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She shook her head.
“I think your father might have spoken the truth,” Lysander said.
Her hand went to her back. “What?”
Lysander studied the page for a long moment. His brow drew tight.
"I can give you a translation," he said. "I don't know if I can give you the right one."
"What does that mean?"
"The grammar." He reached out, but didn't touch her back. "Thaalrun doesn't work like our tongues. Hold fast the key, for you're flame. It could be an instruction, you, hold the key. Or it could be describing something already happening, the key is being held fast. And for you're flame, that could mean because you're flame, or it could mean on behalf of you, who are flame. I'm not a scholar, witchling. I know the shape of the words. I don't know which shape is the right one."
Idonea's hand drifted to her back without her permission. Her fingers found the lowest mark through her shirt, the one Nellith had carved on her twenty-fifth birthday. It was warm under the fabric. Warmer than her skin had any right to be.
She pulled her hand away.
"What if I am the key."
"Then the relic is something else."
"Or what if I am being held by the key."
Lysander didn't answer at once. He looked at her, at her back, where her hand had been.
"Then I don't know what your mother made you for."
Her breath went thin.
"She knew," Idonea said. "Whatever this is, she knew. The marks. The years. The order."
"Yes."
"And she didn't tell me."
"No."
Her breath halted. My mother put this on me. She knew.
The air was too tight. Her hand found the marks. Not tradition, or protection, but preparation.
“I wasn’t meant to save Nellith,” Idonea said, her voice breaking. “I was meant to open the Nexis.”
She let herself lean into him, just enough to feel his breath stir her hair. Then she pulled away.
The space between them filled with what neither dared to say.
Lysander rose, boots creaking against the boards. His shoulders were taut, his eyes still dark with the weight of what he'd seen.
Her eyes strayed to the bedroom door. Lance had fallen quiet.
Lysander’s voice came low, rough. “So, if you go near that relic…”
She cut across him, her own voice sharp. “No. That will not happen. I will not be someone’s tool.”
His jaw tightened. “Then what?”
“We find it. And we destroy it.”
