20. My Attic
My Attic
MAX
“Is it working?” Nick calls to E.
He’s standing on the first rung of the attic ladder as my ghost uses the fresh boost of power from the séance we just performed to burn off Mabel’s wards, but my brother doesn’t know patience. Or subtlety.
“Give me a second. I’m almost done,” E shoots back, clearly annoyed.
The séance was awkward, all right, but Nick didn’t seem to notice anything out of place—not the way E’s hands slid over mine and squeezed them as though he was promising far more once we were alone.
I pretended to focus on the spell, on the smoke curling upward, on the runes, but all I felt was him. The memory of our kiss still burns my lips, a spark I can’t shake, no matter how hard I try.
A sharp tang of burnt plaster hits my nose, the scent tickling the back of my throat. My pulse skitters. If E can’t destroy the wards barring passage, we’re back to square one. And Nick will be grumpy as hell.
My brother steps forward with his arms lifted toward the ceiling. “I think it’s working.”
A mix of anxiety and excitement ripples through my gut as I follow him up the ladder, half expecting the runes upstairs to flare again and punch us straight back down on our asses.
But no.
We’re in.
The attic smells of dust and asbestos, the kind of staleness that settles into your lungs and nestles deep.
Crimson symbols crawl across the slanted walls, half burned off, the rest glowing in angry shades of scarlet, peeking between stacked wooden crates and solid beams. Candles crowd the shelves and crates and lay in clusters over a heavy desk littered with parchment scraps.
A thick leather-bound book embossed with the Bloodraven crest—a scarlet upside-down tree forming a circle—towers at its center.
It must be Mabel’s book of shadows, where she keeps her most secret spells and recipes.
“So many candles… Can you light them, Maxie?” Nick asks.
I send a tentative flicker of fire forward, and the wicks catch one by one.
A warm, wavering light blooms to life. Every nook and cranny, every scrap of parchment is flooded in a yellow-orange glow—everything except the dark, swirling mass of nothingness that emanates from a mirror leaning against the far wall.
The glass undulates under my frozen stare, its surface untouched by light.
A nervous gasp pops out of me. “Blimey. Is that a mirror?”
Nick’s gaze zeroes in on it, and he tiptoes closer.
The dark blotch swallows the electrical glow emanating from Nick’s flashlight instead of reflecting it. Why would Mabel keep a mirror here, in the house? All mirrors are connected to the place between worlds, and this one isn’t even warded—
Nick switches off his flashlight and lets his arms fall at his sides. “By the Dark One… That’s no mirror.”
“There’s nothing in it,” E says. “No reflection, nothing.”
Unease crawls up my spine.
A low whistle escapes Nick. “No wonder Mabel worked so hard to keep us out of here. This is a passage into Faerie.”
My breath catches. “What?”
“A special kind of passage that allows travel to and from one single location in Faerie,” Nick answers, raising a shaky hand to the void with a wide-eyed, reverent expression.
“You mean anyone on the other side could just step into the house at will?” I say.
“Yes.”
My brother turns his attention back to the piles of parchment and kneels over the huge map sprawled across the floorboards. “I’m sure we can find where it leads to on this map.”
He kneels over the massive map, but my attention is drawn to the ceiling instead.
Above our heads, a giant tree is painted directly onto the wood, stretching from floor to ceiling and across the sloped roof. Its trunk and branches twist in rich shades of charcoal, vermilion, and gold to form a canopy that feels less painted than grown.
My fingers lift of their own accord, grazing the bark of the painted tree. The wood beneath the paint feels prickly and warm, like something ancient is pressing back against my fingertips.
A gasp quakes my throat when I notice the names written in fine calligraphy along the smaller branches. Hundreds and hundreds of names sprawl across the canopy, no doubt written in Mabel's hand.
The ones on the right side of the tree are rendered in charcoal streaks, rough and violent, marking the darklings and creatures born of ice, shadows, and storms. The light Fae occupy the other side, the names from the Spring, Summer, and Sun courts painted in gold.
Every bloodline in Faerie is compiled here, from royals to commoners—almost as if Mabel was searching for something.
Or someone. In the middle, where the sap of the tree bleeds out, the witches are mapped.
Near her bloodline, some of the names have been burned off and stand incomplete, probably to keep them safe.
Many branches split and fork outward, only to weave themselves together again.
To any mortal, this family tree would seem like a lovely, if rather intense, genealogy experiment—a way to keep track of one’s lineage. But the names written on this tree could bring empires to ruin. Names that could bind or enchant people who are otherwise all-powerful.
This is a secret war code, a weapon of mass destruction.
Mabel immortalized the names of her enemies and allies alike, making sure Bloodsingers could research here for ways to influence, even manipulate, their peers.
The witches’ names are written in blood that has sunk deep into the grain. Threaded next to the witches are the Reds—their names darker and blistered, a record of the priestesses who ransacked our forest and singed hallowed ground.
Only a few names are etched there, Lillivere among them.
Lillivere Janina Cross.
I commit the wretched name to memory. If the opportunity presents itself, I will use this war-book as intended and destroy this woman. My throat constricts, a bitter tang flooding my mouth as I consider the empty spaces flanking her name. So few Reds are revealed here.
“Yes. Here. The passage leads into the Red Forest,” Nick says on a rushed breath, barely able to contain his excitement.
