Page 34 of Never the Same

“Our phoenix is different from what you may remember in the movies.” He lifted his chin as a directive toward the painting. “Only the wing is in the fire, not the whole bird like usual. It represents a transformation still in progress. Not a full rebirth. Just . . . survival.” He turned away from the painting. “Once it was safe to visit England again, you’d always spend your time down here exploring.”

“Why wasn’t it safe to—”

“An enemy of our parents tried to kill Gideon. He was seven at the time, and that’s when they opted to move to the US.”

I was less shocked by the story and more surprised at the outcome of it. “So what you’re saying is, she cared about us at one point?” My shoulders sagged with regret almost immediately. “Sorry, that was rude.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder and gently squeezed, and thankfully, his touch didn’t bother me. “No, it’s just untrue.” His dark brows slanted as he stared at me. “Mum is a hard nut to crack. She’s got walls higher than the one our parents helped dismantle in Berlin in 1989. She has her reasons, I swear.”

“Sure.” I rolled my eyes, then huffed out a deep breath. “What if Tristan is responsible for what happened? Gideon said he’d kill whoever did this to me.”

He was quiet for a moment, taking longer than I thought he’d need to answer. “He’d never kill Tristan. Not even if he did this.”

“Just lock him away?” I raised my brows.

“Maybe.” His gaze slipped over to a case that held a leatherbound book with bronze-capped corners, as if searching for a distraction.

Books in cases—why does that feel so familiar? I closed my eyes, trying to summon a memory. I even tightened my lids as much as possible, as if the action would produce something. The only thing that came to mind . . . a husband I wasn’t married to and kids I didn’t have. What in the world?

“You used to read this all the time.” Julian’s words returned me to the present, which was ironically also my past. “The Avery Wyndham d’Aragon Codex. It’s one of the records of our bloodline—from Iberia to our Vatican ties. This isn’t legend, it’s documentation.”

Iberia? Vatican? “So we’re not just—”

“No,” he cut in. “We’re far from being just British aristocrats.”

“Our mother mentioned she’s an Avery and our father is a Wyndham d’Aragon.” What a mouthful. “Why does he have two last names?”

“Dad’s mum’s side is the Wyndhams—another powerful bloodline. Our grandparents were matched together just like our parents were.”

Matched? Like . . . arranged marriage?

Julian typed in a code, letting that subject go as if it were no big thing. The case hissed and unlocked, opening with a click. He tried to hand the codex to me, but I hesitated, because something told me a book that needed special sealing shouldn’t be touched.

“That’s okay.” I waved him off. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

He opened it, revealing pages of illuminated script. Handwritten Latin, intricate diagrams, and gilded edges.

“It’s a history of war and peace. Influence and legacy. Family secrets, too.” After gently turning a few more pages, he closed the book, resealed the case, and returned it to the shelf.

A hopeful feeling of familiarity pulled at me, but I didn’t bother to shut my eyes this time. No point.

“Our bloodlines have advised the Medicis. Funded some of da Vinci’s work. Have long-standing privileges with the Vatican. Helped launch MI6. And that’s barely scratching the surface.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’ve been there, done that. Been around a while.”

This should have produced a lot more shock and awe inside me, but my pulse remained fairly steady. And as long as we weren’t discussing lives I’d taken, I didn’t feel the need to upchuck. I supposed that meant the badass me was front and center, not the shaky, sad who-the-heck-am-I version my mother couldn’t stand.

“Pretty much,” he finally said, doing a three-sixty as if to admire the place himself. “This room is one of six. We have vaults like this all over the world, protecting knowledge and secrets. Dangerous truths.” He went over to a framed oil painting and angled his head toward it. “That was vault seven. It was located on the back of the property where our pops lived. You called him Pappy.”

Pappy, huh? I read the inscription beneath it out loud. “Destroyed in a fire in 1992.” There were two side-by-side canvases in one frame: before and after the destruction.

The first showed the exterior rising from a mountainside like part of the stone itself. Narrow arched windows that caught the light, glinting like shards of ice against a darker facade. The terraced steps led up to heavy doors bound in black iron. It looked like a fortress cloaked in snow and silence.

On the right side, a scar carved into that same mountain. A collapsed roof in jagged sheets, leaving exposed blackened beams jutting skyward like broken teeth. No longer windows reflecting light, just hollow sockets rimmed in soot. Empty and broken.

“Arson?”

“Doubtful. No foul play was detected, so it was assumed to be an accident.”