The air in the cathedral’s subterranean archives was thick with the scent of decaying parchment and cold, damp stone. It was a place designed to bury secrets, not keep them.
Cattleya moved through the narrow aisles, her lantern casting elongated, frantic shadows against the shelves. She wasn”t here for research. She was here because an anonymous note”written in her father”s unmistakably precise, slanted script had been left on her surgical tray.
The truth of the Vesper bloodline lies in File 709. Your education is incomplete, daughter.
Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She knew this was a trap. Every instinct she possessed, honed by years of surviving the city”s darkest corners, screamed at her to turn back. But the pull of the truth”the need to understand what R
