The tears keep falling, and I don't bother stopping them. They trace hot paths down my cheeks, drip onto my hands where they're twisted in my lap. Aeliana. Theron. Names that should have been lullabies, battle cries, the shape of a childhood I never got to have. Instead they're just words, heavy and foreign in my mouth, belonging to ghosts I'll never meet.
The wood stove ticks as it cools. Somewhere in the walls, a pipe groans. These small, mundane sounds feel obscene—how dare the world keep running when mine just tilted off its axis?
I'm still crying when I feel it.
A warmth spreads from the hollow of my throat, slow and deliberate, like honey poured over ice. The locket. It's been cold against my skin since Kaelen handed it over, a dead weight, a relic. Now it's warming, a gentle throb that syncs with my pulse until I can't tell where my heartbeat ends and its heat begins.
I try to ignore it. Focus on breathing. On the rough wool of the quilt beneath my palms. On Kaelen's voice as he starts talking again—something about a job, a delivery he was supposed to make tonight, someone who'll be waiting.
The warmth deepens. Presses harder against my breastbone.
"—and the package needs to reach the depot before mid—"
It's hot now. Uncomfortably hot, a coiled fist of heat against my skin. I press my palm over the locket through my shirt, and the heat seeps through the fabric, stinging my fingers.
"Kaelen." My voice comes out raw, scraped clean of everything but recognition. "What did you say this locket did, exactly?"
He stops mid-sentence.
His hands freeze where they were wiping grease from a rag, fingers suspended, stained dark against the white fabric. His hazel eyes lock onto my chest—onto the faint, pearlescent glow bleeding through the worn silk of my shirt.
The room goes still.
Sera's head snaps up from where she'd been slouched against the wall, her winter-sea eyes narrowing, sharpening, fixing on the same light. "Rowan. Your—your chest is glowing."
"I noticed." My voice is steadier than I feel. A lie. I'm shaking. The locket pulses against my palm, a rhythm that isn't quite mine settling into my ribs, and I feel something stir beneath the silver—a pressure, a presence, a word forming in the dark of my chest.
Kaelen sets down the rag. He moves slowly, deliberately, the way you'd approach a wild animal that might bolt. His moss-green face is pale beneath the glow, his horns catching the light as he leans forward.
"Show me," he says. Not a command. A request, soft and careful. "Rowan. Show me the locket."
My fingers close around the chain. The metal is warm, almost hot, and I pull it over my head with hands that won't stop trembling. The locket falls into my palm, and I gasp.
It's hot enough to sting.
The silver disc isn't cold anymore. It's warm, pulsing with a light that seeps through the metal, through the seams, through the careful engraving of the thorn tree. The glow is soft, pearlescent, like moonlight through fog.
And it's beating.
A rhythm. Slow. Steady. A heartbeat that isn't mine.
"By the old roots," Kaelen breathes. His voice cracks, ancient and raw. "She's reaching for you."
The words land into silence. Heavy. Final.
"Who?" I ask, but I already know. I feel it in my chest, in the recognition that thrums through my bones. "My mother?"
Kaelen doesn't answer. He's staring at the locket, at the light bleeding between my fingers, and there's something in his eyes I haven't seen before. Wonder. Fear. Grief, old and deep as riverbeds.
"The locket was never just a keepsake." His voice is barely a whisper. "Aeliana was one of the most powerful fae to ever live. Her magic was woven into the wards that protected you, yes—but she put something else into that silver."
"What?" My throat is tight. "Kaelen, what did she put in here?"
"Herself."
Sera moves before I can respond, pushing off the wall and crossing the small room in three quick strides. "What do you mean, herself? Like, a piece of her soul? Her consciousness?"
"A memory." Kaelen's eyes don't leave the locket. "A message. A piece of her magic, dormant until Rowan's own power woke." He finally looks at me, and his gaze is heavy, weighted with decades. "She knew you might not survive. She knew the assassins would hunt you. She left you a way to find her, to hear her voice, even from beyond the veil."
The locket thrums in my hand. Hotter now. Almost too hot to hold.
"It's trying to open," I whisper.
"Then let it."
