The Vesper Creed

Chapter 14

Aizere's Point of View

The house was silent when I arrived. I bypassed the kitchen and went straight to my father's bedroom. It was a room defined by order—starched uniforms, a neat bed, and a heavy oak dresser. I began to search with a frantic energy, pulling out drawers and checking the backs of closets. Finally, shoved deep inside a locked metal box beneath a loose floorboard in the closet, I found it.

A manila envelope, crisp and cold. Inside was a Certificate of Adoption. My name, Aizere, was typed next to a blank space where the biological parents' names should have been.

The front door creaked open downstairs. The heavy, rhythmic thud of my father's boots echoed in the hallway. I didn't hide the paper. I stood at the top of the stairs, the document trembling in my hand, as he stepped into the light of the foyer.

"Aizere?" he called out, his voice weary from a long shift. He looked up, and the moment his eyes landed on the paper in my hand, the color drained from his face. He looked as though he had been struck.

The air in the hallway felt stiflingly hot as my father stood at the base of the stairs, his eyes locked onto the adoption papers in my hand. The silence between us stretched, heavy and suffocating, until he finally let out a long, shuddering breath. He looked like a man who had been holding back a dam for nineteen years, and I had just cracked the surface.

"I didn't think you'd ever find that, Aizere," he said, his voice barely more than a gravelly whisper. "I hoped you'd never have to."

"What is this, Dad?" I asked, my voice trembling as I descended the stairs, the paper crinkling in my grip. "It says I was adopted. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

He sat heavily on the bottom step, leaning his elbows on his knees. He looked up at me, his eyes filled with a pain I hadn't understood until this moment. "Because to us, you were always ours. From the moment we laid eyes on you. But the truth is... your mother and I, we tried for years. Doctors, specialists... they all told us the same thing. We couldn't have children of our own. It was the great heartbreak of our lives."

I froze on the middle step. I had grown up thinking I was a perfect blend of the two of them—the sheriff's grit and my mother's grace. To hear that the biological connection was a lie felt like the floor was dropping out from under me.

"Then where did I come from?" I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"It was a night much like tonight," he began, staring into the middle distance as if watching the memory play out. "A man came to our door. He called himself a warlock. Now, I'm a man of facts and law, but there was something about him... he had an air of power that made my skin crawl. He told us he knew of our struggle, and he promised he could give us the child we'd prayed for."

He let out a dry, hollow laugh. "We thought he was a ghost story come to life, until he showed up a week later during a storm. He was carrying a bundle wrapped in heavy silk. He handed you to us and said you were an orphan of a tragedy, a child who needed a name and a life far away from the 'shadows.' We didn't ask questions. We were so blinded by the joy of finally having you that we didn't care where you came from."

I sat down on the step above him, clutching Snow to my chest. The cat was deathly still, listening.

"For eight years, it was perfect," my father continued, his voice growing dark. "But then things changed. Men started appearing in town. They weren't like the folks here in Caxwell. They were cold, and they kept asking questions, asking if you were our biological daughter. They were looking for something, Aizere. Something they thought was dead."

"The Lightwoods," I whispered, thinking of the book and the vampires.

"I don't know that name," he said, shaking his head. "I only knew you were in danger. I found the warlock again, and he was frantic. He told me the shadows were closing in and that Caxwell was a trap for you. He said we had to get you out of town immediately."

He turned to look at me, tears finally spilling over. "But I couldn't leave my duty here, and I thought if I stayed, I could distract them. Your mother couldn't handle the fear. She took you and moved all the way to Covington, Georgia, just to put miles between you and this place. We stayed apart for years, living separate lives, all to keep the trail cold. We sacrificed everything so you could grow up thinking you were just a normal girl in a normal town."

I looked down at the paper. My life hadn't been a series of random events; it had been a carefully constructed fortress. A human father and a mother had torn their lives apart to hide a child they weren't even supposed to have.

I didn't stay to hear my father's pleas for me to stay inside. I needed to get back to the mansion. My mind was a storm of conflicting identities: Aizere Forbes, the girl from Georgia, and the nameless Lightwood baby delivered in a silk bundle.

When I pulled up to the Mikaelson estate, the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting long, bloody streaks across the stone facade. I didn't knock. I pushed through the heavy front doors, my boots echoing like gunshots on the marble floor.

The four of them were exactly where I had left them, as if they had been frozen in time, waiting for my return.

"I found it," I said, my voice raw as I held up the adoption papers. I marched into the center of the foyer and looked Ezrain dead in the eyes. "My parents couldn't have children. My father just confessed everything. A man—a warlock—brought me to them nineteen years ago during a storm. He told them I was an orphan of a tragedy and that I needed to be hidden from 'shadows.'"

Victoria stepped forward, her eyes scanning my face. "A warlock? Did he give a name?"

"No," I said, "but my father described him. He wore a ring—a blue stone that glowed whenever he was near me."

The reaction was instantaneous. Ezrain's face didn't just darken; it went completely rigid, his silver eyes turning to chips of ice. Beside him, Niklaus let out a sharp, cold laugh that held no humor.

"The Blue Weaver," Ezrain whispered, his voice like a death knell. "Silas."

"Silas?" I repeated, looking at the sudden tension in Ezrain's shoulders. "You know him?"

"Know him?" Enzo remarked from the shadows, his voice grim. "Ezrain spent a decade hunting him. Silas was the Lightwoods' advisor, their most trusted confidant. But during the m******e nineteen years ago, he was branded a traitor. It was believed he was the one who lowered the wards and let the shadows into the Lightwood estate."

Ezrain stepped toward me, his presence cold and suffocating. "I was the one who found him, Aizere. After the fires went out and the blood settled, I tracked him to the cliffs. I was the one who drove a blade through his chest and watched him fall into the black water of the gorge. I killed him for what he did to the Lightwoods. For what he did to your family."

"But if he's the one who brought me to my father," I argued, my voice rising, "then he didn't destroy the line. He saved it! He must have faked his death or survived your blade just long enough to get me out."

"He played us all," Niklaus growled, his eyes flashing. "He let us believe the Lightwoods were extinct so that the shadows would stop hunting for a survivor. He turned Silas into a villain so that you could become a Forbes."

Ezrain looked down at the adoption paper, his hands trembling with a mixture of rage and a sudden, haunting realization. "I spent nineteen years carrying the weight of that execution, thinking I had delivered justice for a fallen pillar. But if Silas survived... if he's still out there..."

"He's not just a warlock," Victoria added, her voice hushed. "He's the only one who knows the rituals of your bloodline, Aizere. If he's been watching you all these years in Georgia, he's been waiting for the moment the 'Sight' returned."

Ezrain looked back at me, his gaze softening with a terrifying intensity. "If I didn't kill him then, I have to find him now. Because if the shadows realize Silas failed to destroy the Lightwood line, they won't just come for him. They'll come for the girl he spent nineteen years protecting."