Rain fell like silver knives across the palazzo's domed windows, but inside, the corridors were still—too still.
Aurelia stood barefoot in the solarium, dressed in a loose silk robe, her palm resting over her abdomen. She wasn't with child... but her magic pulsed differently, humming low, protective, watchful. She sensed the shift in the air long before Soraya burst through the carved double doors.
"They've started moving," Soraya said breathlessly, rain dripping from her shoulders. "Casella met with two Roman emissaries last night. One of them wore the mark of the Ninth Circle."
Aurelia's blood turned cold. "A conjuror's guild?"
"No." Soraya shook her head. "Worse. A blood sect. The kind that believes the DeCarlo heir must never be born—or the balance of power collapses."
Aurelia turned to the window. Lightning traced ghostly rivers through the clouds. "Then they've seen the prophecy too."
In a hidden chamber deep beneath the Palazzo DeCarlo, Lucien lit three candles in a triangle, drawing chalk lines across the stone floor. He hadn't summoned the oracle in years—not since his mother was trapped between life and spirit.
The flames turned violet.
A translucent form slowly took shape within the circle: a woman cloaked in shadow, her eyes pale as dust. She wore the same chain of thorns Aurelia once bore.
"You seek truth," the oracle rasped. "But truth, Sovereign, has teeth."
Lucien knelt. "Tell me what they fear."
The oracle's mouth curled.
"The Queen's womb bears more than life. It is the gate. Through it, the old power will rise again—the magic that was broken in the Time Before."
Lucien's hands curled into fists.
"If she bears the child, the throne will not belong to you... or her. It will belong to the one they
call L'Equilibrio—the Balance." "And if she doesn't?"
The oracle's image flickered. "Then you lose her. And the world loses its only chance to survive."
Meanwhile, Aurelia entered the hidden library once used by Lucien's grandfather. Books bound in demon-hide lined the walls. She traced her fingers over a heavy tome marked Genealogia Incantata.
When she opened it, her name was already inscribed inside.
Aurelia Moretti DeCarlo. Queen Consort. Mother of the Key.
She slammed the book shut, heart racing. That night, in the safety of their private wing, she confronted Lucien.
"You knew," she said.
"I suspected," he admitted. "But I didn't want you to carry the weight of it before you had to."
Aurelia stepped back. "This isn't just about us anymore, Lucien. If I conceive, the entire magical order may rise—or fall."
Lucien's eyes darkened. "Then we choose carefully. We shield you from them, and from what's coming. Even if I have to tear down the old order brick by brick."
Aurelia touched the sigil on her wrist, which pulsed with a deep, steady light. "Then we do it together."
But outside their door, a single thorned rose was laid on the floor — its petals soaked in blood, its stem etched with one word:
"Soon."