Rowan's hand hovered over the vessel. The heat coming off it was wrong — not fire-hot, but warm like living skin, like something breathing. Her fingers trembled inches above the surface, and she could feel the pulse of it traveling up through the air, through her arm, settling somewhere behind her ribs.

"I don't know what this is," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Kaelen didn't answer. She could feel his gaze on her, heavy and patient. The apothecary was absolutely still — no creak of the old building, no rustle of dried herbs, no sound from Sera, who stood somewhere behind her, holding her breath.

The symbols on the vessel pulsed faster.

Rowan's jaw tightened. Her palm was sweating. The sea-glass pendant lay cool and still against her chest, doing nothing to quiet the hum under her ribs that was building now, rising from a whisper to a thrum.

Rowan let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Her fingers stopped shaking — or maybe she just stopped noticing. Her hand lowered.

The first contact was cold.

Then the world dropped away.

It wasn't like falling. It was like the floor opened beneath her and the room was yanked upward, leaving her suspended in nothing. No sound. No air. No body. Just the silver light, flooding her vision from every direction at once, pouring into her eyes, her mouth, her lungs, filling every hollow space in her skull until she couldn't tell where the light ended and she began.

Then shapes.

Marble floor, cold and white, slick with something dark. Blood. It spread in wide arcs, pooling between her feet, and she realized she was standing on it — no, not standing, floating, watching from above. The throne room stretched in every direction, vast and impossibly tall, its pillars cracked, its tapestries hanging in blackened shreds. A throne sat at the far end, carved from something pale, its armrests stained red.

And across the hall, a woman.

She had a wild, unforgettable presence. Copper curls tumbled over her shoulders, framing eyes that were a fierce storm-grey. The same grey Rowan stared back at in the mirror every morning, now looking at her through a memory that felt far too heavy to carry.

The woman stared directly at her.

Not through her. Not past her. At her.

Her lips moved. Rowan felt the shape of her own name before she heard it, vibrating through the silver light like a bell being struck.

Rowan.

She tried to move. Her body wouldn't obey. She tried to speak. Her throat was full of light.

The woman took a step forward. The blood on the floor didn't ripple around her feet. It stayed flat, undisturbed, as if she wasn't touching it at all. Her mouth kept moving — Rowan, run, Rowan, listen, Rowan—

Then the silver fire came.

It erupted from nothing — from the walls, from the floor, from the woman's chest — a roar of incandescent light that swallowed the throne room whole. The heat hit first, searing and absolute, and Rowan felt her skin blister, felt her hair singe, felt the air in her lungs turn to steam—

She jerked back.

The world snapped into place like a rubber band.

Her back hit the chair hard enough to knock the breath out of her. The vessel clattered onto the table, spinning once, twice, before coming to a stop. Its symbols were dark. Dead. Nothing pulsed. Nothing hummed. It was just a piece of carved stone now, cold and silent.

Rowan's chest heaved. She couldn't get enough air. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white, her heart slamming against her ribs so hard she thought she might crack open.

Her palm stung.

She looked down.

A thin silver line traced her lifeline from wrist to the base of her index finger, pulsing with a faint, steady glow. It looked like the symbols on the vessel, like the script she couldn't read carved into someone's skin. She watched, frozen, as it pulsed once — twice — then sank under her skin, disappearing into the layers of her palm like water into sand.

Gone.

Her palm was unmarked. Clean. Normal.

She stared at it anyway, breathing hard, her ears ringing, the ghost of silver fire still hot behind her eyes.

The vessel sat between her and Kaelen, dark and empty. Whatever it had been holding, whatever had lived in those pulsing symbols, was gone now.

She looked at Kaelen.

His face was unreadable. His hands rested flat on the table, fingers splayed, the wooden beads around his neck catching the low light. He didn't speak. He just watched her, his hazel eyes tracking the way her chest rose and fell, the way her fingers trembled against the wood, the way she couldn't stop staring at her own palm.

"What," Rowan said. Her voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. "What the fuck was that."

It wasn't a question. It came out flat and hard, the way she'd learned to talk when the world stopped making sense, when she needed answers and she needed them now.

Kaelen's jaw worked. He leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning under his weight, and let out a long, slow breath.

"That," he said, "was a memory."

"A memory."

"Your mother's. Or the court's. Or both." He gestured at the vessel. "They built it to hold what mattered — moments, warnings, the truth of what happened. It recognized you the moment you walked in. And now it has given you what it carried."

Rowan's hand clenched into a fist. The silver line was gone, but she could still feel it under her skin, a faint warmth, a ghost of a pulse where no pulse should be.

"She looked like me."

"She was your mother."

