Chapter 60 — The First Memory "I remember you." Amelia couldn't move. The voice was hers — not similar, not distorted, not some echo carrying her tone. Her own voice, speaking from somewhere so close she felt the words against the shell of her ear. Then the darkness shifted, and she opened her eyes standing alone. No grave, no staircase, no First King, no Alaric. No Adrian. Only darkness stretching in every direction. "Adrian?" Her voice vanished into the black. "Adrian!" Nothing. Panic rose sharp in her chest as she turned, searching for anything familiar. Then a small golden light appeared in the distance, and a child stood inside it. Amelia recognized her instantly. The first version of herself — the little girl beneath the three moons. But this time, she wasn't smiling. "You're late," the child said. "Where's Adrian?" "He's remembering." "Remembering what?" "The part he wasn't allo...
Chapter 1 - The Door at Blackwood Manor Rain had been hammering the roof for three hours straight when Amelia Hart finally saw the door. It waited at the far end of the west corridor, hemmed in by portraits gone the color of weak tea and wallpaper curling away from the plaster like old skin. Amelia had lived in the manor nearly a month. She would have sworn, under oath, that this corridor ended in a blank wall. The door itself was tall, narrow, cut from oak so dark it seemed to drink the lantern light rather than reflect it. Silver traced across its surface in patterns that resolved, the longer she looked, into something like constellations. She stopped walking. "That's not possible." She raised the lantern. The flame guttered, then steadied, throwing the door into sharper relief. She had walked every room of this house since her grandmother's death handed it to her — every room, she'd have said, without exception. The old woman's final letter had contained ...