Chapter 14 Maren
MAREN
Maren didn't go to her cottage.
The lie sat heavy on her tongue as she walked away from Tristan, but she couldn't bring herself to regret it. He needed to investigate without her shadow hanging over his every move, and she needed answers that wouldn't come from ransacking her own belongings.
She needed the Book Nook.
The shop sat tucked between the apothecary and a closed seamstress storefront, its windows glowing warm despite the cold. A painted sign creaked in the wind, and the door chimed softly as Maren pushed inside.
Books lined every wall from floor to ceiling, stacked on tables, piled in corners, organized by a system that probably made sense only to its owners.
The smell of old paper and leather bindings wrapped around her like a familiar blanket, calming nerves that had been frayed since the fountain incident.
Lucien Vale appeared from behind a towering shelf, moving with the liquid grace of his panther heritage.
Sharp green eyes assessed her from a face carved in angular shadows, dark hair falling in waves to his shoulders.
He looked like he'd been carved from oak and moonlight, beautiful in the way dangerous things often were.
"Maren." His voice carried no warmth, but no hostility either. "You're supposed to be at the safe house."
"I needed research. The kind I can't do from two miles outside town."
"Research on what?"
"On who could be framing me."
Lucien studied her for a moment, then stepped aside and gestured toward the back of the shop. "Moira's in the archives. Try not to disturb the organizational system."
Maren wound through the maze of bookshelves until she found the archival room, a cramped space lit by enchanted candles that never dripped or burned out.
Moira Marsh sat surrounded by open volumes, her mahogany curls escaping from a loose bun, glasses perched on her nose as she traced lines of text with one finger.
"Maren!" Moira looked up with genuine warmth, a welcome change from the fear and suspicion that had greeted her in the square. "I heard about the incidents. Are you alright?"
"Physically, yes. Legally, that remains to be seen." Maren settled into the chair across from Moira, her shadows spreading cautiously across the floor. "I need your help."
"Anything. You know that."
"Someone's copying my magical signature.
Using it to cause accidents and illusions that look like my work.
The Council thinks I'm losing control, and the town thinks I'm attacking them deliberately.
" Maren leaned forward, urgency bleeding into her voice.
"I need to know if there's any record of magic that could do that, specifically shadow magic that could mimic a bloodline signature well enough to fool wards and witnesses. "
Moira's expression shifted to scholarly interest, the same look she got when presented with a particularly challenging translation. "Signature mimicry is rare. Most cases involve blood theft or possession, neither of which would produce the sustained effects you're describing."
"What about relics? Cursed objects tied to specific bloodlines?"
"That's more promising." Moira stood, moving to a shelf packed with leather-bound volumes so old their spines had worn smooth. "Shadow magic has a complicated history. Most of it was purged during the witch trials, but some artifacts survived. Let me check the Pitch lineage records."
Maren's heart stuttered. "You have records on my family?"
"The Book Nook has records on most magical bloodlines.
Lucien's been collecting them for decades.
" Moira pulled down a massive tome, its cover stamped with symbols Maren vaguely recognized from her grandmother's journals.
"The Pitch line is particularly well-documented because of the trials.
Your ancestors were among the most powerful shadow witches in recorded history. "
"And among the most persecuted."
"Often the same thing." Moira carried the book back to the table and began flipping through pages covered in dense script and faded illustrations. "Here we go. Pitch family artifacts, catalogued by the Council of Shadows before the purge."
Maren watched as Moira's finger traced down a list of names and descriptions. Rings that amplified shadow work. Mirrors that could trap reflections. Daggers that cut through wards like paper.
Then Moira stopped, her finger hovering over an entry near the bottom of the page.
"The Nightwell Locket," she read aloud, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Created by Evangeline Pitch in the year 1623. A blood-bound artifact capable of storing shadow essence and, under certain conditions, birthing a shadow doppelg?nger."
Maren's blood went cold. "A what?"
"A doppelg?nger. A magical construct made from shadow and blood, capable of mimicking its creator's appearance and magical signature.
" Moira looked up, her brown eyes wide behind her glasses.
"According to this, the locket was designed as a defensive measure, a way to create a decoy during times of persecution.
But if it fell into the wrong hands, or if the blood binding was corrupted somehow—"
"It could be used to frame someone," Maren finished. "To make it look like they were causing harm when they weren't even present."
