Chapter 21: Delphine

The mark appeared overnight.

I didn’t feel it happen. There was no jolt of magic or scream in the dark or glowing runes crawling over my skin. Just silence. Soft. Patient.

Like the castle had been waiting for me to let my guard down.

When I woke, the candlelight in the annex was low and golden. A soft breeze stirred the loose parchment on the desk. I sat up slowly, muscles sore from having slept in a chair again. The rose the castle had given me days ago still sat in its dish—black petals unfurling slightly more each morning. Still impossibly alive.

I pushed my sleeves up to wash my hands. My fingers were still faintly dusted with chalk, the tips of two marked with old ink.

That’s when I saw it.

At first, I thought it was a stain. A shadow from sleep or spellwork.

But no.

The mark was on my upper forearm—just below the inside of my elbow. Perfectly centered. Faintly luminescent.

It was a sigil. Circular. Complex. Familiar.

I had seen it carved into the stone of the vault, etched into the mirror’s surface. I’d seen it in dreams.

My family’s glyph.

But altered.

The outer ring bore vampire court symmetry. Old magic, the kind that spoke of blood and vows. Inside that ring, the Ashwood lunar crest pulsed gently—overlaid with a third shape.

A mirror. Simple. Empty.

I blinked, my breath catching.

The castle hadn’t just marked me with magic.

It had marked me with its seal.

I stood up too fast, heart pounding. The air in the annex felt thicker than usual, laced with that same humming tension I now recognized as the castle’s awareness.

I pressed my palm to the stone wall. “What did you do?”

No voice answered, but I felt it. A pulse from the floor beneath me. The same kind of echo I felt in the vault. The seal had woken—and now it had taken something from me.

Or left something behind.

The mark didn’t hurt. But it wasn’t dormant, either. It pulsed in time with something deeper than my heartbeat. Something older. It was alive.

And it didn’t feel like a threat.

It felt like a claim.

-

I found Theron in the observatory an hour later. He looked up before I said anything—his gaze drawn, it seemed, by the magic still vibrating beneath my skin.

“What happened?” he asked immediately.

I held out my arm.

His expression changed.

He stepped forward, carefully taking my wrist, turning it gently in his hands. The moment he touched the mark, it flared slightly beneath his fingers, as if recognizing him too.

His voice was quiet. “It’s bound you.”

“To the vault?”

“To the castle.”

I pulled my arm back slowly. “Is it dangerous?”

Theron didn’t answer at first. He looked at the place where the mark had glowed, then met my eyes. “No. Not to you. Not now.”

“And later?”

His hesitation told me everything.

He reached for me again—no urgency, just the kind of quiet touch meant to steady.

“You need to understand something,” he said. “This mark means the castle sees you not just as a guest, not even as a catalyst. It sees you as... essential.”

“Essential to what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve seen marks like this once before. And it never chose lightly.”

I looked down at the sigil on my skin. It shimmered, faint and constant, like a magic that wasn’t asking for permission anymore.

“Then I guess I don’t get to be neutral anymore,” I said softly.

“You never were.”

We stood in silence for a long moment.

I could feel it again—that quiet thrum of something beneath the castle’s foundation. Waiting. Breathing.

The seal had claimed me.

The question now was whether I still belonged to myself.

POV Switch: Theron

After Delphine left, I stood alone in the observatory with the echo of her magic still clinging to my sleeves.

I could feel the mark she bore like a second heartbeat in the air.

The castle had claimed her.

No ward, no spell, no barrier would remove that now. Not without consequences. Not without destroying her. The bond was etched too deeply. It wasn’t just a magical marking—it was a living anchor, tying her to the castle’s foundation. A signature of intent.

And I’d seen one before.

Only once.

It had appeared on the last Ashwood. Days before she walked willingly into the seal chamber and closed the curse behind her.

Not because she wanted to.

Because the magic stopped giving her a choice.

Valesa joined me without knocking. She never did, not when things were falling apart.

“She showed you?” she asked.

I nodded.

Valesa moved to the window, watching the distant shimmer of the East Wing tower. “And how much did you tell her?”

“Not everything.”

“She deserves everything.”

“She deserves peace.”

Valesa turned to me slowly. “Then you shouldn’t have let her stay.”

I sat down at the edge of the war table, my hand braced against the edge. “I didn’t know it would go this far.”

“You did,” she said, not unkindly. “You just hoped it wouldn’t.”

I didn’t argue.

She joined me, folding her hands in front of her. “The castle hasn’t marked anyone in a hundred and thirty years. Not since her. Not since we carved the seal and gave it a name and a body to bind it to.”

“I remember.”

“You buried her, Theron. You said you wouldn’t let it happen again.”

I looked at her. “I meant it.”

Valesa’s eyes softened, but her voice didn’t. “Then you need to decide—soon. If the castle keeps adapting around her, it won’t just choose her. It will become her.”

“And if I stand in the way?”

She was silent for a long time.

Then: “You won’t survive it. And neither will she.”

I looked down at the map. The leyline threads had begun to blur at the center, curling gently toward one point like vines toward sunlight.

Her mark hadn’t just bound her to the castle.

It had made her the center of it.

And the castle was already beginning to rewrite itself around her shape.