CHAPTER 12
Mallory
Home did not feel the same. It felt hollow and empty.
Maybe it was the long flight back in which Brooke and Jenna continued to give her the cold shoulder. They still thought she was keeping secrets, and Mallory couldn’t blame them. She still didn’t understand herself.
Mallory sat in the university library three days later, surrounded by books and hushed voices, and felt like she was underwater. Sound reached her, but her ears refused to listen to anything specific. Light filtered in but she could no longer see any warmth in it.
Even though everything looked exactly the same, from the same scarred wooden tables, the same dust-heavy shelves, and the same half-finished coffee cooling beside her laptop, she wasn’t the same.
The classes that she had looked forward to for so long no longer held any appeal. The upcoming projects she had spent so much thought on now seemed like chores instead of adventures.
Her dreams of excelling in medicinal research had changed to the point she didn’t even recognize herself. Still, she went through the motions. Maybe acting was in her future.
Her pen hovered uselessly above her notebook, the page still blank except for the date. She tried to focus on the article open on her screen, something about organic medicinal plants, but her thoughts drifted of their own free will back to snow and mountains.
To peacock-blue eyes and a voice that still echoed in her dreams. The man who had changed her.
Jakob.
She hadn’t heard from him. Not a message. Not a goodbye. Nothing to tell her if what they’d shared had been real or just something she’d imagined because of the thin mountain air.
She told herself that was normal. Rational. He was a king, one of the royal family. Prince William never explained himself. And she was nothing more than a university student with a complicated family history and a bruised heart.
And yet, every night, she dreamed of wings.
She tried to shake it off by diving into research, telling herself this was what she should be doing.
But instead of school work, she found herself searching the Iskara Northlands for her own knowledge, and then Onyxheim.
The regional histories, the people, and the traditions.
She needed something practical that she could justify if anyone asked.
She typed in medicinal plants of the Silver Snow Mountains. There had to be something there that she could use.
Instead, she found stories of white dragons that guarded mountain realms. Myths that dwelled in children’s stories and local lore.
Rulers who were bound to a single mate because of their winged secrets.
Mallory let out a soft, humorless laugh as she closed one book and opened another.
“Fairytales,” she murmured under her breath. But her chest tightened anyway.
Because the folktales felt uncomfortably familiar. The reverence given to the king. The way the land itself responded to him. The insistence, repeated across cultures and centuries, that once a bond was formed, it could not be broken without consequence.
She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples.
This was ridiculous. Her misery was projecting onto the pages of the books. Missing someone didn’t mean rewriting reality. Grief and longing had a way of making patterns where none existed.
Still, when she closed her eyes, she could almost feel Jakob’s coat around her shoulders again, heavy, warm, and protective.
The way he’d looked at her as if she mattered more than the entire world he carried.
Mostly the way he refused to take from her that which he had never hesitated taking from other women.
Her phone buzzed. Mallory’s heart jumped before she could stop it, a sharp, hopeful beat that immediately betrayed her.
But it wasn’t Jakob. It was another message from the same unknown number.
You left Onyxheim. Why would you do that? Your sister doesn’t have much time.
Mallory’s breath caught painfully, like the air had been knocked from her lungs.
The library faded around her as she stared at the screen. Fear and anger tangled so tightly she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Her fingers curled around the phone until her knuckles ached.
Meg.
The name felt like a bruise she kept pressing just to prove it was still there. She sent a text back.
If I return, will you let me see her?
She knew better than to expect an answer. She swallowed hard and shut down her laptop. Whatever Jakob was fighting inside himself and whatever reasons had kept him distant wouldn’t change this. She was on her own.
Meg was out there.
And Mallory was going to find her.
She headed to her parents’ house instead of her apartment when she left the library. Being alone meant she would stare at her phone. She needed distraction.
Their house smelled the same as it always had of clean laundry, lemon polish, and something warm baking in the oven. It should have felt comforting. Instead, it made her chest ache.
Her mom hovered as soon as Mallory stepped inside, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her sweater, asking too many questions about classes, about work, about whether she was eating enough.
Her dad stayed near the kitchen counter, arms folded, pretending to read something on his phone he clearly wasn’t absorbing.
They were both watching her.
Mallory noticed it in the pauses. In the way conversations stopped just a beat too long when she mentioned travel or research. In the careful way her mom avoided saying Meg’s name at all.
They sat at the table with mugs of coffee between them. She watched the steam curl upward.
“So,” her dad said finally without quite meeting her eyes, “what’s got you digging into old myths all of a sudden?”
Mallory’s fingers tightened around her mug. “A little bit of research for a mid-term paper, and a little bit of curiosity.”
“Have you found anything useful?”
She’d had conversations like this before and learned the hard way not to give direct answers. If she kept it vague, it was much safer.
“I’m just… following a lead,” she said. “Something that might explain a few unanswered questions.”
Her mom’s smile wavered. “About what?”
Mallory hesitated. Just long enough.
Her dad sighed and set his phone down. “Mallory.”
There it was. The tone that meant don’t.
“You’re not…” Her mom stopped and swallowed hard. “You’re not still trying to figure out where Meg went, are you?”
The words landed softly, but the weight of them was crushing. Her parents wanted answers without actually knowing if they wanted to know.
Mallory forced herself to breathe. “I never stopped wondering,” she said quietly. “How could I?”
Her mom looked away with eyes shiny from tears. Her dad’s jaw tightened.
“We’ve been through this,” he said. “Meg left after that fight. She was angry. She wanted freedom. She didn’t want to be found.”
“That doesn’t mean she disappeared,” Mallory said with a tremor that slipped into her voice despite her efforts. “She wouldn’t just vanish. She wouldn’t just cut me off.”
Her mom reached for her hand, then stopped halfway, as if afraid to touch the subject. Or Mallory herself. “Sweetheart, we can’t do this again. We’ve spent years tearing ourselves apart over maybes and what-ifs.”
Mallory’s throat burned. “I’m not asking you to tear yourselves apart. I’m just asking you to admit there might be more.”
“There isn’t,” her dad said sharply, then softer, “We’ve accepted what happened. You should too.”
Accepted.
The word felt like a door slammed shut.
Mallory nodded, even though every instinct in her screamed in protest. She suddenly saw the truth she had circled for years.
They weren’t indifferent. They were broken.
Meg’s disappearance had shattered something in them, and pretending it had been a rebellious choice instead of something darker was the only way they’d survived. Digging again meant reopening wounds they’d barely stitched closed.
She stood and forced a smile that she didn’t feel. “I should go. I’ve got a lot to do.”
Her mom hugged her a little too tightly. Her dad kissed her forehead like she was still a child who could be protected by not knowing.
Mallory walked out into the fading afternoon light with her heart pounding.
They suspected. They always had. They just couldn’t follow her where she was going, and that was okay. She would go alone.
She pulled out her phone once more and stared at the message from the unknown number. She only had one option.
Even if it meant returning to the mountains she’d left behind and even if it meant she had to face the man who had undone her. Even if the truth changed everything.
She would find Meg.