Page 101 of Severed Heir

I turned to leave, but Amria’s hand caught my elbow, her grip featherlight but firm.

“Your brother… he was the Seeker, wasn’t he?” Her eyes drifted to the bookshelf behind Archer’s desk. “The one whose words line his study?”

I froze.

“They burned his writings,” I said quietly. “At least, that’s what Archer told me.”

“Perhaps not all,” she murmured. “He kept what he could. The prison wouldn’t need much reason to execute him if they found these.”

My heart pounded. Archer had said Klaus’s journals were gone.

“Maybe,” she whispered, “they were never meant to be burned. Maybe someone only said they were. A Seeker, perhaps. Maybe they were waiting, for you to be the one to decide.”

I reached for the spines. These were Klaus’s words. His stories of an untold future. And Archer had kept them.

“I have to burn them,” I whispered.

Flame sparked from my fingertips as I struck the first book. The fire curled around the pages. I didn’t read a single line. I couldn’t.

The parchment cracked and folded in on itself. Ink bled into fire. Klaus’s thoughts vanished before they could ever reach me.

Gods, did I ever want to read them.

If Malvoria found out Archer had kept them, Amria was right, it would end badly. Klaus had trusted him. And Archer had trusted me to finish what he couldn’t. Maybe he hadn’t been strong enough to do it himself.

“Charles killed him,” I murmured. “But this... this is worse.”

She nodded once. “This was necessary.”

I burned every last page, smoke curling up the chimney until nothing remained but ash. Then I turned and walked away. Outside, the night churned wild and deep. Stars scattered like loose threads across the sky. I stepped into it.

Behind me, the land glowed with new borders of flame. Every home in Demetria was warm now. Safe. Even in his absence. Even in mine.

Naraic waited near the cliff’s edge. I ran a hand over his snout, and his pearl scales shimmered beneath the starlight and drifting ash. A scar cut along his neck, a reminder of the night I bound him with flame.

We were both a little broken.

“We need to fly to Malvoria,” I whispered. “I need Cully.”

He pressed his snout to my chest, a low hum rising from deep within him.“We fly.”

Enlisting my scholarly brother to break Archer out of prison might be the most reckless thing I’d ever done. Then again, breaking into Malvoria might top it.

The sky sagged low, clouds streaked with slush. Howls echoed from somewhere deep in the trees. It should have taken five hours, but Naraic flew like hellfire. We made it in four.

We landed just outside the perimeter. I took the last stretch on foot. Through a barred window, I spotted Delair’s father, his chin resting on his palm, sword balanced down his back. Hisstillness wasn’t idleness. It was patience. The kind a predator wears like armor. But his eyes betrayed him. Grief lived there, buried just beneath the steel.

I crouched beneath a moss-laced overhang, heart pounding in time with the flickering lanterns above. I kept low, shadows skimming my boots as I veered toward the journalist dorms. Abducting my brother had been a desperate plan, but Cully was still my only way to get close to Archer.

I paused.

The dungeons loomed behind me, stone dark and silent. It was the kind of quiet that warned of death, the kind that meant the guards were distracted.

I stopped beside the door. Cold rust pressed against my palm. This was where I’d spent so many sleepless nights. Where they had broken me down piece by piece.

Giesel was still down there. And she had no chance of escaping. So I gave her one, because the woods were safer than these walls.

I leaned close to the stone and whispered into the wind, “Be free.” Then I wrenched the iron door open, the hinges shrieking louder than I meant. Air rushed into the chamber like a scream let loose.

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