I trace my own name, then Nick’s, our middle and last names burned right off the wood, our true names hidden from everyone, including ourselves.
I’m just Maxine. Like Zendaya or Madonna.
The line leading up to our mother, Sierra Lilith Morgan, draws tears to my eyes.
Common sense dictates that Nick and I shall bear her surname, but after my encounter with the Mist King, I doubt it.
I follow the long, sinuous twine leading to our father, holding my breath. The space where his name should stand is more than burned off. A piece of bark is missing, carved out, a hollow dark spot in its place, right at the heart of the tree.
My shoulders sag.
“That’s frustrating,” E says on an empathic breath.
It is. But the emptiness pulls my attention outward, away from my broken family.
“You’ve got to be on there, too,” I murmur.
I leave my own bloodline behind and move to Mabel’s name instead. Then her daughters and their issues. My pulse stutters.
“Mabel’s daughters bore her surname. Witches are matriarchal, but her daughters abandoned that tradition with their own children to keep them from danger,” I explain. “It’s no wonder they didn’t want to flaunt the family name, considering how renowned Mabel had become after the Mist Wars.”
“But you use her name,” E says.
I bite the inside of my cheek for a moment before answering, “Which means my true name must be even more dangerous.”
E steps closer.
I thought I came up here to find the spindle, not scratch at the old wound left by my absent father, but right now I’m far more excited to search for my ghost.
Because if his name is written here—if it survived all these years in Mabel’s attic—it means he existed. That he lived. That he belonged to this world.
“It’s written here. Siobhan Bloodsinger gave birth to two boys. Ezra and Elio Lightbringer of the Sun Court.” My heart screeches past my feet as I quickly scan his lineage. “You’re Mabel’s grandson. And a Fae prince.”
“I’m not,” he says, his voice unsteady. “I can’t be.”
A Fae prince.
Suddenly, I understand why I never finished the King of Wands. I was waiting for him—the invisible prince hiding in the lines of graphite, the one whose light I could never quite capture because he hadn’t stepped into my life yet.
Of course, he’s charismatic.
Of course, he’s beautiful.
E is the king I never drew, the one ready to bleed with color and return to the living.
He embodies every single one of my silly teenage fantasies—my secret longings. And I’ll get crushed when he remembers who he is. Because if Nick is without a doubt powerful and stubborn enough to fight his way to a crown, I’ve got nothing of a queen in me. Nothing regal. Nothing chosen.
I should have known he had some mystic pull over me—some treacherous enchantment humming beneath every word, every grin I couldn’t see but somehow felt. I should have guessed that he carried a crown from the vividness of his voice alone.
I’ve got no business lusting for a Fae prince. I’m just a mortal girl with too many anxieties and not enough spine.
Fuck me… An actual Fae prince.
Fae royals living in lanterns have a past—and past lovers.
The blood in my ears rings with a crystal-clear pitch. Faint dotted lines swirl toward other names on the tree, forming branches of their own. His name is threaded, irrevocably, into another life. Another woman.
My jaw locks hard enough to hurt.
Ezra Hermes Lightbringer — Willow Hathor Summers
Elio Hades Lightbringer — Lorisha Pari Singh
Smoldering embers of envy rake through my gut.
I don’t know if they are even alive, but the fact that they existed at all irks me.
What am I supposed to do with that?
What am I supposed to be next to them?
I couldn’t possibly be his queen, but I don’t want to be his mistress.
Nick checks his pinging phone and runs down the ladder. “I have to make a call. Let’s find that spindle.”
I nod, the heat of E hovering closer somehow making me feel colder.
I wrap my arms around my frame. “You’re married.”
And that—more than any crown, any name, any ancient power—is the part that terrifies me the most.
“Marriage is dissolved in death. If I were even one of those two men,” E says softly.
I’m right about him being a prince of the Sun Court. I feel it in my bones. “Don’t you want to know who you were? Which of these two names belongs to you?”
And who you belong to? I almost add.
“Only if it gets me you. Otherwise, I couldn’t care less.”
“What are your instincts telling you? Are you Elio, or Ezra? Does one of those two names ring a bell?”
“To be honest, both names make me sick to my stomach.”
A line of fire snakes around my throat and slithers down the valley between my breasts, my cotton shirt catching fire. “Willow or Lori, then?”
Before I can spiral further out of control, E cuts me off. “Let me stay just E, for now. Until we know more, I won’t let you use this family tree as a shield. Who knows who those men and women are, or if they’re still even alive? They’re meaningless.”
I understand what he’s asking.
He doesn’t want to acknowledge any hypothesis that could push us apart. I know it’s foolish to agree, that I should demand answers, distance, and restraint.
Instead, I nod. “Alright.”
Something dark and reckless stirs within me. Because whatever he once was, whatever life he lost, I can feel the truth of him now. Abandoned, alone, nearly erased. A prince reduced to a ghost in a lantern, left to fade while the world carried on without him.
The unfairness of it makes my chest ache.
And with that ache comes something sharper and more dangerous.
The certainty that if I were given the chance, I’d fight for him.
Not as the princess he was meant to end up with, not as the rightful queen of some ancient dynasty, but as the woman he needs now.
The one who sees what’s left of him and still wants it.
The one who fell for him without knowing he was a prince at all.