Chapter 4
Liora
The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the old window frame.
Liora froze for a second, then crept toward the window and peeled back the curtain just enough to see outside. Hektor’s broad figure was already halfway down the walkway, and she could release the breath she’d been holding.
“Well,” she muttered to the empty room, letting the curtain fall back into place. “That went well.”
It hadn’t. Not even a little.
She leaned her forehead briefly against the cool glass. The quiet inside the house felt strange after the intense conversation between Hektor and Elian.
While she and Elian had gone back to Alindale, Vale Crossing’s capital, Zara and Hektor had gone to his home in Drakkoria. And it had taken Hektor a week or so to fall in love with her sister and, somehow, impossibly, break her heart just as quickly. Liora still wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed that particular feat. Something about duty. Something aboutDrakkon traditions. Something about not wanting to bind Zara to a life she didn’t choose.
Zara’s response had been simple. She’d packed a bag and vanished back to their parents’ house in Santa Fe.
Liora pushed away from the window, rubbing her temples. “Well,” she sighed to herself, moving back toward the kitchen. “That was a disaster.”
Still…if she was being honest, the chaos had been a welcome distraction.
Because while everyone had been busy arguing about Zara and Hektor and emotional Drakkon declarations, no one had asked her any inconvenient questions.
Specifically, the one question she was very much avoiding. Like why she’d been unusually quiet since returning from Solkaris or why she had suddenly become very interested in researching ancient basilisk customs.
She leaned against the kitchen counter and stared at the notebook lying open in front of her. At the words written across the top of the page: Sacred Spring Binding Rituals.
She groaned softly and covered her face with both hands. “Still married,” she muttered through her fingers.
The words sounded ridiculous every time she said them. She lowered her hands and stared at the page again. Married. To a basilisk she’d met less than two hours before falling into a sacred spring with him.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
And somehow—somehow—she still hadn’t told her siblings. Not Elian. Not Zara. She pushed off the counter and began pacing.
“I will tell them,” she said aloud.
Then she stopped. “Soon.”
Another pause. “Eventually.”
She sighed again, dragging a hand through her hair. She grabbed her notebook and flipped to a new page.
“Okay,” she told the empty kitchen. “New plan.”
Step one: figure out how to undo an accidental basilisk marriage.
Step two: maybe—maybe—tell her siblings before they found out another way.
She had just picked up a pen when a knock sounded on the door.
Liora froze. “Please tell me,” she said to no one in particular, “that he is not about to show up here.”
Then the knock came again.
Sharp.
Certain.
