Chapter 11
Piper
Snow swirls lazily outside Bean & Bell, our tiny local coffee shop strung with warm lights and evergreen garland. The windows are fogged from the heat inside, giving the place a cozy, snow-globe quality.
Inside, everything smells like cinnamon, espresso, and comfort. Perfectly normal, and exactly what I need.
Rhea is already at a corner table, coat tossed over her chair, curls wild around her face. She’s stirring her latte like she’s trying to divine a prophecy in the foam. The moment she sees me, her amber eyes widen. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“That’s because I haven’t.”
She pats the seat beside her. “Come. Tell me everything.”
I slide into the booth, lowering the linen-wrapped bell onto the table between us.
Rhea leans forward, eyes narrowing. “Oh…That’s a… vibe.”
“It shouldn’t be,” I mutter. “It’s just a bell.”
“That’s a Veda bell. It’s NEVER ‘just’ anything.”
I rub my temples. “I was hoping you’d say it’s fake. Or decorative. Or an antique someone misplaced.”
“Piper,” she whispers, voice softening. “It’s humming.”
I go still. “You can feel it too?”
She nods, expression sobering. “It feels… old. And stubborn.” She hesitates. “Kind of like you.”
I glare. “Not helpful.”
“Okay, okay.” She folds her hands. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”
I meet her gaze. “What do you know about Veda?”
Rhea sighs. “Not much. She’s practically a myth in our family. A name in a ledger. A sketch in an old book, if you will. The one who ‘broke the balance’—whatever that means.”
“Slade says she lied,” I mutter, staring down at the tarnished little bell.
Rhea lifts both eyebrows. “Oh, I remember.”
She waves a hand dramatically. “Veda wasn’t the victim, she was the architect,” she says, voice deepening into an overly dramatic imitation of Slade. “She ran from the bond. She wanted supremacy.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Rhea—”
She softens, leaning forward. “Look, Pipes… I didn’t want to hear it either. But some of what he said lines up with the old coven rumors. Not the official stuff, but the things our great-aunts whispered when they’d had too much peppermint liquor.”
I blink. “What rumors?”
“That the curse wasn’t born out of punishment.”
She lowers her voice. “But out of a choice. A… break. A severing.”
My stomach tightens. “A severing of what?”
Rhea shakes her head helplessly. “I don’t know. A bargain? A sacrifice? A bond she didn’t want? But something this old—” She gestures toward the bell. “It would hide itself until the right Bellamy came along.”
“And you think that’s me.”
“I know it’s you,” she whispers.
The words land heavy. Ancient. Inescapable. I swallow. “So what do we do?”
Rhea stares at the bell again, shoulders tense. “We investigate. Carefully.”
She unwraps the linen, exposing the tarnished brass. Nothing glows. It doesn’t rattle. Nothing hums. It looks like a trinket. Except when Rhea brushes her fingertips across the metal—a soft pulse of air ripples through my magic.
Rhea recoils instantly. “Okay. NOPE. That is definitely holding a memory. Or a message. Or trauma.” She shudders. “Probably trauma.”
“Fantastic,” I mutter. “Super reassuring.”
Rhea points at it. “Ring it.”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
“Just lightly!”
“That doesn’t lower the danger level!”
“Piper, it might be the only way to activate it.”
I force a breathe in, releasing it in a whoosh. “You felt Slade’s warning. He nearly growled when I picked it up.”
Rhea scoffs. “Please. Demons say ‘don’t’ like it’s punctuation.” She deepens her voice. “‘Don’t touch that.’ ‘Don’t go alone.’ ‘Don’t summon ancient powers by accident.’” She flicks her wrist. “And yet here we are—summoning demons and unraveling curses like it’s Tuesday.”
“I hate everything you’re saying right now,” I growl.
“You love it.”
“I absolutely do not.”
She takes a smug sip of her latte. “Your demon babysitting Newt right now says otherwise.”
I groan into my hands. “Rhea. Slade made me promise that if YOU couldn’t help, I’d go to the Ninth Realm.”
Rhea spits her drink across the table. “THE WHAT?”
“The Ninth Realm.”
She coughs violently. “As in Lucifer’s Christmas Ball?!”
“Yes.”
“PIPER LEIGH!”
“I KNOW.”
“PIPER. LEIGH. BELLAMY,” she screeches, drawing nearly every eye in the coffee shop. Then slaps the table, scandalized. “Why would you agree to that?!”
“Because the Ninth Realm has the oldest archives in existence!” I hiss, waving frantically trying to get her to hush. “Slade said they might have what Veda erased!”
Rhea freezes. Then leans in very, very slowly. “You want the truth?”
I nod, throat tight.
“Then we’re way out of our depth.”
My blood goes cold. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” she whispers, eyes on the bell, “this is older than anything I’ve ever studied. Definitely older than our coven. Maybe older than Bellamy magic entirely.”
A quiet dread creeps under my skin.
Rhea inhales shakily. “Or, ya know. Maybe it’s harmless,” she says, sighing dramatically like she doesn't even believe herself. “Pipes… I can’t help you. Not fully. Not with this.” The words hit like a stone. I tighten my grip on the linen-wrapped bell.
Rhea reaches for my hands, squeezing gently. “But I can prepare you. And I can be at your back. No matter what you find.”
My vision blurs for a second—emotion, fear, the weight of five centuries pressing down on me.
“You have to go,” she whispers.
My throat tightens. “Slade will be impossible after this.”
She snorts. “He was impossible before this.”
I close my eyes. The truth cracks out of me in one whispered breath, “I think he wants more than the bond.”
Rhea squeezes my hand tighter. “Oh sweetie. He does. We both saw it.”
“But I don’t know if I can handle that.”
Rhea’s voice drops, soft but sharp with honesty. “Then decide what scares you more. The curse… or letting someone actually see you.”
The bell pulses. Once. Soft. Like the heartbeat of someone finally waking. And just like that—I know.
The Ninth Realm isn’t optional anymore…
It’s inevitable.