"I think the witch was enamored with my mother."

"Well, of course he was," Irene said, stuffing her mouth with a sandwich. "Did you see the way he looked at you?"

Arthur was in the closet, changing his clothes. Irene, Noah and I sat around the table in my room. The box's contents spilled on the table, and Irene shoved the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. The fire crackling in the hearth and a floor lamp in the corner were the only sources of light. The room felt cozy and warm under the orange glow.

We had come straight to mine and Arthur's room once dinner wrapped up. The first thing I did was discard the heels and change into a tank top and sweatpants. Charles and Marianno were gone when I got out of the closet, and Irene was eating a sandwich since she didn't eat earlier at dinner. Being on guard duty with the two vampires, they stood guard during dinner. Arthur walked into the closet as I got out to change out of his suit.

"How did he look at me?" I asked.

"He couldn't take his eyes off you," Irene said. I rolled my eyes. "No, seriously, Elle. The guy has such intense eyes, I was surprised you didn't burst into flames during dinner."

Okay. Maybe he had a problem with staring. "I think you're exaggerating a little."

"She is not," Noah said. He somehow managed to loom even when sitting down. I looked at him. Really? Now he was being talkative?

"It all started because of you, anyway," I stabbed a finger his way. "If you didn't put the idea in their heads, no one would be seeing things that didn't exist."

"The truth might make you uncomfortable. But it's still the truth."

They just wouldn't stop. So I changed the subject.

"Where did Charles and Marianno go?" I flipped through the first pages of my mother's diary. According to what I was reading, she had started this diary when she was around sixteen. It was fascinating, how my mother's entire life was stuffed into a stack of yellowing pages.

"Arthur has them doing a security sweep around the place," Irene said, brushing her hands against each other. She picked up the photographs that Noah had just been going through.

The pages in front of me were accounts of my mother's first trip outside her native village. Her words gave me the feeling she had been a recluse in her hometown.

I wondered when the diary ended. My curiosity about that trumped my need to know everything about my mother. I flipped the diary to the last page.

"Where did you get the scar?" Noah asked.

He was looking at the scar on my arm. I eyed his own scars, the three slashes across his face, and grinned. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

He blinked. A ghost of a smile lightened his face. "Maybe some other time."

"Your choice." I shrugged.

Arthur walked out of the closet. Yep, he still looked good in a t-shirt and cargo pants. Even better, actually. He looked wilder.

He perched on the arm of my chair and put his arm along its back. It groaned under his weight. "What are you reading?"

"I skipped to the last page." It contained a few sketches out of which I couldn't make heads nor tails. There were circles and complicated glyphs, and... were those drawings of animals? "Do you understand any of this?"

Arthur tapped the drawing in the center of the page. "Spells. It's..." He squinted his eyes, a feeling of wariness shaking the bond.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm...not certain," he said. But there was something in his face that told me whatever he suspected, I would not like. He blew out a breath and mumbled. "Hmm, I wish Kate was here."

I squashed the irrational jealousy before it could bloom and focused on the sketches. "We can send her a picture."

We did just that. Irene snapped a few pictures of the sketches with her phone, there were more in the last pages of the diary, and sent them to Amanda.

Charles and Marianno joined us. I zoned them out as they spoke about security patrols around our rooms.

I flipped through the diary backward until I found the last entry. The words were written in a different hand. I switched back and forth between the first pages and the last entry. No, the author was the same, but over the last pages, the strokes of the pen looked jerky, more pressed into the page. Several words were crossed all over the page, as if the author wasn't sure how to convey her thoughts. Looking at the page hurt.

A sense of looming doom quickened my breath as I read the scattered sentences on the page.

He would not believe me. Even if he does, how could I tell him that I was once a member of their ranks. Their ideas have been very alluring to me as a young, outcast woman. But their goals kept changing over the years- or decades. It doesn't matter. I had to tell him, before I lost all my senses. Their threats will just keep getting worse. I can't deal with it, not anymore, not now that I had another life to think of. Especially not when I could turn into a monster anytime, now. Maybe if I just... but no, it won't work. One way or another it will end with death. And he will have his heart broken either way, if he found out about it. I can't even think clearly anymore. But someone had to... I just wish... I don't know.

I frowned, my heart racing, and went back a few pages. I wish I could go through the pages quickly, but reading the First tongue wasn't nearly as easy as reading a human language. My head was aching already, and my magic felt drowsy. A weight pressed down on my lungs, getting heavier the longer I read. My mother's sadness and regret and pain scrubbed my heart raw.

