The woman screamed Mira Thorne's name again.

Lyra was already moving before the echo died.

She crossed the ruined chapel toward the doors, Kael beside her and Adrian close behind. Darius barked an order for two soldiers to hold position around the broken severing engine, then pointed to three other royal guards near the chapel wall.

"With me."

They fell in behind him.

Cassian came too.

King Edric did not.

"No one leaves this chapel without my permission," the king said.

Adrian stopped at the threshold and turned.

"Then consider this my first act of disobedience as your heir."

Edric's face hardened.

"Adrian."

"A woman is screaming."

"That woman may be part of a conspiracy against the crown."

"At the moment, Father, that narrows the palace population very little."

Adrian pushed through the doors.

Lyra followed.

The corridor outside Saint Orienne's chapel was chaos.

Servants pressed themselves against the walls. Two Temple knights were arguing with royal guards near the western archway. Smoke from the damaged chapel drifted into the passage, turning the morning light gray.

At the far end, a young records clerk struggled against a soldier's grip.

"Mira Thorne!" she shouted. "They're taking her downstairs!"

Darius reached her first.

"Who?"

The clerk stared at his commander's bloodstained uniform and went pale.

"Temple men. Four of them. They came with an order bearing the High Priest's seal."

Everyone looked at Cassian.

Cassian stopped dead.

"I issued no such order."

The clerk swallowed.

"The seal was yours."

Cassian's expression became colder than Lyra had ever seen it.

"Where did they take her?"

"The western stair. They said she was being transferred for doctrinal questioning."

Kael's amusement vanished entirely.

"That sounds unpleasantly like a phrase invented to avoid saying torture."

Lyra felt anger surge through the bond.

Some of it was hers.

Some was Kael's.

Stage Three made distinguishing the edges difficult.

Darius signaled sharply to the soldier restraining the clerk.

"Release her."

The soldier obeyed.

Darius drew his sword.

"West stair connects to the archive crypts and the old interrogation rooms."

Cassian's jaw tightened.

"Those rooms were sealed twenty years ago."

"Apparently someone kept the keys."

They ran.

Lyra had crossed the western palace galleries hundreds of times during ceremonies, but she had never taken the narrow servants' stair hidden behind the records wing.

Darius led them through it, his three guards close behind.

The deeper they descended, the colder the stone became.

Kael stayed within arm's reach.

The silver line beneath Lyra's skin pulsed whenever the distance widened even slightly.

Twenty-five days.

The number from the vault seemed to beat with her heart.

Halfway down, a memory struck.

Lyra stumbled against the wall.

This one belonged to Kael.

A corridor.

Not this corridor, but one like it.

Three centuries earlier.

Men in white robes dragged someone ahead of him.

Kael was wounded badly enough that every breath hurt.

Melian screamed from somewhere behind a locked door.

And a man's voice said, "Veil the king first. The child can be shaped later."

The memory vanished.

Lyra gasped.

Kael caught her wrist.

He had gone pale.

"You saw it."

"Yes."

"I did too."

Cassian turned from below them.

"Saw what?"

Kael stared at him.

"Someone ordered my memory altered."

Cassian's face changed.

Not surprise alone.

Recognition.

Lyra saw it.

"You know something."

"I know certain Temple texts describe a rite called the Veiling."

Kael's fingers tightened around Lyra's wrist.

"A memory spell."

"Not exactly. The rite could not create false memories from nothing. It suppressed access to selected memories by binding them beneath layers of holy magic."

Kael's eyes flashed gold.

"And you neglected to mention that until now?"

"Because I believed the rite ceremonial. It has not been recorded as performed in my lifetime."

"Your institution has an impressive collection of ceremonies that keep turning out to be crimes."

A cry echoed from below.

Mira.

Lyra recognized her voice.

They ran again.

At the bottom of the stair stood an iron door.

Two Temple knights guarded it.

One raised his spear.

"By order of the High Priest—"

Cassian stepped around Darius.

"I am the High Priest."

The knight froze.

Cassian held out his hand.

"Give me the order."

Neither knight moved.

Darius's sword came up.

"Now."

The younger knight produced a folded parchment.

Cassian tore it open.

His own seal was pressed into the wax.

His signature was not.

"Forged," he said.

The older knight's face drained.

"Your Eminence, we were told—"

"Open the door."

Inside, Mira Thorne sat tied to a wooden chair.

Her lower lip was split. A thin line of blood ran from one temple.

Three men in plain white Temple robes stood around her.

On the table beside them lay the stolen genealogies.

And a brazier full of burning paper.

One of the men dropped another page toward the flame.

"Stop!" Lyra shouted.

Kael moved faster.

Black scales flashed over one forearm as he crossed the room and seized the page before it fully caught. Flame crawled over his scaled fingers without visibly harming them. He crushed the burning edge between his claws.

Darius and the three royal guards who had followed him downstairs moved at once. The Temple men were disarmed and forced away from the table.

Cassian walked to the brazier.

His expression was terrible.

"Who gave you this order?"

No one answered.

Mira laughed weakly from the chair.

"They were disappointingly committed to silence before you arrived too."

Lyra rushed to her.

"Are you badly hurt?"

"Only in my professional pride. I spent seven years learning how not to get caught stealing restricted documents."

"You were caught with three books under your coat."

"Yes. As I said. Professional pride."

Darius handed Lyra a knife. She cut the ropes.

