For a heartbeat, Elara forgot the castle, the Night Regent, the smoke and alarms. The world shrank to the woman at the foot of the stair—lamplight catching in the silver threads woven through dark hair, eyes the same storm-bright gray Elara saw in the mirror when her magic woke.
"Mother," Elara breathed, the word a fracture and a prayer.
Queen Maera smiled with a softness Elara remembered from a thousand childhood evenings, then steadied that smile with the steel Elara had learned to wear. "I hoped you would be the one to find the key." Her gaze dipped to the Starforged. "And that you would be strong enough to lift it."
Kael moved before Elara could, stepping half a pace to block, to assess, to protect. His voice was low, ragged with a hundred cautions. "We buried the queen in the western crypts."
Maera's eyes flicked to him—taking his measure, acknowledging his stance—and back to Elara. "You buried a body. You did not bury me."
The chamber pressed close with the weight of old secrets. Elara tightened her fingers on the Starforged hilt. "How?"
"By bargaining badly," Maera said without flinching. "By trading one life for many, and discovering the exchange came due with interest." She lifted her right hand. Pale light edged her fingers, a glow like moonrise trapped beneath skin. It wasn't starlight. It moved slower, older, tidal. "When Malachar's knives turned inward, I made a pact I swore I would never touch. I bound myself to the Moonwrought—an older current than the crowns, older than the wards. It kept breath in me while a different breath fled the world in my shape."
Elara's stomach twisted. "A double."
"A shell," Maera said. "A mercy. I was meant to return when the knife-work was done. But shadow bargains tangle. The Moonwrought required a price: secrecy, and the surrender of my sovereign's seal. The Night Regent learned of the pact and moved to claim what Malachar could not."
"The Regent," Kael said. "Alive, then. Not a myth."
"Alive," Maera agreed. "And very patient."
Elara took a breath that didn't feel like drowning. "If you knew all this—if you've been here, alive, hiding—why didn't you come to me?"
Pain rippled through Maera's face, brief, unmasked. "Because the Moonwrought would not let me move toward you. Because every path I took that bent your way closed like water around a stone." She lifted her chin. "Because if I stepped into your light before you were ready, you would not become the queen the realm needs."
Anger flared—hot, childish, human. Elara clung to it because it was simpler than sorrow. "So you let me burn alone."
"No," Maera said, and the word struck with a deeper gravity. "I learned to hold my breath in dark water so you would learn to swim. There is a difference." She reached out. The Moonwrought glow brushed Elara's wrist just shy of contact. "That mark—who placed it?"
"Lyros," Elara said, the name ash on her tongue. "He claims he served the realm. He spoke of balance. Of the Night Regent."
Maera's mouth tightened. "Balance is a word men use when they want to break a woman's spine and call it justice."
Kael's shoulder loosened a fraction. "Can you remove it?"
"No," Maera said. "It is not a curse. It is a promise made in your blood without your consent. Those are stubborn." Her gaze met Elara's. "But promises can be redirected."
She stepped to the pedestal and laid her hand alongside the Starforged. The ancient sigils brightened, a ripple of light traveling the blade's length. "Your father called it a key because it opens only what deserves to be opened—and closes what must be closed. He believed the line of queens did not keep crowns. We kept doors."
Elara felt the truth of it like a chord struck in her bones. "The messenger said the Regent would rather not break the door if it might be opened."
"Then we will choose which door they see," Maera said. "Kael, draw a circle. The old measure—seven points, not six. This is Moonwrought work wearing shadow's mask."
Kael obeyed without question, chalk whispering across stone. Elara stood in the center with her mother. Old lullabies flickered at the edges of memory—the tune of the spell Maera hummed now, a melody that tasted of salt and winter apples.
"Hold the blade above your heart," Maera said. "Call the star by its oldest name."
Elara lifted the Starforged. "Serael." The word was a bell in an empty valley. Power answered—not as a rush, but as a tide, rising sure and cold. The mark on her wrist throbbed once, twice, then a thin thread of light unspooled from it like a fishing line cast into night.
Maera caught that thread between forefinger and thumb. "We don't sever. We splice." She drew a circle in the air, and the thread bent, curving toward the chamber's far wall where the stone was darkest. "Give the Night Regent what they hunger for: a queen who walks toward their summons."
Elara swallowed. "A decoy."
"A mirror," Maera corrected. "Shadows follow reflections too."
The thread anchored. Elara felt the pull shift—not gone, but redirected, as if the gaze at the end of the tether had swiveled to watch a path one corridor to the left of where she stood. She exhaled, lightheaded and suddenly, fiercely hopeful.