Still, I suffered through the lines before me, too curious to be stopped by pain. I was pulled into the page, a thread of fate stretching from the ink to my heart.

I almost lost it today. The stress is getting to me. Orion thinks it's because I didn't get any blood. And maybe that was a reason. But the reality is that Rami conveyed another threat to keep my mouth shut. The problem is... if I don't come clean, if I don't offer him proof that his own brother was not to be trusted, he will put my child in harm's way without even knowing. But to come clean means to tell him about my own crimes. I don't know what to do. I don't want to disappoint him, not now that he's hurting so much.

"Elle. Enough."

I jerked, turning my head up. Arthur was blurry. I blinked and my sight cleared up. He crouched in front of me, concern etched in his face, and wiped my cheeks. They were wet.

I cleared my throat, hoping to dislodge the rock that had settled in it sometime in the last few minutes. The heavy cloud of sadness and hopelessness lifted a little. What was wrong with me?

I rubbed my eyes. "My eyes are leaking."

Arthur was angry. He plucked the diary from my hands and read the page I was in. He went over it in seconds.

I rubbed my face and breathed through my nose. The others stood near the door, huddled around a datapad held in Irene's hand.

"My mother was involved in something, wasn't she?" I asked in a whisper.

Arthur met my eyes, the look in his made my heart drop. He flipped to those last pages that contained the sketches.

"Arthur?"

"Let's leave this until we come back from our meeting with Ryan," he mumbled, closing the diary.

I frowned and took it from him. "What are you not telling me?"

He stood up and went to take the diary away from me. I moved my hand away quickly, in my haste to dodge his reach, the diary left my hand and flew backwards, dropping with a muted thud on the carpet. The hum of the others' conversation paused before picking up again.

"Did you do that?" I asked Arthur, pissed off. I hadn't felt him using his magic.

"No. You're just clumsy."

I glared at him. He sighed and crouched in front of me again, his hands on the arms of my chair. "Elle, we're going to see Ryan now. Your mother's diary can wait."

"You know something."

His jaw clenched. "Yes. But I will not tell you until I'm certain. I need you to be clear headed for the rest of the night."

"I'm doing just fine," I growled.

"No, you're not." He spoke slowly. "Choose. You can stay or you can come with me to Ryan's. But you won't be reading your mother's diary without me around."

"And why is that, pray tell?" I asked.

"Because I said so."

Arrogant ass. I made a show of patting my sweatpants pockets. Arthur frowned. "What are you looking for?"

"A fuck to give. I didn't find any. So you can take your order and shove it up your ass," I told him. "Right after you take the stick that's stuck in there."

Silence blanketed the room. Arthur's eyes went completely black.

"Elle..." his voice was laced with warning. His magic roared to life, pushing against the walls. Everyone froze, I couldn't even hear them breathe. I understood because I was the same. It was like being in the presence of a predator and trying hard to stay absolutely still lest you attract the monster's attention.

It took incredible effort to relax my muscles.

"That's not going to work on me, your lordship," I said, poking his chest. The tension in the room melted.

Arthur turned his head aside and cursed. Once he straightened, I jumped to my feet and went to get the diary. The others returned to their discussion, albeit with lower voices.

I slowed as I approached the diary. There was a square white paper on the floor. What was that?

I picked it up. It was a folded sheet of paper, obviously torn from the pages of the diary. It must've been tucked in the middle of the diary.

Arthur's warmth was beside me in a second. I unfolded it. A small note was folded inside the letter. The smaller note contained a list of names, but my eyes focused on the letter.

The words were written in First Tongue. The first words made my heart kick.

Dear Daughter.

Arthur put his hand on my shoulder. I looked at him. If he wanted me to put this away until later...

"Do you want some privacy?" he asked in a low voice.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Grateful that he would give me this despite his earlier words, I nodded. He kissed my forehead and went outside with the others.

I plopped down on the chair and eyed the letter with wariness. Did I even want to read it? Yes, I did. But I wasn't sure if I would like its contents. My mother was obviously involved in something nasty, something she couldn't share with my father. Heck, she apparently knew Rami even before coming to the castle. And no one knew about their history together, if Rami's words were anything to go by. He had spoken as if he only knew her through my father.

"Stop being a wuss." I straightened the letter and started reading.

Dear daughter,

If you're reading this, it means that I'm dead. I want you to know that you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you even though I have never laid eyes on you. Your father does, too, even though sometimes his sense of loyalty to his race can overcome his common sense. He is a good man, however, a much better person than your mother.

