The first light of dawn crept through the ruined chapel like a thief, painting the broken stones in pale gold and long, stretching shadows. Seraphina sat motionless on the moss-covered steps, turning the silver hairpin over and over in her fingers. The delicate wings of the bird-shaped ornament lay flat and lifeless now, the strange energy that had animated it hours before gone as suddenly as it had come.
The metal was cool to the touch, smooth as glass, with no trace of the deadly blade it had become—no blood, no lingering warmth. Only the memory of its power remained, a phantom pulse beneath her skin that made her fingertips tingle.
Kaelan knelt beside Lysandra's unconscious form, his broad shoulders blocking the morning light as he pressed two fingers to the crown princess's throat. The gash in her shoulder had stopped bleeding, the fabric of her ice-blue gown stiff and dark around the wound. His hands, usually so steady with a sword, trembled slightly as he checked the makeshift bandage Corvin had fashioned from torn strips of his own cloak.
"She'll live," he muttered, his voice rough with exhaustion. He wiped his bloodied hands on his torn tunic, leaving rusty streaks across the already stained fabric. When he looked up at Seraphina, his dark eyes were shadowed, the gold flecks dulled by fatigue and something else—something that might have been fear. "For now."
Corvin paced the length of the broken altar, his boots crunching on fragments of colored glass that had once formed the chapel's rose window. The morning light caught in his disheveled russet hair, turning the strands copper where they stuck up in wild tufts. At sixteen, he still had the gangly limbs of a boy not quite grown into his height, but there was a new hardness in his hazel eyes that hadn't been there yesterday.
"If the crown is the source of the curse," he said, his voice too loud in the quiet ruins, "then we need to find it. Destroy it." His fingers twitched at his sides, as though aching for the sword he'd never been allowed to carry. The words were brave, but his voice wavered on the last syllable, betraying the terror his expression tried to mask.
Seraphina closed her fist around the hairpin, the metal biting into her palm. The visions it had shown her—her mother's murder, the crown's unnatural crimson glow—had left a hollow ache in her chest, a wound that went deeper than any blade could reach. But there had been something else in those fractured memories, too. A flicker of a place deep beneath the castle, where the shadows moved with purpose, where the very air seemed to pulse with ancient malice.
"The vault," she said suddenly, the words leaving her lips before she fully understood them.
Kaelan's head snapped up. "What?"
"The crown isn't in the throne room." Seraphina pressed a hand to her temple, chasing the remnants of the vision. The images came in flashes—a spiral staircase descending into blackness, a door darker than midnight, the whisper of something stirring in the deep. "It's hidden. Beneath the western tower. Behind a door with no handle."
A muscle jumped in Kaelan's jaw, the scar that ran from his brow to his mouth pulling tight. "The sealed chambers," he said slowly, as though the words left a bad taste in his mouth. "No one's entered those in generations."
"Because no one comes back," Corvin whispered. His freckles stood out starkly against his suddenly pale skin, his fingers knotting in the fabric of his tunic. "The servants say—"
"I don't care what the servants say." Seraphina stood abruptly, the hairpin clutched tight in her fist. The metal hummed faintly against her skin, a silent promise of power waiting to be unleashed. "We're going."
The descent into the castle's bowels was a journey through the belly of a nightmare.
The western tower's staircase spiraled downward into suffocating blackness, the steps worn smooth by centuries of footsteps that had never returned. The air grew thicker with each turn, the scent of damp stone giving way to something older—something metallic and cloyingly sweet, like rust and rotting flowers left too long in a sealed room. Seraphina led the way, the hairpin's hum growing stronger with every step, vibrating up her arm like a plucked bowstring.
Behind her, Kaelan's torch cast flickering shadows that danced along the curved walls, the flames guttering in the stale air. The light caught the angles of his face, turning his sharp cheekbones into blades of gold and black, his dark eyes reflecting the fire like molten metal. He hadn't spoken since they'd left Lysandra in the ruins, but his silence was heavy with unasked questions, with warnings he knew she wouldn't heed.
Corvin brought up the rear, his breathing too quick, too loud in the confined space. His fingers trailed along the wall as though seeking balance, coming away black with ancient soot. "The servants say these tunnels are haunted," he muttered, his voice echoing oddly in the narrow stairwell. "That the dead don't rest here. They watch."
