Chapter 9The Room of Her Sister’s Ghosts

The symbol on the wall caught the candlelight like wet stone. Nora pressed her fingers to it—three interlocking circles, each crossed by a line that split at the center. Sophia had drawn this shape on the back of a grocery receipt once. She’d called it a *key without a lock*.

“Where does it lead?” Nora asked.

Kael stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “Nowhere. It’s old decoration.”

“My sister drew this exact symbol the week before she died.”

His jaw tightened. For a long moment, the only sound was Dorian’s quiet breathing as he pressed a cloth to his reopened wound.

“There’s a room,” Kael finally said. “Behind the wall. She used it for work.”

“Show me.”

“You don’t want to see what’s in there.”

Nora stepped toward him. “I’ve spent six months imagining what her last days looked like. I think I can handle it.”

Kael held her gaze, something breaking behind his eyes. Then he turned and pressed his palm flat against the wall beside the symbol. A seam appeared—hairline thin, invisible until the candlelight shifted. He pushed, and a section of the wall swung inward.

The smell hit her first. Dust and dried herbs and something metallic. Copper. Blood.

She stepped inside.

Sophia’s room was smaller than she’d imagined. A cot in the corner, sheets still rumpled. A table covered in glass vials and scattered papers. On the wall, pinned like butterfly specimens, were sketches of the human circulatory system, the vampire heart, and a single drawing of a door with no handle.

Nora picked up a page covered in Sophia’s handwriting—sharp, impatient strokes. *Third component: vampire heart essence. Must be willing. Must be living. Must be—*

The word at the end was crossed out so hard the paper had torn.

*Brave.*

“She worked on it for months,” Kael said from the doorway. “I helped where I could. Brought her supplies. Kept Marcus’s people away.”

“Then what happened?”

He didn’t answer. He was looking at the cot.

Nora followed his gaze. There was a dark stain on the pillow, faded but unmistakable. Blood. Her sister’s blood.

“She got sick,” Kael whispered. “The disease moved faster than she expected. She had the first two components. The nightshade root. The willing blood—she’d convinced one of the feral vampires to give a sample before he died. But the third…”

“Heart essence.”

“She asked me.” His voice cracked. “I was pure. Never killed. My heart essence would have worked. But I was afraid. I told her we had time. I told her I’d find another way.”

Nora’s throat closed.

“She died three days later.” Kael pressed his palm against the wall. “Her last words were ‘find someone braver.’”

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.

Nora looked at the locked chest beneath the window. “What’s in there?”

“Her journal. And the heart essence she extracted from herself before she died.”

“She extracted her own—”

“She knew she was dying. She thought if she could preserve it, someone could use it later.” Kael’s laugh was hollow. “But it’s too old now. Decayed. Useless.”

“Open it.”

“It’s blood-sealed. I can’t.”

Dorian stepped forward, hand already bleeding from where he’d cut it earlier. “I can.”

Kael grabbed his wrist. “You don’t understand. That seal—if you break it, Marcus will know. He spelled it himself, months ago. He’s been waiting for someone to open this chest.”

“Then we’ll be fast.” Nora pulled the chest toward her. “Open it.”

Dorian pressed his bloody palm against the seal. The metal glowed red, then black, then clicked open.

Inside: a leather-bound journal, pages yellowed, and a vial of dark liquid that no longer moved when Nora tilted it.

She opened the journal to the last entry.

*I’ve found the loophole. The mutual bond. It’s in Marcus’s library, in a text called the Codex of Equal Blood. If two people undergo the ritual, they share life force equally. Both become mortal. Both survive. But the book is locked in his private collection, and he knows what it contains.*

*He’s been reading it too.*

Nora looked up. “The mutual bond. It’s the answer.”

Kael’s face went pale. “That book is suicide to steal. Marcus keeps it in a vault behind his study. He patrols it personally.”

“Then we need someone who knows the layout.”

Kael didn’t answer. He was staring at the vial of preserved heart essence, his reflection warped in the glass.

“I can’t help you,” he said. “I couldn’t help her either. I’m a coward.”

Nora stepped close enough to see the tears he was trying to hide. “My sister asked for someone braver. I’m here.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is. But I’m going anyway. With or without you.”

Kael’s shoulders shook once, then stilled. “Dawn. Patrols thin out at dawn. If we leave now, we might make it.”

“We?”

He met her eyes. “She trusted me. I failed her. Maybe I can still fail her better.”

Lila’s phone buzzed from the main room.

She checked it, and her face went gray.

“What?” Nora asked.

Lila turned the screen toward them.

The message was from Marcus.

*I know where you’re going. The library is a trap.*