Echo of the Fallen Empress

Chapter 1

Anya

The last thing I smell is my own skin burning. The scent is heavy, sickeningly sweet, like roasted meat left too long on the spit. My silk gown, the one embroidered with the imperial sunburst, melts into my flesh. Smoke claws at my lungs, thick and black. I try to scream, but only a dry, rattling gasp escapes.

“It’s a pity, my love.” His voice cuts through the roar of the flames, cool and untouched. Valerius. My husband. The Emperor. “But the empire needs a stronger heir than you can provide.”

I see his silhouette through the shimmering heat, standing just outside the locked doors of my bedchamber. He is not alone. A smaller, more slender shape is beside him, her hand resting on his arm.

“Don’t worry, cousin.” Livia’s voice is a silken poison. “I’ll take good care of him. And the throne.”

My cousin. My dearest friend. The woman I brought to court, who I trusted with my life. She leans her head on my husband’s shoulder. They watch me burn. The betrayal is an agony sharper than the fire. My world dissolves into orange and black, into a pain so absolute it becomes its own universe. My last thought is not of the empire, or my title, or my life. It is a promise, a curse screamed into the void.

You will pay.

Then, nothing.

Cold. A raw, damp cold seeps into my bones. The smell of fire is gone, replaced by the sharp, clean scent of lye and wet stone. My back aches, protesting a mattress stuffed with straw, not goose down. I blink my eyes open. Rough, grey stone ceilings loom above me, slick with condensation. This isn’t my bedchamber. This isn’t the imperial palace.

I sit up, my head spinning. A coarse linen shift, scratchy and thin, is all I wear. I look down at my hands. These are not the hands of an Empress. They are small and red, with chapped knuckles and calluses on the palms. My nails are cut short, with dirt lodged beneath them. Panic, cold and sharp, stabs through me. I swing my legs over the side of the narrow cot, my bare feet hitting a freezing stone floor. A bucket of water sits in the corner. I stumble toward it, my reflection rippling as I lean over.

A stranger stares back. A girl, no older than sixteen, with a thin face, wide, frightened brown eyes, and plain brown hair tied back in a messy knot. This is not my face. Not Empress Ophelia’s face, with its high cheekbones and violet eyes.

“Anya, get up!” A sharp voice cuts through my confusion. A stout woman with a weary face bustles past, throwing a folded bundle of rough clothes at my cot. “Head Laundress Marta will have our hides if we’re late with the morning collection.”

Anya. My name is Anya. The word feels alien on a tongue that doesn't feel like my own.

“Come on, girl. The Crown Prince’s party returns from the summer palace today. That means double the work.”

The Crown Prince. Not the Emperor. My mind latches onto the words, trying to make sense of them. Valerius has been Emperor for five years. But she said Crown Prince.

My body moves on autopilot. I pull on the drab grey dress and worn leather slippers. My limbs feel clumsy, uncoordinated. I follow the other girl, her name is Lena, out of the small dormitory and into a sprawling courtyard filled with steam and the rhythmic thwack of paddles against wet laundry. This is the servant’s quarter. I, who once ruled this palace, am now scrubbing its filth.

The day is a blur of work that breaks my new, soft body. My hands burn from the harsh soap. My arms ache from wringing heavy velvet cloaks. I keep my head down, my mind a maelstrom of impossible thoughts. Reincarnation? A trick of the gods? A nightmare from which I cannot wake?

By late afternoon, Lena shoves a basket of folded linens into my arms. “These are for the Rosewater Wing. Lady Livia’s chambers. Be quick, and for the gods’ sake, don’t get in anyone’s way.”

Livia. The name hits me like a physical blow. I clutch the basket, the wicker digging into my fingers. I walk through the familiar corridors of the palace, but from a perspective I’ve never known. I am invisible. Guards look past me, courtiers sweep by without a glance. I am part of the furniture.

As I round a corner into the main garden promenade, I hear their voices. His laugh, rich and confident. Hers, a tinkling bell of false sweetness.

“Honestly, Val, this palace is so dreary,” Livia is saying. She clings to his arm, resplendent in a gown of emerald green silk. She looks younger, her face free of the subtle lines of ambition that would later harden it. “When you are Emperor, we must redecorate. Everything in gold, I think.”

