Aria's POV
The glow was the first thing I noticed.
Soft. Silver. Coming from my own hands.
I stared at them in the dark of the archive room, fingers spread wide against my thighs, that cold light pulsing with my heartbeat like it had somewhere to be and was tired of waiting. The lanterns Rhea had lit earlier had burned down to almost nothing. The room was quiet except for Damian's steady breathing behind me, his arm still heavy across my waist, his chest warm against my back.
My mother's journal lay open on the table. The last page I'd read before exhaustion finally dragged me under. Her handwriting blurred slightly in the low light in careful, slanted letters that looked too much like mine when I wrote fast and stopped caring about neatness.
The blood must not fall into t
