Theo didn't storm out.
He walked—slow, tight, like if he moved too fast, he'd shatter.
Lina hadn't picked Lucien. Not exactly. But she hadn't picked him either.
That was worse.
The hallway swallowed him. No footsteps behind. No apology called after him. Just silence.
For a moment, he wanted to tear something apart. Or run. Or disappear into the woods where none of their families' lies could reach.
But he didn't.
He turned down the old servant's corridor, toward the west annex—the place no one liked to go. Dust-heavy. Cold. Forgotten.
Except Theo had always known this was where the house watched from.
He didn't know why he ended up there.
Maybe he wanted to punish himself.
Maybe something else was guiding him.
A door creaked open on its own.
Inside, a single oil lamp burned on a table too old to still exist. A book sat beside it—not ancient, but newer.
Bound in green leather.
Stamped with his family's seal.
The Albrecht Ledger.
His father had told him it was "lost." That it had "vanished in the fire."
Theo stepped closer. The book was already open.
"In every generation, one must carry the weight. But if two are born marked, only one may survive."
His blood turned to ice.
This wasn't just Lina's curse.
It was his too.
His breath caught as he read the names.
Two from his line.
Two from hers.
Every generation—linked. Bound. Sacrificed.
Theo staggered back.
The curse had never been about a single family. It was about balance. One to suffer. One to protect. One to die.
And sometimes… that line blurred.
The grimoire pulsed in her hands like it had a heartbeat.
Lucien had gone silent, standing nearby with a watchful stillness that made it hard to tell if he was impressed or afraid.
Maybe both.
Lina turned the next page.
A symbol—etched deep into the parchment—glowed faintly. Not drawn, but branded into the paper.
"Speak the true name. The one the curse was written for. Only then does it bend."
Lucien stepped forward. "Careful. That ink doesn't forgive."
Lina ignored him. Her fingers hovered over the glowing glyph. It was familiar. Uncomfortably familiar.
She had seen it before.
Not in a dream.
In a mirror.
It wasn't a symbol.
It was a sigil.
Her mark.
Etched just below her collarbone. The one her family told her was a "birthmark."
"I thought the curse came from them," she whispered. "But this…"
"This came from you," Lucien finished. "Your line was the lock. But you… you're the key."
Lina's pulse spiked.
Because suddenly it all made sense—the nightmares, the visions, the way the house sometimes listened to her when she was angry enough.
This wasn't a curse meant to contain her.
It was a curse born from her.
Someone in her bloodline had done something ancient. Terrible. Powerful.
And it had echoed into her.
Lina looked up from the book, her voice low. "If I break it—what happens to the rest of them?"
Lucien's eyes were unreadable. "That depends on whether it breaks… or detonates."
Theo didn't make it three steps past the front gate before it hit.
A pulse.
Not from outside—but from within.
He staggered, grabbing the wrought-iron post as the world warped around the edges. The air smelled like copper and storm.
Something had changed.
No—snapped.
And it had her name on it.
He gasped as heat lanced across his chest—straight through the mark he'd never known he had. A faint, spiraling glyph over his heart, invisible most days. But now it glowed, thrummed like a second pulse trying to sync with another.
Lina's.
"No," he whispered.
Not because he didn't believe it.
But because he did.
She had called the curse.
And it had answered both of them.
He sank to his knees in the gravel, breath ragged, as memory not his own tore through him like lightning:
A child with silver eyes, crying in a blood-soaked chapel.
A girl standing on a cliff, screaming a name the wind swallowed whole.
A boy. Always the same boy. Reaching for her hand. Dying every time.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Theo clutched his head as the visions vanished, leaving only truth behind:
They weren't just tied together by fate.
They were bound by design.
A sacrifice and a sentinel.
One to call the curse.
One to carry it.
But now that she had called it by its name—he could feel the magic choosing.
And it was pulling hard.
Harder than blood.
Harder than love.
Harder than fear.
He looked toward the east wing. Toward her.
And for the first time since they were children—
Theo didn't know if saving her meant saving himself…
…or destroying them both.