"Kaelen." Sera's voice cuts sharp. "We don't know what that will do. What if it shatters the remnant wards entirely? What if it draws the assassins straight to us?"
"The assassins already know she exists." His voice is calm, but there's steel beneath it. "The wards are already cracked. And Aeliana's magic is not a weapon—it's a gift. The last gift she could give her daughter."
I look down at the locket in my palm. The glow is brighter now, pulsing in time with my heart, and I feel it pulling at something deep in my chest. A thread, a cord, a bridge forming between the silver and the place where my magic lives.
"Sera." I meet her eyes. "I have to know."
Her jaw tightens. Her silver-blue hair catches the light as she shakes her head, but she doesn't argue. She just moves closer, positioning herself between me and the door, her hand dropping to the knife in her boot.
"Then do it fast," she says. "And if something goes wrong, I'm pulling you out."
I nod. Turn back to the locket.
The pressure in my chest builds, a word forming on my tongue, a name I almost remember. I focus on the heat, on the pulse, on the light bleeding through the seams. I let my magic rise to meet it—the golden warmth I felt when I healed Sera, the power that cracked the wards and woke the dead.
The locket answers.
The heat spikes. The light flares, bright enough to make me squint, and I feel something *push* against the inside of the silver. A pressure, like a hand pressing against a door from the other side.
The seam splits.
A whisper of sound, soft as a breath, as the locket opens.
Light spills out, liquid and warm, pooling in my palm, and I feel a presence settle around me like a blanket. Familiar. Safe. A scent rises from the silver: night-blooming jasmine and old parchment, wood smoke and rain.
A voice.
Faint. Distant. Like it's traveling through a long tunnel, arriving at the end of a dream I never knew I was having.
"Rowan."
My name. Spoken not in my head, but in the air, in the room, in the space between heartbeats. A woman's voice, warm and clear and achingly familiar, like a lullaby I heard a thousand times in the womb.
"My daughter."
I can't breathe. I can't move. The light in my palm is a small sun, and I can feel her—feel her magic, her presence, the shape of a woman I never got to know.
"I'm here, Rowan. I'm here."
Kaelen's lips part, his voice barely a whisper. "She's reaching for you."
The words land into silence.
The light in my palm flickers, dims, then steadies—a small sun cradled in my cupped hands. The voice fades, retreating like a tide pulling back from shore, but the presence remains. I feel it wrapped around me, warm and familiar, the ghost of an embrace I never got to receive.
The locket lies open in my hand, its two halves splayed like a book. Inside, where I expected a portrait or a lock of hair, there's nothing but light. A tiny sphere of gold, no bigger than a pearl, pulsing with a rhythm that matches my own heartbeat.
I can't look away from it. Can't breathe past the weight pressing against my ribs.
"She's in there." My voice doesn't sound like mine—too thin, too young, too raw. "My mother is actually in there."
Kaelen moves closer, his heavy boots silent on the worn floorboards. He doesn't reach for the locket, doesn't try to take it from me. He just stands there, his hazel eyes fixed on the light, his moss-green face etched with something I can't name.
"Aeliana was a weaver," he says, his voice low and careful. "One of the most gifted the Thornheart line ever produced. She could thread magic through anything—metal, stone, flesh, bone. The locket was her final work."
The light pulses again, and I feel it resonate in my chest, a sympathetic vibration that makes my ribs ache. The golden warmth I summoned to heal Sera stirs in response, rising to meet the locket's call like a hand reaching for another in the dark.
"Can she hear me?" I ask. "Can she—can I talk to her?"
Kaelen's pause is heavy. "I don't know. The magic she wove into that silver is older than any spell I've encountered. I've never seen one activate, never heard of one speaking." He shakes his head slowly, his horns catching the lamplight. "You're the first Thornheart to wake a remnant in three centuries."
The warmth in my palm intensifies, and I feel the golden sphere pulse again—stronger this time, more insistent. The light flickers, and for a moment, I swear I see something move inside it. A shape. A shadow. The suggestion of a face.
"Mom?" The word slips out before I can stop it, small and broken, a child's word for a woman I never knew. "Can you hear me?"
