Moonlight pooled on the polished floorboards of the library wing as Irene traced the faded runes of the prophecy scroll with a trembling finger. The parchment crackled beneath her palm—the same brittle voice that had warned of fractured blood and a husband's betrayal. Tonight, the words felt less like distant omen and more like a ledger of her husband's hidden debts.
A quiet step in the hallway stole her gaze. Daemon appeared at the archway, framed in shadow. His eyes glinted with restrained alarm, the ember hue flickering in the lantern light. He closed the distance on silent feet, though every measured breath betrayed the worry he carried like a blade at his back.
"You shouldn't be here, Ire," he said, voice low and rough as desert wind. He stood beside her but did not reach for the scroll.
"I should," Irene replied, wrapping her arms around the ancient text. "This prophecy haunts our family. It names me, it names our children. It names you." Her gaze did not waver. "Why did you hide the part about your mother's involvement? Your father's warnings?" She gestures to the text.
Daemon's jaw tightened. He folded one gauntleted hand over the table. "Dae-... King and Queen Daemon are long dead. My father's warnings are burned with him. And my mother... What remains are just rumors."
"Rumors written in this ink," she pressed, flipping the scroll to the margin where a second hand had sketched a horned silhouette. "You told me the prophecy began with an angel deceived by love. But here—" she tapped the sketch "—it names a guide who speaks for demons, and a warnings poet. The demon king. Your father."
He inhaled, as if drawing courage from the stale air. "That hand is my blood, but not mine too, and you know that," he said. "I found this scroll in the citadel archives, years before I met you. Father said I should keep it."
Irene leaned closer, the scent of jasmine from her chamber drifting in. "Yet you claimed you'd never heard prophecy speak your name."
He turned away, the candlelight outlining the sigil carved beneath his cloak. "I feared its power," he admitted, though his voice cracked at the last word. "I feared what belief in it might demand of us. Of me."
"Fear demands nothing," Irene said softly. "It only convinces us to look away." She reached for his arm, but he slipped from her grasp and paced toward the window, where the valley slumbered under a quilt of mist.
Daemon's reflection fractured in the glass. He looked simultaneously at the peaceful night and the threat lurking within it. "I did what I thought necessary to protect you—to protect them," he whispered. "Some truths are weapons that cut both protector and prey."
Irene's chest tightened. "Then tell me which part I must defend and which part I must slay, please? Show me the edge of your secret so I can guard it, or I will find it on my own—and you know I will."
He bowed his head, the weight of every unspoken betrayal settling on his shoulders. When he spoke again, his voice was fragile as smoke. "The prophecy names a key hidden in our daughter's first born name. It marks Ellina as both fulcrum and fault line. And it also marks Allisiario as the next heir."
Her heart stuttered. "Then you feared naming it aloud would unleash consequences none of us could stand."
He met her eyes at last, amber coals shining with remorse. "Yes. And yet every moment I hoped you would ask anyway."
Irene folded the scroll and tucked it into her robes. "I am asking." She stepped toward him, resolute and mild—two forces he had once believed irreconcilable. "Teach me the rest. Show me the truth before war drags us blind."
Daemon hesitated as thunder rolled in the distance, though the sky was still clear. Then he exhaled and guided her hand to the hidden latch in the bookshelf. A secret alcove swung open to reveal more scrolls, each bound in demon-hide and sealed with celestial wax.
As she reached for the nearest tome, Irene felt the chill of revelation—and the promise that knowledge, once unbarred, could no longer be contained. The hush between them was both a truce and a thunderclap: she would not relent until every shadow of his past lay bare. And Daemon, at last, would have to decide whether truth could redeem the betrayals he'd once thought necessary.