Valerius smiles down at her. He is just the Crown Prince here, his jawline sharper, his shoulders not yet burdened by the full weight of the crown, but the same casual arrogance is there in his eyes. He is handsome, I cannot deny it, a fact that now makes my stomach turn. “Whatever you wish, my dear. A golden cage for my beautiful songbird.”

They stop walking, bathed in the afternoon sun. He traces her cheekbone with his finger, and she leans into his touch. Lovers. Even then. Ten years before my death, they were already plotting. The basket in my arms trembles. The sight of them, so happy, so alive, while the memory of the fire still scorches my soul, fills me with a coldness that has nothing to do with the damp stone floors of the laundry.

It is real. I am ten years in the past. I am in a body that is not my own. And they are here, their futures stretching before them like a sunlit road. A road that will be built on my ashes.

As they turn to continue their stroll, a young maid, even younger than me, scurries past with a watering can. Her foot slips on a damp cobblestone, and a small splash of water arcs out, landing on the hem of Livia’s emerald gown.

The world seems to stop. Livia looks down at the dark spot on her silk dress as if she has been stabbed.

“You,” she says, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. The maid freezes, her face draining of all color. She looks like a terrified mouse cornered by a cat.

“I… I am so sorry, my lady,” the girl stammers, dropping into a low curtsy. “It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Livia’s laugh is sharp, brittle. “This gown came from the finest silk merchant in the Southern Isles. Its cost is more than your entire miserable life. Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Yes, my lady. Please, forgive me.” The girl is trembling so hard the watering can rattles against the stones.

Valerius watches, a lazy, amused smile on his lips. He makes no move to intervene. He enjoys this. He always did.

“Apologize properly,” Livia commands, her voice ringing with authority. She takes a step closer, looming over the girl. “On your knees.”

The maid hesitates for a fraction of a second. It is too long.

Livia’s hand flashes out, and she slaps the girl across the face. The sound is sharp, ugly in the quiet garden. The maid cries out, stumbling back and falling to the ground. The watering can clatters away.

“I said, on your knees,” Livia repeats, her voice like ice. “Now.”

Sobbing, the girl scrambles onto her knees, pressing her forehead to the cobblestones. “Forgive me, my lady. Please, forgive me.”

Livia watches her for a long moment, her expression one of utter satisfaction. She smooths a wrinkle from her dress. “See that you are not so clumsy again. Or I will have you flogged and thrown out of the palace.”

She turns, slipping her arm back through Valerius’s as if nothing happened. “Now, where were we, my prince?”

They walk away, their laughter drifting back on the breeze. Leaving the girl weeping on the ground.

I stand frozen in the shadows of the colonnade, the laundry basket clutched to my chest like a shield. My knuckles are white. The searing heat of the fire returns, but it is not in my skin anymore. It is in my heart. A cold, controlled inferno.

In my first life, I was Empress Ophelia. I was a ruler, a wife, a cousin. I was a fool. I tried to rule with compassion, to win loyalty with kindness. I thought their ambition could be managed, their cruelty tamed.

I see now. They do not deserve compassion. They deserve to be dismantled. Piece by piece.

They don’t know me. To them, I am Anya, a laundry maid. A ghost. Invisible. And from the shadows, a ghost can learn every secret, every weakness. I know their future. I know the conspiracies they will hatch, the famines they will ignore, the wars they will blunder into. I know the precise moments their power is most fragile.

They lit the match that burned my world to the ground. They have no idea that I am the spark that survived the ashes. And this time, I will be the fire.

Chapter 2

Anya

I watch until the weeping girl is hauled away by two senior servants. Livia’s casual cruelty leaves a stain in the air, more permanent than the water spot on her dress. My knuckles are bone white where I grip the wicker basket. Power. That is the only language they understand. The power to hurt, to dismiss, to destroy. My first life taught me that kindness is a vulnerability. This life will be a lesson in wielding power from the shadows.

I turn and deliver the linens to Livia’s chambers. The rooms are already filled with her cloying rosewater perfume. The scent of my betrayal. I move silently, a ghost in my own home, and leave without being seen.

The work in the laundry is endless, a cycle of filth and steam designed to break the body and dull the mind. My hands are raw, my back a constant, screaming ache. But the pain is a useful anchor. It reminds me I am no longer Empress Ophelia, draped in silks. I am Anya, caked in lye, and Anya must be smarter. Stronger.

“Your hands are bleeding again,” Lena says a few days later, her voice flat with exhaustion as we scrub the Crown Prince’s hunting cloaks. The fabric is thick with mud and the metallic scent of dried blood.