The light flares once, bright enough to make me blink, and then settles back to its steady pulse. No voice. No answer. But the presence tightens around me, warmer now, almost urgent, and I feel a single word press against the edge of my consciousness.
Daughter.
Not spoken aloud. Not even a voice in my head. Just the feeling of the word, the shape of it, the weight of a mother's love condensed into a single syllable.
I gasp. The locket trembles in my hand, and the golden sphere begins to spin—slowly at first, then faster, a whirlpool of light that draws my gaze deeper, deeper, until the room falls away and all I can see is the glow.
"Rowan." Sera's voice cuts through, sharp and worried. "Rowan, your eyes—"
I can't respond. The light is pulling at something inside me, a thread I didn't know was there, and I feel myself falling —not physically, but somewhere deeper, somewhere else. The locket's warmth floods through my palm, up my arm, into my chest, and I taste jasmine on my tongue and hear rain falling on distant leaves.
For a moment—a breath, a heartbeat, an eternity—I'm not in Kaelen's room anymore.
I'm standing in a garden. Moonlight spills through silver leaves, and the air is thick with the scent of night-blooming flowers. A woman stands before me, her back turned, her copper hair falling in waves down her spine. She's wearing a dress the color of autumn leaves, and she's humming—a soft, wordless melody that makes my chest ache with a grief I can't name.
She turns.
Her face is mine. Older, softer, lined with sorrow and strength, but unmistakably mine. The same storm-grey eyes, the same stubborn jaw, the same wild copper curls. She looks at me, and her lips part, and I see tears tracking down her cheeks.
"Rowan." Her voice is the one I heard from the locket, warm and clear and breaking. "You found me."
I try to speak, try to move, but I'm frozen, caught in the vision like a fly in amber. She steps closer, and I smell jasmine and wood smoke, and her hand rises to cup my cheek.
Her touch is warm. Real.
"I don't have much time," she says, and her voice is urgent now, desperate. "The remnant is fragile, and the wards are breaking. Listen to me, my daughter. Listen carefully."
I nod, or try to. My throat is too tight for words.
"You are hunted. The same assassins who killed me, who killed your father, who destroyed our court—they've found you. They'll keep coming. They won't stop until the Thornheart line is erased from existence." Her grip on my face tightens. "But you are not alone. Kaelen will guide you. Sera will stand with you. And there are others—allies I planted in the shadows, waiting for the signal that a Thornheart heir had awakened."
"What signal?" The words tear out of me, raw and desperate. "How do I find them?"
Her eyes search mine, and I see something flicker in their depths—fear, hope, love so vast it threatens to drown me. "The locket is a key. Not just to my memory, but to the vault beneath the Thornheart estate. Everything you need is there—spells, weapons, documents, the truth of what happened the night I died." She leans closer, her forehead pressing against mine. "But the vault is warded. It will only open for Thornheart blood, freely given, and only when the moon is dark."
The vision flickers. The garden begins to dissolve at the edges, the moonlight fading, the scent of jasmine thinning.
"No—wait—"
"I love you, Rowan." Her voice is already distant, retreating, a whisper carried on a dying wind. "I have always loved you. I never stopped watching over you. And I will be with you, in every step you take, in every choice you make, until the very end."
Her hand slips from my cheek.
The garden shatters.
I'm back in Kaelen's room, gasping, my hand clamped around the locket so hard the edges bite into my palm. Sera is kneeling in front of me, her winter-sea eyes wide, her hands gripping my shoulders. Kaelen stands behind her, his face unreadable, his hands clenched at his sides.
"Rowan." Sera's voice is sharp, grounding. "Rowan, come back. You're here. You're safe."
I blink. The locket is closed in my hand, the light faded, the metal cool against my skin. But the warmth of my mother's touch lingers on my cheek, and her words echo in my skull like a bell that won't stop ringing.
"I saw her." My voice cracks. "I saw my mother."
Sera's grip tightens. "What did she say?"
I look down at the locket in my palm. It's still now, quiet, dormant. But I know—I know —it's not empty. She's in there, waiting, watching, her love pressed into the silver like a prayer.
"She said there's a vault," I whisper. "Beneath the Thornheart estate. And that I need to find it before the assassins find me."