Chapter 26 Amelia
AMELIA
The archives of Nytheria do not forgive impatience.
Dust gathers in deliberate layers across carved stone shelves, and the air smells of dried vellum, old ink, and the faint metallic trace of warded preservation spells.
Light filters down through high, narrow windows, catching motes that drift like suspended time.
Most Purnas avoid this level unless required. History is heavy. It demands attention.
Today, I welcome the weight.
Zeidan stands near the entrance, arms crossed, watchful without intruding. He insisted on coming. I insisted he not hover. We compromised: he guards the perimeter while I dismantle the past.
The arrow rests on the central table, wrapped carefully in neutral cloth. We removed it without triggering the secondary ward, though it took both of us and more restraint than either of us enjoyed. The sigil near its base is faint, nearly decorative if you don’t know what to look for.
But I do..
I pull three separate codices toward me, one detailing pre-unification assassin guilds, one cataloguing forbidden sigilwork from the border wars, and one older still, its spine cracked with age, chronicling ritual curses tied to land corruption.
The symbol on the arrow is not a house crest. It is not Velcryn. It is not a coven mark. It is a contraction glyph.
“Someone who wanted plausible deniability,” I murmur.
Zeidan’s voice drifts from the doorway. “Meaning?”
“It collapses layered enchantments into a single signature. You see one mark. Underneath, there are three.”
He shifts slightly closer. “Can you separate them?”
“Yes,” I say, though I am not entirely certain.
I press my fingers lightly against the cloth-wrapped shaft and draw a thread of magic into the glyph. The archive wards stir in mild disapproval but do not interfere. I breathe slowly and peel back the outer linework, revealing the faintest echo beneath it.
There. Three overlapping roots. Not decorative. Intentional.
I turn to the oldest codex and flip through brittle pages until I find what my instinct is already whispering.
Wildspont corruption rites.
The ink is faded, but the illustration is unmistakable, three-rooted sigils used in ancient attempts to “redirect” ley energy when a Wildspont became unstable. Most of the rites were abandoned after catastrophic failure.
Because they do not heal blight. They feed it. My stomach tightens.
“Zeidan,” I say quietly. “This isn’t just assassination work.”
He moves to my side immediately. I turn the book so he can see the illustration. His gaze sharpens.
“It’s a feeding structure,” he says after a moment.
“Yes.”
The arrow is not simply poisoned. It is keyed. Designed to destabilize ley-aligned beings, Vrakken, Purnas, anyone deeply attuned, and channel the magical discharge into something else.
Something below.
“The blight,” I whisper.
Not natural. Sustained.
Zeidan’s jaw sets. “You’re certain?”
“I’m certain this symbol appears in rites designed to siphon Wildspont energy through sacrifice or trauma.” I meet his eyes. “And you were shot on the outer perimeter directly above one of the older root tunnels.”
Silence stretches between us.
“If someone is feeding the blight,” he says slowly, “they need a conduit.”
“And proximity to sacred ground.”
We both think of the ruined temple. Abandoned generations ago after the ley lines shifted. Declared unstable. Avoided by most of the coven except historians and the foolish.
“Of course it’s the temple,” Zeidan mutters.
I close the codex gently instead of snapping it shut.
“We should move before someone else does,” I say.
Zeidan nods, but he doesn’t step away from the table. His eyes remain on the arrow, on the exposed glyphs, calculating.
“There’s something else,” I add.
That gets his attention. His gaze lifts, sharpening instantly. “What?”
I hesitate. This shouldn’t feel difficult. It isn’t a confession. It isn’t an accusation. And yet.
“I spoke to Ron.”
There is the faintest shift in his posture.
“When?” he asks.
“After you were shot.”
A pause. “Without my knowledge.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens, but not in anger. In consideration. “And what did my little brother decide to tell you?”
I lean back against the edge of the table, folding my arms loosely. “That you’re insufferable when you’re trying to protect someone.”
That almost earns a reaction. Almost.
“He said,” I continue more quietly, “that you’ve never let anyone close enough to matter since… before.”
Sabrina goes unspoken, but it settles between us anyway. Zeidan looks away first.
“He had no right—”
“He had every right,” I interrupt gently. “He was worried about you.”
Silence fills the archives, thick but not hostile. The dust in the air drifts lazily through a shaft of light between us.
“He said something else,” I add.
Zeidan’s eyes return to mine, wary now.
“He said you’re different with me.”
A faint crease appears between his brows. “Different how?”
“Alive,” I say simply.
That lands harder than anything else. He exhales through his nose, almost a quiet scoff. “Ron romanticizes things he does not understand.”
“No,” I say softly. “He understands you better than anyone.”
That makes him go still.
“He trusts me,” I continue. “He told me that outright. Said if I ever hurt you, he’d have words. But he trusts me.”
There’s something almost boyish in the way Zeidan absorbs that. A flicker of surprise. Of uncertainty.
“I swear I didn't fight him with pillows enough when we were younger,” Zeidan mutters.
I burst out laughing. The sound echoes faintly off the stone shelves, scandalously bright for a room that has likely not heard laughter in decades.
“I cannot,” I say between breaths, “imagine you in a pillow fight.”
Zeidan arches a brow. “I was a child once.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I assure you, I was inconveniently small.”