“It’s nothing,” I say, plunging my hands back into the scalding water. The sting is sharp, welcome.

“It’s everything,” she mutters. “This is our life, Anya. Buckets and bleach until we’re too old to lift a paddle.”

“There are other lives,” I say, my voice low.

Lena gives a short, bitter laugh. “Not for us. We’re born to this. We die in this.”

Her words are meant to be a final judgment, but they spark a fire in my mind. She’s wrong. I have died once already. I will not be buried in this place. I need a way out. A way up. Not into the spotlight, not yet. I need a quiet place. A place with information. With secrets.

The Palace Archives. The thought arrives with the clarity of a lightning strike.

But a laundry maid cannot simply walk into the archives. I need a patron. Someone with influence, but someone overlooked by Valerius and his circle. Someone who would see a clever, helpful girl as an asset, not a threat.

The Empress Dowager, Aurelia.

Valerius’s stepmother. The late Emperor’s second wife. A woman of quiet dignity, now relegated to her secluded wing of the palace, her days consumed by chronic, agonizing pain in her joints. In my first life, the court physicians tried everything. Nothing worked, not until a visiting herbalist from the Summer Isles suggested a rare poultice, years from now. But I remember something else. A whisper from a lady-in-waiting. She spoke of a fluke discovery, a tea that eased the Dowager’s suffering for a few precious months before the supply ran out, its source a mystery.

I know that source. I remember walking with my own physician through the palace grounds, shortly after I became Empress. He pointed to a small, pale flower growing in the cracks of a crumbling fountain in the abandoned Sunstone Conservatory. A Ghost Orchid, he’d called it. He said ancient texts claimed it could “cool fire in the bones,” but that it was incredibly rare, almost a myth. I had filed the information away as a curiosity. Now, it is the key.

“What are you smiling at?” Lena asks, eyeing me with suspicion. “Did you get into the cooking sherry?”

“Just thinking,” I say, my smile turning into a mask of placid obedience. “Thinking that this cloak is finally clean.”

My chance comes two days later. I am tasked with hauling away spoiled rushes from the Dowager’s wing. It is near the Sunstone Conservatory, a place no one has entered for decades, ever since a section of the glass roof collapsed in a storm.

I find an excuse, telling the guard I need to relieve myself in the gardens. He waves me on without a second look. I am Anya. I am nothing.

The conservatory doors are rotted and locked, but a large pane of glass is missing near the ground. I slip through the opening, my rough dress catching on a shard. The air inside is thick with the smell of damp earth and decay. Greenery runs wild, vines strangling statues of forgotten nymphs. Sunlight streams through the broken roof, illuminating a world left to die.

And there, just as I remember, is the fountain. It’s covered in moss, the water long since dried up. But growing from a fissure in the marble basin are three small, delicate flowers. They are a translucent, ghostly white, with a single, deep purple spot at their heart. The Ghost Orchid.

I carefully pluck two of them, wrapping the precious stems in a spare handkerchief. I have the cure. Now I need the physician.

Physician Alaric is an old man, kind and competent, but utterly conventional. In my past life, I knew him to be perpetually frustrated by his inability to help the Empress Dowager. I also know he takes a constitutional walk through the lesser rose gardens every afternoon after his consultations, a creature of absolute habit.

I wait for him near the path, my heart a steady, cold drum in my chest. I hold one of the orchids in my hand. When he approaches, his brow furrowed in thought, I step forward and drop into a deep curtsy, forcing my expression into one of timid awe.

“Physician Alaric,” I say, my voice a soft murmur.

He stops, startled. He squints down at me, his eyes clouded by age. “Do I know you, child?”

“No, sir. I am Anya. From the laundry service.” I keep my gaze fixed on the gravel path. “Forgive my boldness. But I… I found this. In the old gardens. My grandmother, she was a village healer. She used to say a flower like this was a gift from the gods for those with fire in their bones.”

I hold out the single, pale bloom. It’s a calculated risk. The story is simple, rustic, and just plausible enough.

Alaric’s gaze shifts from me to the flower. His expression is dismissive at first, the look of a learned man confronted with folk nonsense. “Child, the palace has dozens of gardeners and herbalists. We do not rely on old wives’ tales.”

“Of course, sir. I am foolish.” I make to pull my hand back, a picture of shame. “I will not bother you again.”

