The defiance in the Crucible had consequences, but not the ones Prince David had hoped for. It drew a sharper, more calculating gaze.
King Bertram did not summon them to a throne room. Instead, he appeared at one of their weekly "consultations" with Jonas and Maria, his presence seeming to condense the light in the family's cavern suite. He was an older, more formidable version of Rhys, his pale eyes holding the glacial patience of the mountain itself.
"Your daughter has spirit," he said, his voice a soft abrasion in the quiet room. He ignored Kaitlyn, speaking about her as if she were a painting on the wall. "Spirit, however, is directionless force. It requires a mold. Gareth's methods are... traditional. Perhaps a more nuanced approach is warranted."
His "nuanced approach" was a manipulation so subtle it felt like a change in gravity. The twins' schedules were abruptly altered. Gareth's brutal solo sessions for Kaitlyn ceased. Instead, they were assigned "tactical partnership" exercises with other wards.
Erik was paired with Morgan.
It was a masterstroke. Morgan, fiercely competitive and disdainful of the Dyad's "unnatural" bond, was the perfect counter to Erik's analytical calm. She attacked every problem with aggressive, individualistic brilliance, refusing to collaborate, verbally dismantling his ideas for being "over-complicated" and "weak." Their sessions were a cold war of clashing methodologies, leaving Erik frustrated and isolated from his usual synergy with Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn, meanwhile, was assigned to Prince David's personal strategy unit.
It was a gilded torture chamber. David, now playing the magnanimous future-king, used the sessions to showcase his "leadership," constantly placing Kaitlyn in subordinate, no-win scenarios in war-game simulations. He would then "save" the scenario with a flourish, demonstrating her supposed need for his guidance. Arthur was often in these sessions, forced to watch silently, his jaw tight. The air between the three of them was a live wire of unspoken tension and simmering rage.
The kingdom wasn't just trying to separate the twins; it was trying to recast their entire support system, making Morgan an antagonist and David an inescapable fixture.
---
While the twins navigated this new, psychological battlefield, Jonas and Maria found their own purpose. Barred from the training floors, they turned their attention to the one enemy everyone agreed on: Morwen.
Using their limited access to the citadel's immense archives, and leveraging Maria's knack for eliciting gossip during "tourist" outings with other high-status guests, they began to piece together histories. They weren't looking for battle tactics; they were looking for biography.
The trail was cold, deliberately so. But in a restricted genealogy scroll, Maria found a striking anomaly. Listed among the "Acquired Wards & Their Progeny" from roughly forty years prior was a single, redacted entry. The reason for acquisition was stated as: "Cessation of Hostile Line: Witch of the Black Birch." The ward's name was scratched out, but the listed child of that ward was not: Rebekah of the Glowing Hand.
Maria stared at the parchment, the fine hairs on her arms rising. Witch of the Black Birch. One of Morwen's epithets. Cessation of Hostile Line. Not eradication. Acquisition.
She cross-referenced with healer rolls. Rebekah had entered the citadel's service as a junior mage-apprentice... around the time she would have been a young teenager. The timeline fit.
That evening, watching Erik return from a frustrating session with Morgan, his shoulders tense, Maria felt a new layer of cold dread settle over her. Mills had met him at the door with a sympathetic smile and a cool drink. The girl's kindness was genuine, Maria knew that in her soul. But the bloodline...
"Jonas," she whispered that night in the dark of their sleeping nook. "Becky. She's not just a healer. She's Morwen's daughter. Mills is her granddaughter."
Jonas was silent for a long moment, the only sound the distant hum of the mountain. "That means the kingdom didn't just defeat Morwen's attack all those years ago. They stole her heir. They broke her line by absorbing it."
"Which makes Morwen's hatred personal. It's not just about a prophecy or a hunter bloodline. It's about theft and vengeance." Maria's mind raced. "And our son is growing fond of the stolen heiress's daughter."