“That’s worse,” I tell him. “Small and brooding?”
“I did not brood.”
“You absolutely brooded.”
A reluctant smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Ron cheated.”
“In a pillow fight?”
“He filled his with sand once.”
I stare at him.
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
I press a hand over my mouth, laughing again. “You were assaulted by decorative bedding.”
“He declared it a strategic adjustment.”
“That explains so much about him.”
“And me,” Zeidan adds dryly.
I shake my head, still smiling. “No. You would have insisted on rules. Formal combat. Approved pillow density.”
“That is absurd.”
“It is painfully accurate.”
For a moment he just looks at me, really looks, and the teasing expression softens into something warmer.
“You laugh differently now,” he says quietly.
The words catch me off guard. “What?”
“It’s lighter,” he says. “Less guarded.”
My chest tightens, not painfully. Just… aware.
“Maybe I’m less alone,” I reply.
Something in his expression shifts again. He steps closer. The space between us disappears without urgency. His hand slides around my waist, warm and steady, drawing me gently against him. I let myself lean into him.
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
The archives remain silent witnesses, dust turning lazily through a beam of light that spills across his shoulder and into his hair. He lowers his head slightly, and I feel his breath brush my temple before his lips press softly into my hair. It isn’t heated. It isn’t hungry. It’s… tender.
A quiet claim that feels earned. I close my eyes.
“If Ron ever learns you’re capable of this,” I murmur against his chest, “your reputation will be ruined.”
“He already suspects,” Zeidan replies.
“Oh?”
“He told me I look insufferably pleased when you enter a room.”
I tilt my head back to look at him. “Do you?”
A faint, almost embarrassed flicker crosses his face.
“I do not monitor my expressions.”
“Mm,” I hum. “That sounds like a yes.”
His thumb traces once along the small of my back, absentminded, grounding.
“For the record,” he says quietly, “I do not regret being different.”
I press my forehead lightly to his chest, just for a heartbeat longer.
“Good,” I whisper.
Then I step back, because if we linger much longer, we may never make it to the temple at all.
“Come on,” I say, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “Let’s go uncover treason before your brother decides to stage an intervention.”
Zeidan huffs softly, but his hand finds mine as we turn toward the exit. He doesn’t let go. And neither do I.
The eastern temple is less ruin and more wound.
Stone columns lean at tired angles, half-swallowed by creeping vines. The roof collapsed long ago, leaving the central altar exposed to sky and rain. Moss blankets cracked tiles, and the air carries a faint, sour undertone beneath the scent of earth.
Blight. Subtle. Breathing. The moment we step past the threshold, the bond shifts. Like stepping into a chamber where sound has always existed but was previously muted.
Zeidan’s fingers brush mine, not by accident. His wings remain hidden, but I feel the restrained edge of his power as keenly as my own. The sacred ground recognizes us, not as invaders, but as something aligned and altered.
The altar at the center is carved with older sigils than the current coven uses. Rootwork spirals outward in concentric circles, but along the outermost ring, something darker stains the stone.
I kneel.
The blight here is thin, but deliberate. It threads into cracks like ink spilled with purpose.
“Do you feel that?” I whisper.
“Yes,” Zeidan answers. “It’s not spreading randomly.”
“It’s being directed.”
The air shifts. A wind that does not belong to the weather curls through the broken columns, stirring leaves without touching branches. The temperature drops slightly, enough to raise gooseflesh along my arms.
Zeidan steps closer.
The altar pulses once beneath my palm. Then again.
A figure forms, translucent, woven from light and root-shadow. Not a ghost. Not entirely a spirit.
A guardian remnant.
Its voice is not sound. It is pressure against thought.
Fed.
The word presses into me like a bruise.
I swallow. “The blight?”
Fed.
Not wound of nature.
Given.
Zeidan stiffens beside me. “By whom?”
The spirit’s shape flickers. One tendril lifts, pointing, not outward, but downward.
Below.
The roots beneath the temple shudder faintly.
Given willingly.
The implication is colder than the air.
The spirit’s light dims slightly, strain evident in the way its form wavers.
You are bound.
The words settle differently this time, acknowledging the bond between us.
Balance disrupted.
Restore.
Then it fractures into motes of pale green light and dissolves back into the stone. Silence rushes in.
Zeidan exhales slowly. “Willingly.”
“Not accidental,” I say.
We circle the altar carefully now, scanning every groove and crack. Near the base, half-hidden beneath collapsed debris, something metallic catches the light.
I brush moss aside. An artifact. Small. Circular. No larger than my palm. It is not ancient. The metal is too refined. The sigilwork too modern.
Three-rooted contraction glyph at its center.
And around the edge, woven so subtly most would miss it, a signature thread I recognize instantly.
My blood goes cold.
Vira.
Not a house mark. Not an official crest. Her personal weave. The same pattern she uses in her council rings. I lift the artifact carefully, my hand steady despite the tremor running through me. Zeidan sees my expression before he sees the object.
“What is it?” he asks.
I turn it so he can see the etched signature.
His face goes very still.
“It’s hers,” I say quietly.
The wind stirs again through the ruined temple, carrying the faint scent of rot from somewhere deep beneath the roots.
Now, we are not chasing suspicion. We are holding proof.