I would never survive losing Graham.
That much I knew. So what I needed to do was put my head down and do what I did best—research.
I pulled the membership lists back toward me and started reading more carefully, now that I didn’t have to hide my reactions from Graham.
Bookkeeper. The word appeared on page after page, always attached to a Wright name. Màiri, Ailsa, Isobel. Generation after generation, the same role, the same family.
And then, after 1745, nothing.
I found one more reference, a letter from 1746, addressed to the Order’s leadership.
Following the events of the winter solstice, it is the consensus of the remaining members that the position of Bookkeeper shall remain vacant until such time as the covenant may be restored and the bridge rebuilt. The Wright line has broken faith with the Order. We shall not record the specifics herein, for to write it is to give it power, but let it be known that what Isobel Wright did cannot be undone by ordinary means. The Three Queens are divided. It is the only way to protect them.
The Three Queens are divided.
I read the words again, my heart pounding.
The three Wright branches—Na Trì Banrigh, whatever that truly meant—had been connected through the Bookkeeper. And Isobel had severed that connection completely. Her betrayal hadn’t just cursed our line. It had scattered the entire family. It detached the Bookkeeper’s role from the Order.Broken faith with the Order.
But how? What had she done that was so terrible it couldn’t even be written down? Something bad enough that her own sisters fled rather than stay?
Isobel hadn’t just failed in her duty. She’d done something unforgivable—something that had broken the Wright family apart and cursed her descendants forever.
And now I was the last of her line. The last daughter of the Bookkeepers.
Which meant …Iwas the remaining member of the Order of Caledonia.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AGNES
Bookkeeper.
Like,obviously. Of course it made sense.
I’d been assisting the Order since Sophie had come to town and we’d hit the ground running to make an actual change in helping with the Kelpies at the loch. But this felt different. It was real in a way that was much more formal, like I was actually a part of it, and it echoed what Liora had said about there being a thread that connected me. I was a part of all of this. Or, at least, my family had once been.
Until Isobel Wright had managed to destroy it somehow.
I stifled a yawn and reached for the next stack of documents, determined to find something—anything—that might explainwhatshe’d done. But before my fingers touched the paper, movement caught my eye.
I froze.
“I swear to the goddess, Clyde, if you jump out at me again,” I warned.
The room was silent, aside from the low hum of radiators creaking.
Had I imagined something?
A soft rustle sounded. Like pages turning.
I stood slowly, grabbing the nearest heavy object—a brass paperweight shaped like a thistle—and crept toward the shelves. I held my breath. This was how people died in horror films, wasn’t it? Investigating strange noises in empty rooms in a castle?
Another rustle sounded and I drew closer.
I raised the paperweight, ready to brain whatever creature was lurking in the stacks, and then I rounded the corner.
A tiny serpentine head poked out from between two leather-bound volumes, regarding me with eyes that glowed faintly gold. The creature was perhaps about four inches long and its body was made of gorgeous luminescent scales that glimmered and shifted colors in the soft light.