Mira rubbed her wrists, then noticed Kael's scaled hand and the silver line glowing beneath Lyra's skin.

"Something happened."

"Several things," Lyra said.

"That is never a reassuring answer."

Adrian reached the table and opened the nearest genealogy.

Several pages had been ripped out.

"What were they destroying?"

Mira's humor disappeared.

"The names I marked."

Lyra looked at her.

"Descendants of the witnesses?"

Mira went very still.

"How do you know that word?"

"Because Sera Thorne was one of them."

For the first time since Lyra had known her, Mira had no clever response.

"You found the chamber."

Cassian stared at her.

"You knew it existed?"

"Not where. My family kept fragments. Bedtime stories, mostly. Seven guardians. A broken current. A promise that the families would find one another if the heart ever woke again."

Kael's expression sharpened.

"Why did you never tell me?"

Mira lifted one brow.

"You were imprisoned beneath a palace and officially categorized as an extinction-level monster. Our opportunities for genealogical conversation were limited."

Adrian made a strangled sound that might have been laughter.

Mira stood.

Her knees nearly buckled.

Lyra caught her.

Silver light flashed across Lyra's fingers.

Mira hissed.

A small branching symbol appeared beneath the skin of her wrist, silver at the center and dark at the edges.

Everyone stared.

Mira did too.

"That," she said faintly, "is new."

Kael pulled the black vial from inside his coat.

The Saintess-derived conduit substance within it had begun moving. Its golden threads twisted toward Mira's marked wrist.

Lyra felt the many dead presences inside it stir.

Not speaking.

Recognizing.

The nearest genealogy fluttered open in the draft from the stairwell. Mira leaned over it and quickly turned several more pages until she found the section she had marked earlier.

"Here."

The THORNE family tree began with Sera Thorne and continued through centuries of descendants. Beside Mira's name, someone had written in red ink:

ACTIVE LINE.

Mira swallowed.

"That notation was already there when I stole the volume."

Adrian turned to the neighboring trees.

There were seven monitored lines grouped together.

Arden.

Thorne.

Valerius.

Vane.

Two surnames Lyra did not recognize.

And one final family name buried beneath layer after layer of black ink.

Darius stared at the Vane line.

"My family."

Adrian looked at Valerius.

"And mine."

The king's confession returned to Lyra.

The crown had watched the seven bloodlines for centuries.

Including itself.

Cassian turned toward Mira.

"You said three genealogies. What else did you find?"

Mira glanced at the brazier.

"Some of it is ash now. But I hid one piece before they brought me here."

She reached inside the torn lining of her sleeve and removed a narrow folded strip of parchment.

"They searched my coat. Not my stitching."

The strip contained names and locations.

Most were crossed out.

Three remained uncrossed.

Mira Thorne — Royal Palace.

Darius Vane — Royal Palace.

Elian Vale — Monastery of the Seventh Light.

Cassian stopped breathing.

Lyra looked at him.

"Vale?"

He took the parchment with shaking fingers.

"My family name is Vale."

Kael's eyes narrowed.

"Then Vale may be another witness line."

Cassian looked down at the grouped genealogies.

"May be. But neither of the two unfamiliar family trees is identified here as Vale. Elian could be connected to the Covenant some other way."

Mira nodded.

"I couldn't prove it either."

Cassian looked again at the name.

"Elian died when I was seventeen."

"Apparently someone still considered him relevant enough to track," Mira said.

Cassian's hand trembled.

Pain tightened Lyra's chest at the sight of him.

Then Kael swore.

A thin fracture had appeared in the vial.

Golden light leaked through the crack between his fingers.

The black liquid pressed toward the broken glass as though answering Mira's new mark.

Kael held the vial away from everyone.

"Do not touch it."

Another crack formed.

The pulse of trapped magic struck Lyra through the bond and through whatever had awakened in her beneath the palace.

Silver flame sprang involuntarily across her free hand.

She jerked back, but the fire bent toward the leaking golden light instead of outward.

Gold and silver met above the table.

The silver dragonfire streamed across the genealogy's blacked-out line.

Lyra tried to pull it away.

"I'm not doing that deliberately."

"Then do not panic," Kael said sharply. "You will only feed it."

The flame did not burn the parchment.

It burned the thick concealment ink.

Black layers curled away in smoking flakes until letters appeared beneath them.

DRAVEN.

Kael went utterly still.

Mira bent closer.

Aren Draven was listed beneath the old branches of the family tree.

Beside his name was the same red notation used beside Mira's.

ACTIVE LINE.

Lyra's breath stopped.

"Aren."

"He died," Kael whispered.

The certainty in his voice fractured before the final word.

Golden light burst from the vial's crack and struck Mira's branching wrist mark.

The interrogation room vanished from Lyra's sight.

For one heartbeat she stood again in the heart-vault.

Seven stone seats surrounded the basin.

Aren stood beside the empty chair bearing the Draven name, more transparent than before.

His silver eyes fixed on her.

"Not dead," he said.

The vision shook.

Stone closed around him like enormous ribs.

His voice came from very far below.

"Bound below."

Lyra snapped back into the interrogation room with Kael gripping her shoulder.

His horror flooded the bond.

He had received the same memory.

"Aren," he breathed.

The cracked vial gave one final, piercing sound.

Kael looked down.

"Lyra—"

The glass shattered in his hand.