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The shock must have been plainly written on my face because she pulls her hand away as if she had been scorched.

I blink, trying to clear my vision. She is here. My sister. Not the hungry creature I had left in that Berlin alley fifty years ago. Nor the broken woman I had watched leave Hell only a couple of weeks ago. She stands beside my chair in the archive—her eyes bright with terrible sadness. She looks older, not in years but in the weight she carries.

“How?” I ask, looking from her to the keeper. “The doors… You said no one enters.”

The keeper shifts, its shadow form rippling. “The doors are barred to those who seek entry,” it rasps. “But she did not enter, Cassiel. She was already here.”

I stare at it. Then at my sister. “Already here?”

Sera kneels beside me and takes my trembling hands in hers. Her grip is solid, grounding. “I’ve been here, Cassie,” she says softly. “Waiting. It was our collective idea to bring you here.”

The betrayal should have stung, but I am too hollow to feel it. “Why…?”

“Because you always took care of me,” she whispers, her thumbs brushing over my knuckles. “For centuries. You took the fall. The exile. You carried the weight of my hunger and my sins until your own knees buckled.” She looks up at me, her loving eyes fierce. “It’s my turn to return the favor. My turn to save you.”

I shake my head, the image of Lysanthe’s ruined body flashing behind my eyes. “There is no saving me, Sera. You know the verdict… You heard what I did. What I became.”

“I heard. And now I know what they did to Lysanthe.”

The name hangs between us, a fragile glass.

“I-I failed her,” I choke out. “I left her to rot in a cold drawer.”

“No,” she says firmly. “You remembered her. You mourned her. And you made them pay! Do you remember how she was? Before?”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “I only see the blood. The table.”

“You need to look past it. Remember Marseille. Remember how she laughed.”

A different image claws its way through the dark. Not the corpse but the vibrant young woman.

“She was…bright,” I whisper and sniffle. “So bright it hurt to look at her sometimes.”

A sad smile touches Sera’s lips. “Even for a vampire, she was full of life. Do you remember? She would pretend to blush if anyone held her gaze too long but snickered behind a fan.”

A sob catches in my throat, but it is not harsh this time. “She loved lavender.” The memory tastes of sweet tea and sunlight. “She pretended to like the blood wine to fit in with Valden’s court, but she hated the taste. She used to sneak sugar cubes into her pockets.”

“She loved you. Tenderly. She didn’t see a monster, Cassie. She saw her friend.”

We sit in the archive’s silence, two sisters mourning the same ghost. The keeper does not rush us. The sand in its eyes slow, honoring the pause.

“She deserves to be remembered like that,” Sera says, squeezing my hands. “Not as a victim. Not as a tool for Valden’s ambition. But as the woman who lived and loved sugar and danced barefoot in the rain.”

I take a deep, shuddering breath. The crushing weight on my chest lightens, just a fraction. The monstrous image of her still body recedes, replaced by a memory of a friend who held my hand in the dark.

“I have to finish it, don’t I?” I say more with acceptance, realizing its truth. “I must tell the rest. For her. For Remiel. For me.”

Sera nods, wiping a stray tear from her own cheek. “You do. You must tell us what happened to Valden.” She stands close, offering me a strength I forgot I could rely on. “I’ll be close. I’m not going anywhere.”

I turn back to the keeper, my spine straightening. The grief is still there, a stone in my gut, but the panic has receded.

“What happened next?” it rasps.

“Valden,” I say, my voice steady. “Valden happened next.”

“Proceed.”

25. Remiel