Ivy sat at Kael’s bedside, watching his skin flush pale and fevered, his breaths shallow and strained. The red still lingered faintly in his eyes. Not the red of vampires.
The red of shadowborn.
She didn’t want to believe it.
Didn’t want to feel the seal inside her pulse in warning when she touched him.
But it was happening.
And she needed answers.
Ember stepped into the tent quietly. “The war council is waiting.”
“Let them wait.”
Ember hesitated. “You can’t ignore them forever.”
“I’m not ignoring them. I’m trying to save him.”
She turned the worn parchment scroll in her hands—Kael’s birth record, retrieved from the Crescent Moon archives.
And hidden beneath that… another scroll.
One Kael had never seen.
One sealed in a flameborn cipher.
Hours later, Ivy sat before the ancien
