Aria*
The map felt heavier than paper should.
It sat folded and hidden in the seam of my dress, a quiet weight against my hip as I moved through the manor, an awareness that tugged at my thoughts every few steps.
Border. River. X.
Future.
I’d barely slept after finding it. My mind had spun too fast—north, cabin, witch, Nightfang, Lucian’s face when the curse punished him for even trying to say where it began.
By morning, the decision had settled in me like a stone in a riverbed.
I was going to that cabin.
I didn’t know when. I didn’t know how.
But I knew I would.
The house hummed with a different kind of tension today. You could feel it in the clipped way servants spoke, in the restless pacing of warriors outside, in the low burr of voices coming from behind the closed council ro
