The silence after Morgan melted into the shadows was thicker than the mountain's bone. Kaitlyn stood frozen, the parchment coordinates a cold, crinkling brand in her palm. Across the still black mirror of Lake Seren, Erik gently untangled himself from Mills. His eyes met his sister's, and the bond delivered the whole, stark truth in a pulse: Morgan. Meeting. War.
Jonas and Maria were already moving, closing the distance with the grim purpose of soldiers securing a perimeter. The grief of minutes before was shoved aside, replaced by a sharper, more familiar tension.
"Morgan," Jonas said, the name a flat statement. He didn't ask. He'd recognized the fierce, desperate silhouette from the training halls, from the high table. The kingdom's most infamous runaway ward.
Kaitlyn nodded, unfurling her fist to show the cryptic symbols. "She wants to talk."
"About what? Her grand betrayal tour?" Jonas's voice was a low growl. "She's not a rebel, she's a rogue asset. Brilliant, ruthless, and loyal only to whatever she stole from that lab. Walking into her web makes us tools in her personal vengeance, not our own."
Maria's gaze was distant, her fingers absently tracing the rough bark of a nearby tree. The ghosts of Emily and George were a whisper at the back of her skull, but layered over them now was the memory of Morgan's defiant glare, the contained fury that had always simmered beneath her competitive drive. "She's also the only one who's ever outmaneuvered him and lived," Maria said, her voice soft but clear. "She didn't just run in a panic. She planned. For years. That hate of hers… it's not chaotic. It's a focused beam."
"She loved someone enough to burn her whole life down for them," Kaitlyn said, Arthur's face flashing behind her eyes. "They killed him for less. I trust her hate more than Bertram's 'order'."
Erik had moved to stand beside Mills, a steadying presence. His mind was the calm eye of the storm. "Analytically, her value is immense: intimate knowledge of citadel weaknesses, infiltration routes, the disposition of the king's forces. The risk is equivalent: she is emotionally compromised, her primary objective is not our safety, and association with her is a capital offense. It's a high-yield, high-volatility proposition."
Mills, her cheeks still tear-streaked but her eyes clearing, spoke into the tense quiet. "She came to see my mother. Once. Very late. They spoke… like people who understood a specific kind of pain." She looked at Erik, then at Kaitlyn. "Mum said her heart was a knot too tight to ever undo. But that a knot that tight… it can anchor a mountain."
The words hung in the damp air. An anchor. Or a noose.
"We can't just go," Jonas stated, crossing his arms. His recently healed skin pulled taut. "But we can't ignore it."
A plan, fragile and dangerous, was woven there by the mourning lake. The twins would go to the coordinates—not to ally, but to assess. To see Morgan's state, to judge the condition of the sister she'd freed, to determine if this was a path or a precipice. Jonas and Maria would return to their quarters not to hide, but to prepare. Jonas would begin quietly, lethally, gathering anything that could serve as weapon or diversion. Maria would retreat inward, trying to grasp the slippery, terrifying new sense that had moved a block of stone, to shape it from a spasm of love into a tool of will.
Mills's role was the most delicate. Using her status as the grieving, harmless healer's apprentice, she would move through the citadel's lower levels, noting guard rotations near the Sundering Spire—the cold, needle-like tower where magical bonds were tested and torn. It was the most likely prison for those the king wanted to break.
"We meet back at first light," Jonas said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Decision then. To move, or to bury this."
The twins shared a look. The bond hummed with a shared, desperate calculation. First light might be too late, it whispered.
---
The coordinates led not out of the mountain, but deeper into its forgotten guts, to a place where the citadel's polished order gave way to its primordial truth. It was a cavern where a thermal vent had died millennia ago, leaving behind a forest of twisted, silicate sculptures and a pool of water so still and black it looked solid. The air held the ghost of heat and the sharp, mineral scent of geode.
Morgan was waiting, leaning against a spire of glassy rock. She looked like a wild animal that had been caught in a rockslide—clothes torn and soot-stained, a livid burn along her jawline, her eyes holding a light that was equal parts exhaustion and unbroken fury. She wasn't alone.
Ten feet away, crouched at the edge of the black pool, was Elara.
Kaitlyn's breath caught. This was not the serene, frozen girl in the pod. This was a feral reflection. Elara was thinner, her skin paler, stretched over sharp bones. Her hair was a tangled dark curtain. She was hunched over, her fingers—too long, too sharp—dipped into the water, stirring it absently. But it was her face that stole the air from the room. When she turned at their approach, her eyes didn't focus. They glowed with a faint, infernal amber. And her mouth… her mouth was stained a rusty, dreadful red.
