The sound came in the middle of the third hour past midnight. Soft, as if it was not meant to be heard.
Caelin sat up straight on the velvet chaise, the book of Veilmark fragments sliding from her lap. The moonlight spilled cold across the floor, and the embers in the hearth cracked in protest. There it was again, like movement of fabric. Measured.
Not a servant.
Not friendly.
Lurking.
Anticipation.
She reached for the dagger hidden beneath the cushion—a gift from her disgraced mother, passed down in pieces and shame. She held it backward in her palm, breath slow and careful.
Aren, who she thought was still asleep on the couch adjacent to her position, was up and at the door before she could move any further.
No hesitation. No warning.
His sword was already halfway unsheathed.
"Get behind me," he said, low and tight.
But the hallway was empty.
No one stood on the landing.
Except—
"Down!" Aren shouted.
The arrow hit the doorframe where Caelin's head had been, splintering oak and embedding itself in the spine of her fallen book.
She dropped to the floor as Aren charged out into the corridor, blade drawn, cloak flaring like shadowed wings. Caelin crawled to the edge and peeked just in time to see him vanish around the corner.
Then, silence.
Not the safe kind.
The wrong kind—the kind that wrapped around your neck and waited to tighten.
---
Caelin crept into the hall, dagger ready, following the distant sound of footfalls and echoing clangs. Her slippers barely made a sound as she passed the royal tapestries, each one depicting a century of false glory.
She turned the corner.
And froze.
Aren was locked in combat with a masked figure—lean, fast, in robes of pale ash. Not just an assassin. A Wraithborn.
Caelin had read about them. Monks who'd sworn to the Oath's silence centuries ago. Their tongues were cut. Their names erased. They lived only to preserve the pact.
Even if it meant killing for it.
The Wraithborn spun, curved blades flashing silver in the dark, but Aren met each strike with brutal precision. She couldn't see his face—only the dance of light on steel, the rhythm of defense becoming offense.
And then the Wraithborn turned toward her.
She lifted the dagger—
—and dropped it as a searing heat exploded in her chest.
Not pain. Memory.
Not her own.
---
A field. Blood-soaked. Voices screaming in a language she'd never learned but somehow understood.
A figure—Aren—kneeling before a stone, palm outstretched. A voice says, "You will forget, or you will burn."
He whispers: "Then let me burn."
---
Caelin collapsed against the wall, gasping. The vision faded just as Aren drove his sword through the Wraithborn's chest. The assassin slumped wordlessly to the floor, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth agape behind their mask.
Aren turned toward her. His brow was furrowed—not in panic, but recognition.
"You saw something," he said.
She nodded, heart pounding. "You were—different. Younger. You remembered something. And I—I felt it."
His lips pressed into a grim line.
"I didn't remember it," he said. "You did."
---
They dragged the body to the hidden chamber behind the east wall—an old escape route from the palace's darker years. Caelin sat slumped, breathing hard, while Aren wiped blood from his blade.
"I thought the Wraithborn were a myth," she whispered.
Aren sheathed his sword.
"Everything's a myth," he muttered. "Until it tries to kill you."
Caelin looked at him. "What are you, Aren?"
His silence was a door that wouldn't open.
She swallowed. "If you don't start telling me the truth, we're going to die with the rest of the fools still clinging to fairy tales."
Aren didn't respond at first.
But when he finally met her eyes, the walls around him cracked just a little.
"I'm the thing the Oath was designed to bury."