“Got a crowbar?”I asked.
“Let me find one.”
He disappeared back into the maze of shelves, leaving me and Owen alone with the crates and the scent of dust and old wood.Owen scanned the stack like he could see through them.
“Owen?”I asked.
“Yeah?”His eyes narrowed, fixing on one crate in particular.
“Are we in over our heads?”
My words snapped him out of whatever he’d been sensing.He looked down at me, the corner of his mouth twitching with something that was almost a smile but didn’t get there.
“I don’t know, Piper,” he admitted.“Maybe.”
I pushed to my feet and moved closer, needing the heat of him, needing something solid to hold on to.“I’m scared,” I whispered.
Of what, I wasn’t even sure anymore.Demons.Queens.Fairy lies.The possibility that my aunt—my anchor—had been tangled up in something darker than any of us realized.That the letter naming me Guardian had been less “inheritance” and more “last-ditch defense.”
Owen caught my hands in his.“We’ll get through it together,” he said.“We’re a team, remember?”
Before I could answer, Dougal returned with a crowbar.
“Found one,” he said.
Owen took it before his father could even offer.“Which crate first?”
I pointed to the one nearest me.Owen attacked it with far too much enthusiasm, grunting as he pried at the nails, ignoring Dougal’s attempts to “help.”Finally, the lid gave with a groan.Owen and Dougal hauled it the rest of the way off.
Packing straw spilled out onto the concrete.I dug both hands into it, wading through the dry rustle until my fingers brushed something solid.I pulled out a shoebox-sized container and eased off the lid.
Inside was a pair of red slippers.
Not ordinary red—ruby red, impossibly vivid, with a faint shimmer and a low magical hum.Their surface caught the fluorescent light and fractured it, scattering tiny sparks of crimson fire as I tilted the box.The color seemed to run deep, as if the slippers weren’t coated in color so much as cut from the heart of a gemstone.
They looked as though they were waiting for someone to slip them on and be carried away.
“What is it?”Dougal asked.
“A pair of red shoes,” I said faintly, though the words felt inadequate.“And I have a feeling they’re not meant for walking.”
I dug deeper, straw scratching my wrists, but the crate held nothing else.
“That’s all in this one,” I said.
“Why would Alice have a pair of red shoes locked up like contraband?”Owen asked.
“I don’t know.”Although the wordrelicwhispered at the back of my mind.Red shoes.Portals.Crossroads.I jammed the lid back onto the box.“Let’s see what’s in the next one.”
We muscled open a second crate after several more minutes of swearing and lever work.Inside, nestled in straw, was a long, rectangular leather case.The leather cracked with age when I unfastened it, the hinges complaining as I lifted the lid.
Light caught metal.
I sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back a step.
The sword lay in black velvet, its blade gleaming like liquid moonlight—clean, flawless, untouched by time.Not sharp in a way that promised violence, but bright in a way that felt… absolute.As if it decided where it belonged, not the other way around.
The pommel was pure gold, etched with symbols I didn’t recognize yet somehow understood.They hummed faintly against my skin, a quiet answering call.