The words hit like a punch to the chest. Rowan had never had a mother — not really. She had Eleanor, the woman who raised her, who held her when she cried and made her soup when she was sick and never once told her she was fae. But the woman in the vision, the one with the copper curls and the storm-grey eyes, the one who had stared at her through the silver fire and mouthed her name like a prayer — that was something else. That was bone-level recognition. That was the shape of a ghost she hadn't known she was carrying.

"She was trying to tell me something." Rowan's voice was hoarse. "Before the fire—she was saying my name. She wanted me to do something."

Kaelen's expression flickered. Something passed behind his eyes — grief, maybe, or knowledge he didn't want to share.

"The vessel's memories are fragmented. It held what it could before the court fell. What you saw may not be complete."

"Bullshit."

He blinked.

Rowan leaned forward, her knuckles white on the table. "That was not a fragmented memory. She looked at me. She knew I was there. She was talking to me."

"Rowan—"

"No." Her voice cut through the apothecary, sharp and raw. "I have spent my whole life not knowing things. Not knowing what I am. Not knowing why I feel wrong in my own skin. Not knowing why I dream of a man with amber eyes and a scar on his brow. And now I'm supposed to accept that the one time something actually gives me an answer, it's incomplete?"

Sera moved behind her. Rowan heard the soft crunch of boots on the wooden floor, felt the weight of her friend's presence at her back.

"Row." Sera's voice was low, careful. "You need to breathe."

"I don't want to fucking breathe. I want to know what she was trying to tell me."

Kaelen held her gaze. His face was unreadable, but his eyes were old, and tired, and full of something that looked almost like recognition.

"Then you need to learn," he said quietly. "The vessel gave you more than a vision. The mark on your palm — that is a bond. A thread. It ties you to the magic that lived in that court. It will help you control what surges inside you, but only if you learn to use it."

Rowan looked down at her unmarked palm. She flexed her fingers. The skin was smooth, unbroken. But she could feel it — a faint thrum, a warmth that didn't belong to her body, a presence brushing against the edges of her consciousness like a hand reaching out in the dark.

She hated it.

She hated the way it felt like being invaded. She hated the way her power didn't ask, didn't wait, didn't care that she had never asked for any of this. And most of all, she hated the way a small, buried part of her — the part she didn't want to examine — felt something else. Something that wasn't hate at all.

Something that felt like hunger.

"Dorian Ashvale," Rowan said. The name tasted strange in her mouth, foreign and heavy, like a stone she couldn't swallow.

Kaelen nodded slowly.

"He is waiting for you. He will train you. But you must understand," he said, leaning forward, his voice dropping, "that his help comes at a cost. He is an incubus. He does not give without taking."

"What kind of cost?"

Kaelen's eyes flickered to Sera, then back to Rowan. "He wants you to owe him a favor. And incubus favors are not given lightly."

Rowan's chest tightened. She thought of the woman in the vision, the silver fire, the sound of her own name on lips that had been dead for twenty-four years.

"I don't care," she said. "Whatever he wants, I'll pay it. I need to understand what I am."

Kaelen's face was somber. "You may come to regret those words."

"I already regret everything about tonight. What's one more thing on the pile."

Sera's hand landed on her shoulder. Warm. Solid. Grounding. Rowan didn't shrug it off.

"We should go," Sera said. "The longer we wait, the more time the assassins have to find us."

Rowan pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt unsteady, the world tilting slightly around her. The vision had taken something out of her — some reserve she hadn't known she was drawing from — and she could feel it in the hollow ache behind her ribs, in the faint tremor in her hands.

The vessel sat on the table, dark and silent. She couldn't bring herself to touch it again.

Kaelen stood as well, his large frame unfolding from the chair. He walked to the counter, his hooves clicking softly against the wood, and pulled something from a drawer — a small leather pouch, tied with a silver cord.

"Take this," he said, holding it out. "It will help you stay hidden until you reach Dorian."

Rowan took it. The pouch was warm, heavier than it looked, and she could feel something shifting inside it — not liquid, not solid, something in between.

"What is it?"

"Dust from the first court's gates. Another kingdom, long fallen. It carries old magic, old protection. Sprinkle it on your clothes before you cross any threshold tonight."

Rowan tucked the pouch into her jacket pocket. "Thanks."

"Do not thank me yet." Kaelen's eyes met hers. "The path you are walking is lined with bones. Yours may be among them."

She should have felt afraid. Maybe she was, somewhere deep, where she kept the things she couldn't look at. But right now, all she felt was the warmth under her palm, the memory of silver fire behind her eyes, and the hungry edge of a question she would not stop until she answered.

"Where do I find him?" she asked.

Kaelen smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly what she was walking into and had chosen not to warn her.

"He will find you."