Ashander
Caelstrom
Emberlain
Ferruskai
Hassan
Morvaine
Shaedryn
Terravanth
Thalrien
My hand hovers over the folder bearing my own name.
Celeste Thalrien.
My next breath comes uneven.
I pull it free. The folder practically vibrates in my hands.
This one is thicker than the rest. Inside: photographs. My mother when she was younger, radiant, a protective curve to her body. A baby wrapped in her father’s arms. Another of a little girl outside a villa in Italy—me at six, eyes too wise. Another still—me and Gavrail, arm in arm in Bulgaria, cheeks flushed from snow and mischief. Then my graduation in Virginia. My mother. My father. So much joy. So much history.
But none of this I gave.
Thorne has been tracking me.
Page after page—addresses. Medical records. School names. Functions attended. The cat I adored when I was ten. The time I broke my wrist falling out of a tree.
He hasn’t just watched me.
He’s studied me.
My pulse hammers. This isn’t curiosity. This is preparation. Strategy. Like he’s been assembling the parts of a puzzle since long before I even knew I was on the board. Thorne mapped mypast. My home. Not just where I live now, but where I came from, where I was shaped. The idea of him knowing those places—studying them—feels invasive. Like a predator tracking prey.
My hand trembles slightly as I lift the next photograph. Something shifts beneath it.
A square of blue velvet, wrapped like a present.
Carefully, I unfold it. A folio—thick parchment edged in faded gold thread. The parchment is aged but well-preserved, covered with blue ink that has not faded. The old script of the water clans—elegant, formal, deliberate.
A lineage record.
At the top:House Thalrien.
Some names are familiar, but most are not.
And then, my father’s name is listed cleanly—Selric Thalrien—and beside it, in dark, precise handwriting:Rosalind Staten Farris.
Below them, a single line descends.
Celeste Thalrien.
A hand-drawn eight-pointed star is next to my name.