“Wait.” His voice is sharp. He takes a step closer, his eyes narrowing as he truly looks at the flower for the first time. His professional curiosity overrides his skepticism. “Let me see that.”

He takes the orchid from my hand, his fingers surprisingly gentle. He holds it up to the light, turning it over and over. A flicker of something, recognition or just deep thought, crosses his face.

“Fire in the bones,” he mutters to himself. “There was a passage in one of Elspeth’s ancient herbals… considered a myth. Never seen a proper specimen.” He looks at me, his gaze suddenly intense. “Where did you say you found this?”

“In the old Sunstone place, sir. By the broken fountain.” I am careful to keep my voice small, my answers simple. “I was not supposed to be there.”

He ignores my confession. His mind is clearly racing elsewhere. “Extraordinary. The conditions would be… yes, it’s possible.” He looks from the flower back to me, a new respect in his eyes. “You say your grandmother used this?”

“She made a tea, sir. Just with the petals. For the old folks when the winter damp settled into their joints.” It’s a lie, but a good one.

“A tea,” he repeats, stroking his chin. He looks at me for a long moment, a silent debate happening behind his eyes. He is weighing the risk of using an unknown remedy against the certainty of the Dowager’s continued suffering. “And you have more of this?”

I nod, reaching into my pocket and producing the second flower, still carefully wrapped. “Only one other, sir.”

He takes it without a word. “Your name is Anya?”

“Yes, Physician.”

“Wait here.” He turns and walks briskly back toward the palace, the two pale flowers clutched in his hand like a lifeline.

I do as I’m told. I wait. An hour passes. The sun begins to dip below the palace walls, casting long shadows across the garden. Every passing guard makes my stomach clench. I could be flogged for speaking to a court physician, for being in this garden, for making up stories. But fear is a luxury I discarded in the fire.

Finally, a page in the Dowager’s livery approaches me. “You are Anya?”

I nod, my throat suddenly dry.

“The Empress Dowager requests your presence.”

I am led through corridors I have only ever scrubbed, into a wing of the palace I have never seen. The air here is warm, smelling of cinnamon and beeswax, not lye. I am brought before the Dowager’s private sitting room. Physician Alaric is there, standing by the side of a large, cushioned chair. In the chair sits a woman who looks a decade older than her fifty years, her face etched with lines of chronic pain. Her knuckles are swollen, her posture rigid.

Empress Dowager Aurelia. She fixes me with sharp, intelligent grey eyes.

“You are the girl,” she says, her voice thin but clear. “You found the flower.”

I sink into the lowest curtsy my body can manage. “I did, Your Majesty.”

“Physician Alaric prepared a tea from the petals,” she continues, her gaze unwavering. “For the first time in a year, the fire in my hands has cooled to embers.”

She flexes her fingers slightly, a small movement that is clearly a monumental victory.

Physician Alaric beams. “The effects are remarkable, Your Majesty. Truly a one in a million discovery.”

“Indeed,” the Dowager says, her eyes still on me. “A laundry maid with the eyes of a master herbalist. What a curious thing.”

My heart pounds. This is the moment. She is testing me.

“I am not smart, Your Majesty,” I say, keeping my eyes downcast. “I am just… observant. The flower was beautiful, and it reminded me of home. I feel only luck that it could bring you a moment’s peace.”

Humble. Lucky. Not threatening.

The Dowager is silent for a long time. The only sound is the crackling of the fire in the hearth.

“Luck should be rewarded,” she says at last. “A girl with such sharp eyes is wasted scrubbing floors. Tell me, Anya. What is it you desire? Gold? A position as a lady’s maid? Speak freely.”

This is it. The door is opening. I must choose the right one.

“Your Majesty is too kind,” I whisper, as if overwhelmed. “I am not worthy of such things. I… I am simple. But… I like the quiet. I like to read. The letters, the stories in old books. It is a foolish wish, I know.”

I let my voice trail off, planting the idea in her mind. Let her think it is her own.

“Reading?” A faint, amused smile touches her lips. “An unusual request. Most girls in your position would ask for silks and jewels.”

“I would not know what to do with such things, Your Majesty.”

She studies me again, her gaze penetrating. She sees a plain, earnest girl asking for a pittance. A quiet place with books. It is a request so modest it cannot possibly be a threat.