Hoofbeats thundered above—dozens, then more. The castle had woken to the alarm in full. Kael finished the last stroke of the circle. "We need a route out."
Maera nodded toward a seam in the chamber wall. "There. The scribe's passage to the river archives. It bypasses the main ward nets."
"Elara," Kael said, "we move to the pier the messenger named. If the Regent expects you there, let them meet your mirror while we choose the ground."
Elara looked to Maera. "Will you come?"
The queen's smile thinned. "I cannot pass the outer wards without triggering every old oath that still thinks I sit a throne. But I can hold this end of the thread. I can buy you hours. Perhaps a dawn."
It wasn't enough. It was everything. Elara stepped close, hunger for an embrace almost buckling her. She stopped a hand's breadth away, as if a wrong movement would shatter the moment. "If I make it back—"
"When," Maera said, not unkindly.
Elara's throat tightened. "When I make it back, tell me the rest of the bargain. Tell me all of it."
"I will," Maera said. "Now go, daughter. Swim."
They took the scribe's passage. It smelled of ink and old thyme. Kael moved ahead, every turn chosen with the instinct of a man who had learned to think like a pursuing blade. By the time they reached the river archives, the castle's alarm had shifted—less frantic, more focused. The mirror thread was doing its work.
At the outer door, Kael paused. "Once we're outside, we keep to cover and follow the canal to the mill sluice. From there we can cut to the Starfall pathways without touching the main streets."
Elara nodded, flexing her fingers around the Starforged. The blade's glow had settled into a quiet breath, as if it, too, was listening.
They slipped into the night. The river ran black and quick, Citywatch lanterns bobbing like anchored stars along the far bank. In the distance, a bell tolled the hour.
Halfway to the mill sluice, a shadow peeled from the wall ahead and knelt, empty hands open, head bowed.
"Don't move," Kael hissed.
"I bring no weapon," the figure said, voice young and shaking. "Only a message for the queen."
Elara kept her distance. "From whom?"
The head lifted just enough for moonlight to catch a face too gaunt for its years, eyes too old for its face. "From the Night Regent's least-loved page." A swallow. "If you go to the pier, you die. If you don't, we all do."
Kael shifted his stance. "Helpful."
The page flinched. "I don't know the Regent's plan. Only that the mirror will hold until dawn and no longer. And that the one who taught me my letters said to tell you this: the lock you seek isn't a door. It's a name." The child's gaze flicked to the Starforged. "And the key must be broken to fit."
Elara felt the blade pulse once, as if in denial.
"What name?" she asked.
The page's mouth worked. A sound came out like a drowning person coughing water. Then the child gagged—and a slick ribbon of shadow spilled from between their lips, writhing on the stones like a severed eelpike. Kael's sword pinned it through the middle. It convulsed and went still, dissolving into a scorch mark.
The page sobbed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They listen."
Elara crouched, keeping her hands visible, her voice level. "What's your name?"
"Rin."
"Rin," Elara said, "run to the old herb-keeper on Candle Street and ask for a sleeping draught. Say the queen owes him a roof and a winter of firewood. He'll hide you. Go now. Don't look back."
Rin ran.
Kael watched the dark a long moment. "If the key must be broken—"
"Then we learn how to break it in a way we can mend," Elara said. The thought horrified and steadied her at once. "Or we find whose name the lock is." She looked toward the east, where the first smear of gray promised morning. "Either way, we don't have until dawn."
They reached the mill sluice without further interruption. The city smelled of wet stone and hearth smoke. Above, the stars were paling.
Kael touched her shoulder. "We need a decision, Elara."
She lifted the Starforged. The blade caught the faintest morning light and returned it as a breath like hope. "We go to Starfall—but not the pier." Her mouth firmed. "We go to the bridge itself. If the Regent wants a meeting, we'll choose the height and the wind."
"And the drop," Kael said.
Elara nodded once.
They climbed the hidden stairs inside the bridge's western buttress, emerging into a dawn made of river mist and gull cries. The city spread beneath them in soft grays and blues. The world felt like it might hold its breath forever.
A figure waited at the center of the span, cloak unmoving despite the wind. Not masked. Not hooded. Beautiful the way a winter cliff is beautiful: honest, and lethal to the careless.
"Welcome, Queen Elara," said the Night Regent.
Elara set her feet. "Let's see which of us keeps doors."
The Regent smiled, and the bridge's first light struck the blade at their hip like a promise broken—and remade.