"Exactly." Moira turned the page, revealing a detailed illustration of a silver locket shaped like a crescent moon.
Dark stones adorned its surface, arranged in a pattern that made Maren's shadows recoil instinctively.
"The locket was supposedly destroyed during the purge, but there's a note here indicating that claim was never verified.
It simply disappeared from the historical record. "
The room felt smaller suddenly. Maren stared at the illustration, something stirring in the back of her memory. A conversation she'd half-forgotten, words spoken by a dying woman who'd spent her life hiding from the consequences of her bloodline.
"My mother mentioned a locket once," Maren said slowly, each word dragged up from somewhere deep and painful. "When she was dying. She said she'd hidden something, something that could never fall into the wrong hands. I thought she meant money, or documents, something practical."
Moira set down the book gently. "You think she had the Nightwell Locket?"
"I don't know. Maybe." Maren pressed her palms against her temples, trying to remember details from a conversation that had happened during the worst week of her life.
"She was delirious near the end. Talking about shadows and mirrors and blood that remembered.
I didn't understand most of it. I was too focused on losing her to pay attention to the specifics. "
"Did she say where she hid it?"
"No. Or if she did, I don't remember." Maren's hands dropped to her lap, frustration and grief tangling in her chest. "She died before I could ask her to explain."
Lucien's voice came from the doorway, making both women start. "If the locket exists and someone found it, they'd need your blood to activate the doppelg?nger function. The binding would require a direct connection to the Pitch bloodline."
Maren thought of the vandalism at her cottage. The slashed wards. The feeling of violation that had lingered even after she'd cleaned up the damage.
"They broke into my home multiple times," she said. "I assumed they were just trying to scare me. But if they took something, hair from my brush, blood from a cut I didn't notice—"
"They'd have everything they needed to create a shadow construct that looked and felt exactly like your magic." Lucien stepped fully into the room, his expression grim. "A perfect frame. You'd be blamed for every incident while the real culprit hid behind your face."
"How do we stop it?" Maren asked. "If the doppelg?nger is already active, already causing chaos, how do we destroy it?"
Moira flipped through more pages, scanning entries with increasing urgency. "The locket would need to be found and destroyed. According to these notes, the construct can't exist without its anchor. Break the locket, break the doppelg?nger."
"But I have no idea where it could be."
"Then we need to find out." Lucien crossed his arms, dark eyes fixed on Maren with unsettling intensity. "Think. Your mother must have left some kind of clue. A letter, a journal, something that could point us in the right direction."
Maren closed her eyes, reaching for memories she'd spent years trying to bury. Her mother's final days had been a blur of fever and fear, whispered warnings that had seemed like delirium at the time. But one phrase kept surfacing, repeated over and over like a prayer.
Where the water remembers. Where the water remembers.
"Moonmirror Lake," Maren breathed, her eyes snapping open. "She kept referring to water that remembers. At the time I thought she was confused, but Moonmirror Lake is famous for holding magical echoes. For remembering things that happened on its shores."
"The scorch marks," Moira said suddenly. "The first incident happened at the lake, didn't it? Tristan reported finding shadow signature burns near the shore."
"Because that's where the locket is." Maren stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. "Or was. Someone found it. Someone activated it using my blood. And now they're using it to destroy everything I've built here."
"You need to tell the Council," Moira said carefully. "This is bigger than one witch being framed. If the Nightwell Locket is active, the doppelg?nger will only grow stronger. It feeds on chaos, on fear, on the very accusations being leveled against you."
"Telling the Council means admitting my family created something capable of this kind of destruction," Maren said bitterly. "Bram already thinks I'm guilty. This will just confirm his suspicions about my bloodline."
"Or it will give them a real enemy to fight instead of a convenient scapegoat." Lucien's voice carried quiet authority. "The choice is yours. But hiding the truth rarely ends well for anyone."
Maren looked at the illustration of the locket, at the dark stones and crescent shape that had apparently been causing havoc while wearing her face.
Her mother had hidden it to protect her. Someone had found it to destroy her.
But why?
"I need to talk to Tristan," she said finally. "He deserves to know what we're actually dealing with."
Moira nodded, closing the book gently. "Be careful, Maren. If whoever's controlling the locket realizes you know about it, they might escalate before you're ready."
"They've already escalated." Maren moved toward the door, her shadows swirling with renewed purpose. "I'm just finally starting to catch up."