“Very well,” she says, making her decision. “Lord Valerius has little use for it, but the Palace Archives are still maintained. The Head Archivist is an old man who could use an assistant to fetch and carry. A quiet place for a quiet girl. Physician Alaric, see to it. She will be transferred in the morning.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I breathe, bowing so low my forehead nearly touches the floor. Relief, cold and sharp, washes through me. It worked.

“Do not thank me,” the Dowager says, a new, almost gentle tone in her voice. “Just keep your sharp eyes open for any more of those little white flowers.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

I am dismissed. As I walk out of the warm, cinnamon-scented room and back into the cold reality of the servant’s corridors, a real smile touches my lips for the first time in this new life. Lena thinks we are born to buckets and bleach. She is wrong.

The next morning, I trade my rough grey dress for a simple but clean dark blue one. I walk past the steaming laundry courtyard without a glance. I am led to a towering oak door at the base of the western tower. The Head Archivist, a man named Master Elian with skin like parchment, looks me over with disinterest.

“The Dowager sent you,” he says, his voice dry as dust. “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to. Your job is to dust the shelves, fetch my meals, and bring me the scrolls I ask for. Nothing more. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Elian,” I say with perfect humility.

He grunts and gestures for me to enter. I step across the threshold. The air is cool, filled with the intoxicating scent of old paper, leather, and ink. Rows upon rows of towering shelves stretch up into the shadows, each one packed with scrolls, ledgers, and leather-bound books. Histories of every noble family. Military campaign logs. Census data. Tax records. Grain storage manifests.

This is not a dusty room full of forgotten papers. It is an armory.

They have given me the keys to all their secrets. They think I am here to dust the shelves. They have no idea I am here to build a scaffold.

Chapter 3

Anya

I run a soft cloth over a shelf of tax ledgers from the reign of the Fifth Emperor. The dust is ancient, a fine grey powder that smells of time itself. Master Elian sits hunched over a desk, his quill scratching a slow, laborious inventory. He barely speaks, which suits me perfectly. Silence is a canvas, and I am learning to paint with it.

For three weeks, this has been my world. Fetching scrolls, organizing maps, and breathing in the scent of a thousand secrets. It is quiet. It is safe. But safety is not my goal. It is a staging ground.

The heavy oak doors of the archive swing open with a groan that echoes in the vaulted silence. A man strides in, flanked by two Royal Guards. He is tall, with broad shoulders that strain the fabric of his dark blue military tunic. His black hair is cut short, and his jaw is set with an impatience that seems to vibrate in the air around him. I know him instantly.

Grand Duke Alexandre. The Emperor’s younger brother. In my past life, his name was a whisper of tragedy, a brilliant general sent to die on a frozen border. Now, he is just a man, his face a mask of controlled frustration.

“Master Elian,” Alexandre’s voice is a low baritone that cuts through the musty air. “I asked you yesterday for everything you have on the nomadic siege tactics of the Northern Tribes.”

Master Elian looks up, blinking like a startled owl. “As I informed Your Grace, we have the standard campaign histories. I had them sent to your study.”

“The standard histories are useless,” Alexandre says, his voice dangerously level. “They speak of pitched battles in open fields. I need to know how they lay siege. How they starve a fortress built on permafrost. There must be something more. A firsthand account. A field report.”

“The archives are vast, Your Grace,” the old man wheezes, gesturing vaguely at the towering shelves. “Without a specific title or author, such a document would be impossible to find. If it even exists.”

Alexandre’s hand clenches into a fist at his side. “The lives of my men are not a matter for ‘if’, archivist. Find it.”

He turns, pacing the length of the central reading table like a caged wolf. His gaze sweeps the room, dismissing me as part of the scenery. I am a dust mote. A shadow. Perfect.

I know the exact scroll he needs. General Voronov’s ‘Reflections on the Winter War’. A disgraced commander from two centuries ago whose unorthodox tactics were deemed cowardly at the time. The manuscript was deemed worthless and misfiled in the cartography section, tucked behind sea charts of the Summer Isles. I remember reading it out of boredom as Empress. Its lessons could save an entire legion.

I can’t just walk over and hand it to him. A librarian’s assistant, a former laundry maid, finding a lost military masterpiece in three weeks? Impossible. Suspicious. I need to guide him. Let him believe it is his own discovery.

I move to a nearby cart laden with scrolls to be reshelved. With a carefully controlled stumble, I let a heavy roll of sea charts tumble to the floor, landing with a loud thud. The scroll I need is at the bottom of the pile I am carrying.