Jonas's hand found hers, his grip warm and tight. "We can't tell him. Not yet. It would destroy whatever trust we have with Mills and Becky, and they might be the only decent people in this rock. But we watch. Closely."
---
Kaitlyn's rebellion took a different, more direct path. Chafing under David's smug control and desperate for a way to blow off steam outside of supervised sessions, she began exploring the citadel's lower depths alone, using the chaos-signature technique she and Erik had developed to blur herself from casual scrying.
It was on one of these illicit excursions that she saw Morgan.
The other girl was moving with a purpose Kaitlyn had never seen in the training halls—not aggression, but a tense, almost fearful determination. She slipped through a half-hidden maintenance door behind the geothermal forges, into a region of the mountain marked on maps as "Geological Stabilisation - Restricted."
Curiosity overriding caution, Kaitlyn followed.
The path led down, down, past the roar of the forges into a deeper, colder silence. The air grew sharp with the scent of ozone and something else… a sterile, chemical smell. They entered a chamber that was no natural cavern. It was a lab. Smooth, manufactured walls housed complex, glowing apparatus. And in the centre, illuminated by a pale, frosty light, stood a cylindrical glass pod.
Inside, suspended in a gel of shimmering ice, was a woman.
She looked young, perhaps in her late teens. Her features were delicate, her hair a dark cloud floating around a face of serene, frozen beauty. She wore a simple grey shift. Tubes and filaments ran from the pod into the machinery, monitoring… something. Life? Stasis?
Morgan stood before the pod, her back to Kaitlyn. Her usual proud posture was gone. She was curled in on herself, one hand pressed lightly against the cold glass. The raw, unguarded anguish on her reflection in the pod was staggering.
Kaitlyn must have made a sound—a sharp intake of breath.
Morgan whirled, her face transforming from grief to feral panic in an instant. "You!" she hissed, the word echoing in the sterile chamber. "You followed me!"
"Who is she?" Kaitlyn asked, her voice low, more awed than accusatory.
"That is none of your business, Dyad," Morgan spat, stepping between Kaitlyn and the pod as if to shield it. "This place doesn't exist. You were never here."
"Morgan, what is this? Is she a prisoner?"
"Get out!" Morgan's voice cracked. She advanced, not with her usual martial grace, but with the desperate menace of a cornered animal. Her eyes were wild. "If you breathe a word of this to the king, to Rhys, to anyone, I swear on my life and on everything I have left, you will lose that precious link between you and your brother forever. I will make it my life's work. Do you understand? I will unmake you."
The threat was not an empty boast. It was a vow, carved from a place of such profound terror and love that it chilled Kaitlyn to the bone. This was not the rival from the training floor. This was a girl guarding a secret so deep it had become the core of her being.
Kaitlyn held up her hands, taking a step back. "Alright. I'm going. I saw nothing."
She retreated, feeling Morgan's burning, terrified gaze on her back until she rounded the corner. The image of the frozen girl, and Morgan's shattered face, was seared into her mind.
That night, in the steam-chamber during their secret practice, she told Erik, Arthur, and Mills everything.
Erik listened, his analyst's mind turning the puzzle over. "A secret prisoner. Morgan's reaction suggests a deep personal connection. A sister? A lover? Someone the kingdom doesn't want known."
Arthur's face had gone grim. "I've heard rumors. Of... failed experiments. Of powerful beings the king couldn't control, so he preserved them. For study. Or for parts."
Mills looked sick. "My mother... she's asked never to be assigned to the deep stabilization units. She said the magic there was... wrong."
Kaitlyn looked at her friends—the ward, the healer's daughter, her brother. Their secret alliance now held a dangerous new piece of the citadel's hidden architecture. It wasn't just a cage. It was a museum of stolen lives and frozen secrets.
And Morgan, their rival, was perhaps the most trapped of all.
The web within the mountain was far more tangled, and far more personal, than they had ever imagined. They were no longer just fighting for their freedom. They were stumbling into a hidden war that had been raging in the citadel's heart long before they arrived.