114. Scarlett
Scarlett
T he manor breathed around me.
The walls weren’t just old—they were alive. The stone pulsed with heat in places and chilled my skin in others. My footsteps echoed back slower than they should’ve, like the halls were memorizing me. Or testing me.
I didn’t know where I was going. I just walked.
A staircase curved downward like it had been carved from bone. I followed it. I didn’t ask why.
Every breath I took felt like dust and something else—something metallic, blood. Or memory.
The air was too quiet. No servants. No guards. No Brielle. Just this place and me and something waiting in the dark.
I reached a door near the end of the hall. It opened like it had been expecting me.
Inside, the room was circular. A domed ceiling. Stone floor. A tapestry hung across the far wall—threadbare but intact.
A dagger. A veil. An eye.
And beneath them—three knots. Two pulled tight. One unraveled.
I stepped closer.
There was writing underneath it, faint but legible in the firelight.
The one who binds will break. The one who breaks will burn. The one who burns will beg. And the heir will choose.
I touched the stone below the tapestry and the world spun. My knees buckled.
And then I was somewhere else.
A dream—or maybe a memory that didn’t belong to me.
I was lying in a garden. Thorns climbing the wall behind me. Moonlight bleeding through the leaves. Someone whispering my name.
Trace. Alden.
I turned my head, and they were there. One on either side. Looking at me like I was salvation and damnation.
“You have to choose,” Alden said.
“You already did,” Trace whispered.
“No,” I said, voice cracking. “I didn’t.”
They touched my hands.
And everything caught fire.
I gasped awake on the stone floor of the tapestry room, my hands burning.
When I looked down, they weren’t marked. But I could still feel the heat.
The manor wasn’t just remembering me.
It was waking me up.
***
I found her in the east wing.
Brielle was sitting like a fucking queen—legs crossed on a velvet chaise, reading something bound in cracked leather and wrapped in arrogance. She didn’t look surprised to see me.
“Took you long enough,” she said, not glancing up.
I walked straight to her and ripped the book from her hands.
“Tell me about the bond, surviving it.”
That got her attention.
Her eyes met mine—bright, sharp, and amused. “Ah. So Daddy dearest finally spilled some bloodline secrets?”
“Tell me. Now.”
She stepped closer. “It’s not just love, Scarlett. It’s not even obsession. It’s tethered magic. Woven before you were even born.”
“The Severance Knot,” I said.
Brielle smiled. “Yes.”
My throat tightened. “So it’s real.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she purred. “It’s older than the Veil. Older than the Order. A power so old it got buried because no one could control it.”
I stepped back. “And now it’s tied to me?” I shook my head. “It wasn’t real until—”
“Until you sealed it,” she said, too sweetly. “Until you let both of them touch you. That’s what did it, you know. That’s what woke Thirelin up.”
“What the hell is Thirelin?” I asked, voice low.
Brielle’s smirk didn’t fade. “This manor. This place. The Red Veil’s sacred ground.”
“That’s not a name,” I said. “That’s something else.”
Her eyes glittered. “Because it is something else. Thirelin isn’t just a manor—it’s a relic, a grave, a living archive of the old magic. You think the walls breathe because you’re imagining it? They remember. They respond to power. To bloodlines. To you.”
I swallowed hard.
“The name comes from the original tongue—Thirelin means the buried thread. The place where the bond was first stitched into flesh. Where Elira made her choice. Where the magic cracked.”
I stared at her. “So I’m just reenacting history?”
“No,” she said, softer now. “You’re rewriting it.”
The air felt heavier.
“The Severance Knot is older than any of us,” she continued. “But this is the first time it’s happened across enemy bloodlines. Two heirs. One girl. One manor that remembers everything.”
I shook my head. “Why does it matter where it happens?”
Brielle stepped closer, her voice almost reverent. “Because Thirelin amplifies magic. It draws it out. It reveals what’s hidden—and what’s coming. It chose to wake now because you woke it. You stepped into this place, into your lineage, and the manor recognized you. It opened the next chapter.”
I looked around, at the stone walls and silver shadows, at the tapestry in my memory and the heat still pulsing in my hands.
The manor wasn’t just a house.
It was a witness.
And I was the storm it had been waiting for.
I hated her. Hated how calm she was. How fucking right she sounded.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why now?”
Brielle tilted her head. “Because you’re the heir. Because fate’s a bitch. And because some knots don’t unravel, no matter how hard you try to pull.”
I didn’t want fate.
I wanted answers that didn’t end with my body being some ancient anchor for ruin and fire.
“I want the rest,” I said. “I want to know how to untie the knot.”
She raised a brow. “Even the part where it kills you?”
I didn’t blink. “Especially that part.”
Brielle stared at me with that infuriating calm like she was the only one holding a map and I was still figuring out what language it was written in.
“You really want the truth?” she asked.
I crossed my arms. “I just said I did.”
She walked to the window and pulled back the curtain, moonlight spilling across the stone floor like silver blood.
“You’re not the first,” she said. “To carry the bond. To bind two souls.”
“There was another before you,” she said. “A woman. Centuries ago. She wore the same bracelet you do now.”
My stomach dropped.
“What bracelet?”
Brielle looked back at me like I was stupid. “The silver one on your wrist, Scarlett. The one you’ve had since you were a child. You think that was some sweet heirloom? It’s a relic. A marker. It’s what wakes the bond up when the time is right.”
I looked down, backing away.
“Her name was Elira,” Brielle went on. “She was the first vessel. She chose both of them. And it destroyed all three.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “That’s what happens?”
“Not always,” she said. “But usually. The Severance Knot isn’t made for happy endings. It’s made for power. And power always has a price.”
I hated how cold the air felt. Like the manor had heard everything. Like the stone was listening.
“And me?” I whispered. “What’s my price?”
Brielle sighed, her patience thinning. “God, do you ever actually listen?”
She turned back toward the window, her silhouette sharp against the silver light. “They’ve all been warning you in their own way—Trace with silence, Alden with sacrifice, Zeke with riddles. None of them want to say it out loud, but you already know.”
I didn’t answer.
She looked over her shoulder. “The price is you, Scarlett.”