropped instead of rising, and that frost formed on the window glass in a room with no draft. That report reached me through channels I would rather not explain yet.”

Sera’s grip tightened on the cup. The ceramic was almost too hot against her palms. “You have been watching me since I was fifteen.”

“Watching is too strong a word. I kept the report. I did not act on it until I had reason to believe you were in danger.”

“You had a contract prepared.”

“I have contracts prepared for several contingencies. Most of them I never use.” He held her gaze. “This is not a comfortable answer, and I am aware of that.”

She thought of that autumn six years ago. She remembered being cold for days, the kind of deep cold that no blanket could touch, and her father telling her it was only a late fever. She had never questioned it. Now the memory felt like a door left unlocked in a house she thought she knew.

“Does my father know?”

“I do not know what your father knows,” Lucian said. “I have never spoken with him.”

That, at least, sounded true. Something in her chest eased a fraction for the honesty of it, even as the rest of the answer left new questions standing in its place. Ronan had taught her to fight. He had never taught her what she was.

“What do the old rituals want from someone like me?” she asked.

Lucian’s jaw tightened. “Some believe the bloodline can be drawn out and bound to a new vessel through specific rites. Others believe simply killing the carrier at the height of the awakening transfers the gift onward, to whoever spills the blood. Neither theory has been proven. Both are dangerous enough that I would rather you never test which one is true.”

The bluntness of it landed harder than any softened version might have. Sera set the cup down. Her hands were steadier than she expected. The fear was still there, but it had company now: anger, and under the anger a hard determination that felt new.

“Then I want to learn to control it,” she said. “Not just wake it by accident in a room full of blades. Control it.”

Lucian studied her for a long moment. The scar along his jaw caught the lamp light. “That can be arranged.”

“And I want the rest of what is in that folder. All of it. Not pieces you decide I am ready for.”

“In time.”

“Now, or trust becomes a word neither of us can use with a straight face.”

Something almost like respect crossed his face. It was brief, but she saw it. “Tomorrow,” he said. “When we are somewhere safer than this room. I give you my word.”

It was not everything. But it was, she was beginning to understand, the shape of every promise she was likely to get from him: partial, careful, and so far, kept. She looked at the open folder again. The silver line had waited six generations to surface. She would not let it be taken from her the way everything else had been taken.