The staircase ended as abruptly as it had begun, depositing them before a door that should not have existed.
Not wood or iron, but something blacker—obsidian, perhaps, or stone stained by centuries of something darker than blood. Its surface drank in the torchlight, reflecting nothing back. And Corvin had been right: it had no handle, no latch, no visible means of opening. Only a single keyhole, shaped like a teardrop, marred its otherwise flawless surface.
Seraphina didn't hesitate. She pressed the hairpin to the lock, the silver wings trembling in her grip.
The moment metal touched stone, the door screamed.
Not a metaphor—a real, physical sound that tore through the confined space like a living thing. The wail was high and thin, the sound of a woman dying in agony, of metal scraping bone, of a child's last, terrified gasp. Corvin stumbled back with his hands clapped over his ears, his mouth open in a silent cry. Kaelan's torch guttered wildly, the flames twisting and leaping as though trying to flee the sound.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the scream cut off.
The door swung inward without a sound.
The vault was alive.
Not with rats or insects or any earthly creatures, but with shadows. They coiled along the walls like living smoke, twining around the pillars and skittering across the vaulted ceiling with unnatural grace. The chamber itself was circular, the walls lined with niches that held crumbling urns and tarnished silver plates—offerings to something that had long since stopped being human.
At the chamber's heart stood a pedestal of black marble, veined with crimson that pulsed faintly in the torchlight. And upon it—
The crown.
It was smaller than Seraphina had imagined, a circlet of blackened silver set with seven irregular gemstones the color of clotted blood. Even in the flickering torchlight, the stones seemed to drink the illumination rather than reflect it, their surfaces swallowing the light whole.
Corvin made a choked sound in the back of his throat. "It's... singing."
And it was. A faint, discordant melody that set Seraphina's teeth on edge, that made the bones in her arms vibrate with each wrong note. The hairpin in her hand burned suddenly, painfully hot, as though in answer to the crown's call.
Kaelan's sword was drawn before she could blink, the steel gleaming dully in the unnatural gloom. "Don't touch it," he warned, his voice rough with something more than fear.
But the crown wanted to be touched. Seraphina could feel its pull like a physical thing, like a hook lodged deep in her ribs, reeling her forward step by unwilling step. The shadows around them stirred, stretching toward her with grasping fingers that were almost, but not quite, solid.
The hairpin's wings unfolded with a sound like breaking glass, the metal flowing like liquid until it formed a blade once more.
Seraphina didn't think. She lunged—not for the crown, but past it, driving the silver point into the writhing darkness behind the pedestal.
The shadows shrieked, a sound that tore at the edges of reality itself.
The vault trembled, dust and fragments of stone raining from the ceiling as the crown's song rose to a deafening wail. The crimson gems cracked, one by one, black ichor oozing from the fractures like blood from a wound. The liquid burned where it struck the stone, eating through the marble with a hiss.
Kaelan grabbed her arm, hauling her back as the pedestal shattered inward, collapsing into itself like a dying star. "Run!"
They barely made it to the stairs before the door slammed shut behind them, the crown's dying screams echoing through the stone long after the sound should have faded.
In the ruins of the chapel, Lysandra was gone.
Only a smear of blood remained where she'd fallen, already drying to a rusty brown in the morning light. The torn strips of Corvin's cloak lay discarded nearby, the fabric stiff with gore. Of the crown princess herself, there was no sign—no footprints in the dew-damp grass, no broken twigs to mark her passage. It was as though she'd simply vanished.
Corvin sank to his knees, his breath coming in ragged gasps that shook his entire frame. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, his freckles standing out like ink splashes against his pallid skin. "Did we... did it work?"
Seraphina opened her hand. The hairpin lay silent in her palm, its silver wings dulled and lifeless once more. But the crown's pull was gone—that insidious whisper in the back of her mind, the constant pressure against her thoughts, silenced at last.
Kaelan's fingers brushed hers as he took the hairpin, his calloused skin warm against her palm despite the morning chill. "It's over," he said, his voice low and rough.
But the look in his eyes said otherwise. The shadows there were too deep, the lines around his mouth too tight. Some battles, that gaze told her, were never truly won.
Somewhere in the castle above them, a bell began to toll—not the steady rhythm marking the hour, but the frantic, uneven pealing of an alarm.
The sound carried on the morning air, clear and cruel as a knife to the throat.