THE SHADOWS OF HER CROWN

Chapter 7: Beneath the Locket’s Secrets

Nora couldn’t stop staring at the photo.

The little girl in the picture had her eyes—wide, curious, full of something both innocent and aching. But it wasn’t just the familiarity that haunted her. It was the locket. That golden phoenix crest… it called to something buried deep in her bones, something that shouldn’t have felt so familiar but did.

She hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even Zane. Not even Ms. Keller, the guidance counselor who sometimes pretended to care more than her job required. She slipped the photo beneath a loose floorboard in her tiny room and tried to focus on the present.

But secrets don’t stay buried—not at Crestwood.

That week, the school halls turned colder. Julian barely looked at her anymore, as if Serena had put him on a leash. Rumors spun out of control. Someone leaked Nora’s scholarship documents to a gossip blog for elite teens. Her grades. Her income level. Even a distorted photo of her modest home.

“Trash,” someone whispered in the bathroom stall next to hers. “Don’t know why they let them in.”

Still, Nora walked with her chin up. Until she didn’t.

One afternoon, she opened her locker and found something else—this time, not a threat. A letter. Slipped between her textbooks. Handwritten.

“Nora,

You don’t remember me. But I remember you.

That crest on your locket? It belongs to the Belmont family.

You’re not who you think you are.

I can prove it.

Meet me at the abandoned greenhouses. Midnight.

Come alone.”

Her hands shook as she folded the letter. Belmont.

Why did that name echo like a half-remembered dream?

She almost tore it up. Almost ignored it.

But at midnight, Nora stood beneath the broken glass archway of the old greenhouses, wrapped in her hoodie, heart pounding.

And someone was waiting.

Not a stranger.

Her twin.