I don't know how you will be raised, but if everything went according to plan, then I hope Robert has done a decent job. He isn't the person I would normally entrust with an enfant, but he is one of the strongest people I know, one of the most loyal, and I know he will do his best to bring you up well. I just hope his best would be enough.

I don't know how much time I have left. Recently, the blood-lust episodes have been happening more frequently. So I will get straight to the point.

First of all, I want you to know that your father has no idea of what I'm about to tell you. He is innocent of the crimes I'm about to admit to you.

When I was four years old, a newly made vampire attacked my village. You must know the effects vampire venom has on the fae. The events of that day are still with me to this moment. There was blood everywhere. Blood and madness. They were my first memories. How ironic, since they would likely be my last moments. But I digress. That day, a vampire attacked me.

For all intents and purposes, I should have been lost to madness then and there. But I wasn't. No one knows the reason. Even later, when I grew older and researched the history and magic behind the vampire venom's effects on the fae, I could only come up with possibilities.

There is a theory that one in every million fae is immune to the vampire venom. There is a theory that vampire venom does not affect child fae as much as it does adults, but I doubt it since I've seen with my own eyes blood-maddened children on that day. They were the most horrible of the lot. Madness in the eyes of a child is something unnatural. Not that blood-crazed adults are normal, but children are not supposed to be monsters.

From that day, I was known to the people of the nearby villages as a cursed child, the one who survived madness but held the promise of it in her blood.

I will not bore you with details. You can read about everything in my diary later. Suffice to know that I left the south and moved around quite a bit.

I have always been interested in the workings of magic. Spells, witchcraft, alchemy, they fascinated me to a great extent. Over the years, I studied under several scholars and witches. I gathered knowledge about complicated spells and magic. It was during one of those academic endeavors that I was first contacted by a nameless organisation.

Their goal, as they explained, was to come up with a way to make the fae immune to vampire venom. You must understand the appeal that promise held for me, considering my past. To this day, I don't know if they chose me because of my particular past, or if it was because of my spectacular record of studies in applied magic, as they told me.

That does not matter. I became a member of the organisation, stayed part of it for years. That was where I met Rami, a member of your father's staff. He and I were one of the very first members to join.

At first, I was a scholar amidst a few others who tried to come up with a solution to the vampire problem. The organisation provided the funding and resources needed for the work. But as the organisation grew in numbers, their goals started shifting.

I did not notice at the time. Or perhaps I did, but did not want to admit it, because that would mean leaving the only place in which I felt like I belonged, like I could make a difference. But as years went by, the higher ups of the organisation no longer focused on their original goal.

I brushed that fact aside and focused on my studies and experiments. Whatever the higher ups demanded, I gave it to them with no regards for what they would be using it for. I heard rumors, but I didn't care. As long as they continued funding my own research, I put all my knowledge in their service. By chance, I found out that they were trying to open another gate. My spells and knowledge of applied magic has helped them come close to that goal.

When I found out, I left. I was scared of the horrors they would unleash. I didn't understand their rationale. I left and ignored them when I should've stopped them or at least reported them.

It was only years later, when I met Rami again, that I found out their true goal: to create a new race of fae. To do that, they wanted to open another gate and bring in a creature that will breed the weakness out of the current fae: Their vulnerability to the vampire venom.

Rami and I met in your father's court years and years after I left the organisation. We pretended we did not know each other because of our past involvement.

He wanted me to join their ranks again. I was horrified to think that he was still entangled in that madness, even when he was a member of the inner court. That was when he told me about Rion's involvement.

Unfortunately, I do not have much information about the organisation and its inner workings anymore. All I have are the names of the people who were involved back when I was part of it, and Rami and Rion. But I have no proof, only Rami's words.

Recently, I have doubts that Rami and Rion are up to something. After the attack, I don't trust anyone any longer. I have an ugly feeling in my guts. Something is brewing. I don't know how to convince your father of what's happening around him. I have my doubts that his brother has his eyes on the throne, because that was the only way he could achieve the organisation's goal: your father will never stand for such madness. But I have to tell him.

Please be careful. Don't trust Rami. Don't trust your uncle. If your father is still alive, warn him. My diary has all the accounts of my time during my involvement with the organisation. Read it. Show your father. I love you, my baby. I'm sorry I had to leave before you. I'm sorry you had to grow up without your mother.

Stay strong. Stay safe.

Your mother.