CHAPTER2:The Name on the Box
1676 Words
For three seconds after the voice spoke, nobody moved.
The fire inside the chest burned without giving off smoke. Its thin light crawled along the wooden lid, illuminating the letters carved there. Camellia could not read them, yet some part of her understood that they belonged to her.
Her mother’s warning remained suspended in the room.
Do not trust the man standing beside you.
Halden was the first to recover. He seized the brass handle of the restoration-room door and pulled with both hands. The lock did not move.
“Who is she?” he demanded, looking at Zayn. “And what did you do to her?”
Zayn did not answer. His attention remained on Camellia’s sleeve, where the mark beneath her skin had begun to burn more fiercely.
“Show me your wrist,” he said.
Camellia backed away. “You heard my mother.”
“I heard a voice using your mother’s memory.”
“That was her voice.”
“Voices can be borrowed.”
His calmness frightened her more than the flames. He stood beside the cabinets as though locked doors and impossible boxes were ordinary inconveniences. Rain darkened his coat, but no drops fell from it. The air around him shimmered faintly, as though the room could not decide whether he belonged inside it.
Halden turned on Camellia. “You know this man?”
“No.”
Zayn’s eyes shifted toward her.
Camellia corrected herself. “I have never met him before today.”
The lie left a bitter taste in her mouth. She remembered the fire, the storm-colored eyes, and the ash beneath her childhood bed. She remembered a voice telling her not to be afraid.
She had never remembered the face.
Until now.
Zayn stepped toward the chest. The flames bent away from him.
“Do not touch it,” Camellia said.
“I am not going to touch it.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Keep it from opening.”
“Why?”
“Because you are not ready.”
The answer struck something inside her. Anger pushed through the fear.
“You do not get to decide what I am ready for.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I stopped having that right a long time ago.”
The chest gave a sudden, violent knock.
Halden flinched. “There is something inside.”
A second knock followed. Then a third.
Camellia counted without meaning to.
Three.
The black cord tightened around the chest. Its fibers sank into the wood as though they were roots. The metal seal brightened until the divided flame became almost white.
Zayn’s expression changed.
It was the first emotion she had seen on his face: fear.
“Camellia,” he said, “listen to me carefully. Whatever happens, do not say the word carved into the lid.”
“You can read it.”
“I know it.”
“Then tell me what it means.”
“It is not a meaning. It is a name.”
“Whose name?”
His silence answered before he did.
“Yours,” he said.
The chest opened.
The lid lifted only an inch, but a blast of heat swept through the room. Papers flew from the shelves. Glass cabinets rattled. The lamps went dark, leaving the fire beneath the lid as the only source of light.
Something whispered from inside.
Camellia understood the word this time.
It was not spoken in any language she knew, yet its meaning arrived in her mind with the force of recognition.
A name.
Her name.
The mark on her wrist flared. Pain shot up her arm and into her shoulder. She pressed her hand against her chest, gasping.
Zayn crossed the room faster than a human body should have been able to move. One moment he stood near the cabinets; the next, he was between Camellia and the chest.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She did.
His eyes had changed. Silver light burned through the darkness of his irises, and for an instant she saw flames reflected there—not the flames in the room, but an entire horizon consumed by fire.
“Breathe,” he said. “Do not listen to it.”
“What is it?”
“A door remembering how to open.”
The lid rose another inch.
Zayn lifted his hand. A circle of pale fire formed beneath his palm and struck the chest. The force threw him backward. He hit the stone wall hard enough to c***k the plaster.
“Zayn!”
His name escaped her before she could stop it.
Every flame in the room turned blue.
Zayn looked at her with sudden alarm. “Do not say my name.”
“You told me your name.”
“That is not the name I mean.”
The chest slammed shut.
The blue flames vanished. The lamps flickered back to life, and the room returned to its ordinary shape. Papers lay scattered across the floor. Halden stood frozen beside the door, one hand still wrapped around the useless handle.
Zayn pushed himself away from the wall.
A thin line of black crossed his cheek. Beneath it, light moved under his skin like fire behind glass.
Camellia stared at him. “You are hurt.”
“It will pass.”
“You hit a wall.”
“I have survived worse.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Halden finally found his voice. “The box is sealed again.”
“For now,” Zayn said.
Camellia turned toward the chest. “What is inside it?”
“A record.”
“Of what?”
“Your beginning.”
“My birth?”
Zayn’s gaze lowered.
“Your name,” he said. “The one given to you before the world knew you as Camellia Vale.”
She moved toward the table. Zayn caught her wrist.
His fingers were cold. Not cool, not chilled from the rain—cold like deep water beneath winter ice.
The mark under her sleeve pulsed between them.
Camellia looked down at his hand. “Let go.”
He did immediately.
The loss of contact was strangely sharp. She hated herself for noticing.
“Why can you touch me?” she asked.
“Why would I not be able to?”
“Because you are not human.”
Something old passed through his expression.
“No,” he said. “I am not.”
Halden moved away from the door. “What exactly are you?”
Zayn finally looked at him. “A jinn.”
The word landed heavily in the small room.
Halden gave a humorless laugh. “That is not possible.”
“Your locked door suggests otherwise.”
“A jinn,” Camellia repeated. “You mean a demon?”
“No.”
“A spirit?”
“Not precisely.”
“A creature that has been following me since I was seven?”
His face tightened. “I was not following you.”
“You were in my bedroom.”
“I was keeping watch.”
“Without permission.”
“You were a child.”
“That does not make it acceptable.”
“No,” he said. “It does not.”
The admission unsettled her. She had expected denial, arrogance, or some elegant supernatural explanation. His regret was more dangerous. It made him seem real.
Camellia glanced at the chest. “You said the box contains my beginning. How did my grandmother get it?”
“Mara did not get it.”
“She hid it.”
“She borrowed it.”
“From whom?”
“From the people who wanted you found.”
The mark on her wrist burned again, and a faint line of light appeared beneath her skin. It moved from her palm toward her elbow, forming a pattern like a narrow branch.
Zayn saw it.
His face went still.
“What?” Camellia asked.
“Nothing.”
“Do not lie to me.”
The words came out more sharply than she intended. She stepped closer. “You know what that mark is.”
“I know what it becomes.”
“Then tell me.”
“Not here.”
“Why not?”
“Because the walls are listening.”
Halden looked toward the stone around them. “That is absurd.”
A soft scratching sound answered from inside the eastern wall.
All three of them turned.
The sound continued: slow, deliberate, and close. Something dragged a hard point across the stone from the other side.
Camellia felt the room grow colder.
Halden whispered, “There is no cavity large enough for a person.”
“Not a person,” Zayn said.
The scratching stopped.
A moment later, three words appeared in the dust on the floor beneath the chest. No hand wrote them. The letters formed one by one, traced by a line of invisible heat.
SHE IS AWAKE.
Camellia’s breath caught.
Zayn moved in front of her again, but this time she saw the flames gathering around his feet.
“Who wrote that?” she asked.
Zayn’s voice became very quiet.
“The one who has been waiting longer than I have.”
The restoration-room door unlocked with a sharp click.
Halden reached for the handle, but Zayn seized his arm.
“Do not open it.”
“Why?” Halden asked.
“Because it is not the door we locked.”
The handle began to turn by itself.
Camellia watched the gap beneath the door darken. A shadow spread across the floor, but it did not belong to anyone standing in the room.
Zayn looked at her.
“Whatever you hear,” he said, “do not answer.”
From the other side came a woman’s voice.
It was her mother’s voice again, softer now, almost pleading.
“Camellia,” it called. “Open the door. I am still alive.”
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