"She's… adjusting," Morgan said, her voice raspy. She didn't move towards her sister, but her entire body was angled as if ready to spring. "The stasis suppressed everything. The hunger. The memory. It's all… flooding back. I'm trying to help her remember the before. Remember me."
As if on cue, Elara's head twitched. She sniffed the air, a quick, animal motion. Her glowing eyes fixed on the twins. A low, vibrational sound emanated from her chest, not quite a growl, not quite a whimper.
"She's been feeding?" Erik asked, his voice carefully neutral, his own senses stretching out, analyzing the scene. The coppery scent under the mineral. The poised tension in Morgan's muscles. The unnatural stillness of the vampiric sister.
"Animals. What I can trap. It's not enough. It never will be." Morgan's gaze was locked on Kaitlyn. "But she's strong. And she hates this place. She can smell their magic, their fear. She can move through shadows they don't own."
"So you brought us here to meet your secret weapon," Kaitlyn said, folding her arms. The coordinates felt like a lead weight in her pocket. "What's the trade? We help you keep her fed, you help us… what? Escape?"
"Escape?" Morgan barked a laugh that held no humor. "There is no escape. There's only burning it down so nothing can grow in its poison again." She pushed off the rock, taking a step forward. "I know where he's weak. Not just the guards, the wards. I know the rhythm of the mountain's heart. I can show you how to make it skip a beat. But I can't do it alone. And you…" She looked from Kaitlyn to Erik. "You're the only thing in this rotten rock he's ever been afraid of. Not as individuals. As a thing he can't understand or control."
The negotiation was beginning, a tense dance on a knife's edge. Erik was about to speak, to dissect the terms, to probe the plan, when the bond between him and Kaitlyn jolted.
It wasn't a message. It was a scream.
A psychic blast of terror, pain, and defiant fury, so vivid it was taste and smell—scorched ozone, the cold scent of null-stone, her mother's cry, her father's roar, the crushing weight of magic-dampening binders.
It came from Maria. A raw, untrained, desperate broadcast through the nascent power born of saving Jonas. One final, clear image: The Sundering Spire. A cell of glowing, rune-etched stone.
Then, silence. A void where the steady, warm presence of their parents had been.
Kaitlyn's vision whited out. The careful calculus, the assessment, the debate—it vaporized in a supernova of pure, undiluted rage. The air around her shimmered, warping with heat haze. The black pool water at her feet began to steam.
She turned on Morgan, but there was no suspicion in her eyes now. Only a reflection of the same all-consuming fire. "They took them," she said, her voice a scrape of broken glass. "The Sundering Spire. Your plan. Now."
Morgan didn't flinch. She saw the absolute truth in Kaitlyn's face, the mirrored echo of her own loss, her own stolen sister. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in something that was not a smile. "Then we don't have a plan," she said, the words dropping like stones. "We have a target."
Erik's mind, the analytical engine, didn't stall. It redirected, fuel-injected by the same fury. His gaze, cold and sharp as a scalpel, went to Elara, who was now staring at Kaitlyn's heat-shimmer with a predator's fixed attention. He assessed the feral vampire, the stained mouth, the animal alertness.
"Can you point her?" Erik's voice was arctic, devoid of anything but purpose. He looked at Morgan. "A vampire. Superior olfactory tracking. Can induce paralyzing fear. Extreme physical strength. Is she a weapon, or a plague? Can you make her a scalpel? Can she find two specific people through stone and magic?"
Morgan followed his gaze to her sister. A profound, tortured love warred with ruthless necessity on her face. She gave a single, sharp nod. "I can point her. She can find them. She can break what stands in the way." She walked to Elara, knelt, and spoke not in words, but in soft, clicking sounds and gentle touches to her sister's temple. Elara's glowing eyes shifted from Kaitlyn to Morgan, the feral edge softening into a semblance of recognition. Morgan pressed her forehead to Elara's. "Find the ones in the cold, bright tower, sister. The ones who smell of fire and storm and love. Break the cages. Bring them to me."
Elara tilted her head, a shudder running through her. She sniffed the air deeply, as if sifting through a thousand scents. Then, she looked towards the cavern wall, towards the distant, buried heart of the citadel. A low, eager keen escaped her throat.
The unholy alliance was not sealed with a handshake or a vow. It was forged in the simultaneous, explosive understanding that the king had just signed his own doom.
They were no longer a family seeking escape, or rebels plotting a coup.
They were a spear of rage, grief, and feral instinct, aimed at the very heart of the mountain.
And they were already in motion.