“Apologies, Your Grace,” I whisper, dropping to my knees. My voice is soft, intended to be overheard, not to command attention. Alexandre stops pacing, his eyes briefly flicking toward me with annoyance.

As I gather the charts, my fingers brush against the worn leather case of Voronov’s manuscript. “So clumsy,” I murmur to myself, just loud enough for him to hear. “Master Elian will be cross. Putting General Voronov’s war log in with the tide charts. Everything is so out of place.”

I say the name clearly. General Voronov.

There is a sudden, sharp silence. I keep my eyes on the floor, my hands busy with the scrolls. I can feel his stare on the top of my head. It’s heavy. Intense.

“What did you say?” Alexandre asks. His voice is different now. The impatience is gone, replaced by a focused stillness.

I look up, my expression a carefully crafted mask of frightened deference. “Nothing, Your Grace. I was just… this scroll, it has the wrong seal. It is a military log, not a map.”

I hold it up. The leather is dark and cracked, the seal a faded wolf’s head, the sigil of the long-disbanded Northern Legion.

He crosses the distance between us in three long strides. He does not offer a hand to help me up. He simply plucks the scroll from my fingers. His touch is brief, but his skin is cold, like stone.

He unrolls the manuscript on the table. Master Elian shuffles over, peering at the text. “General Voronov?” the archivist says, his voice thin with confusion. “But his campaigns were considered a failure. A disgrace.”

“He held the Frostfang Pass for three years against an army ten times the size of his own,” Alexandre says, his eyes scanning the ancient script. His voice is quiet, almost reverent. A muscle works in his jaw. “They called him a coward because he refused to meet them in the open field. He built defenses underground. Used the ice to his advantage. He…”

Alexandre’s voice trails off. He has found it. The precise passage detailing how to collapse ice tunnels to cut off supply lines, a tactic the tribes used against him in my first life, a tactic that cost him a quarter of his men.

He is completely still for a full minute, absorbing the words on the page. I slowly get to my feet, brushing the dust from my dress. I make myself small, ready to retreat back into the shadows. I have done what I needed to do.

“You,” he says, not looking up from the scroll. “The girl.”

I freeze. “Your Grace?”

He finally raises his head. His eyes are the color of a winter sky, sharp and piercing. He is truly looking at me now. Not at a maid’s uniform, but at me. I feel like a specimen under glass.

“You said the scroll was out of place. How did you know this was a war log?” he asks. His question is a blade, testing for weakness.

I must choose my words with the care of a poisoner. “The seal, Your Grace. The wolf’s head. Master Elian has been teaching me to recognize the old legionary markers.” It is a plausible lie. It credits my knowledge to my master, not to myself.

“And the name,” he presses, his gaze unwavering. “General Voronov. You spoke it with familiarity.”

“I… I read the inscription, Your Grace. It is my job to read the titles before I shelve them.”

His eyes narrow slightly. He does not believe me. Not completely. I can see the gears turning in his brilliant tactical mind. A laundry maid with a sharp eye for detail. A fortunate stumble. A perfect coincidence.

“What is your name?” he asks.

“Anya, Your Grace.”

“Anya,” he repeats the name slowly, as if tasting it. “You have been here long?”

“Only three weeks, Your Grace. I was in the laundry service before.”

The corner of his mouth quirks in a semblance of a smile, but it holds no humor. It is the expression of a man who has just discovered a new, unexpected piece on the game board.

“From the laundry to the archives,” he says softly, more to himself than to me. “Anya. See that this manuscript is delivered to my study immediately.”

He rolls the scroll up with practiced efficiency and hands it not to Master Elian, but directly to me. Our fingers brush again. This time, a jolt passes through me, a flicker of awareness that is both terrifying and exhilarating.

He turns without another word and strides out of the archive, his guards falling into step behind him. The heavy doors boom shut, leaving a profound silence in his wake.

Master Elian stares at the door, then at me, his mouth agape. “Well, I never. The Grand Duke…”

I clutch the leather scroll to my chest. It feels warm. Alexandre left annoyed and frustrated. Now he has a solution to his problem, and a mystery he cannot solve.

He does not know it, but our alliance has just been forged. Not in promises or oaths, but in the dust of a forgotten history. I have given him a weapon to save his men. And I have planted a seed of curiosity in the one mind in this palace sharp enough to matter. The ghost in the archive has made her first move.