The snowstorm had grown wilder overnight.
Winds howled through the Ashthorn mountains, rattling the estate's high windows like claws against glass. Morning didn't come gently. It arrived cold, white, and shrouded in silence.
Larissa stood at the edge of the nursery, watching the children sleep. Alina's tiny hand clutched the edge of her blanket. Roman and Nikolai were curled up together, twin shapes under warm quilts.
This peace—it felt fragile.
Like the kind of quiet that came right before everything unraveled.
She turned when she heard the door open behind her. Lukyan stepped in, silent as always, dressed in black.
"You didn't sleep," he said.
"Neither did you."
He walked closer, stopping just behind her. "I called in more security. The guards will rotate every three hours. No one gets in or out without my say."
She nodded, but her heart didn't ease. "You're expecting something."
He was quiet for a beat. "We found another message. It was buried in the envelope. Hidden behind the seal."
Larissa turned sharply. "What?"
He reached into his coat and handed her a small, folded piece of parchment. It looked aged. The kind of paper that yellowed under secrets. On it, scrawled in ink, was a single line.
"The girl knows. She always did."
Larissa stared.
The words blurred for a moment as her blood turned cold. "What does that mean?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me."
"I don't—" She stopped. Swallowed.
There was something. A memory—faint, fractured, buried beneath years of silence.
A woman's voice. A burning fireplace. The smell of blood and lavender.
"Larissa?" Lukyan's voice grounded her.
She looked up, panic flickering in her chest. "My mother," she whispered. "She once warned me... if I ever married into the Volkov family, I had to leave after the tenth year. She never explained why."
Lukyan's face hardened. "What else did she say?"
"She said… they would come for me. The same way they came for her."
His body went rigid. "She was connected to all this?"
"I don't know," Larissa said, shaking her head. "She died before I could ask."
Silence settled like ice between them. Then Lukyan said something she didn't expect.
"I think it's time you met someone."
Later That Day – The Forgotten Wing
Lukyan led her through a hallway she hadn't seen in years. Dust covered the portraits, and cobwebs danced between wall sconces.
At the end of the corridor, he stopped before a sealed wooden door.
"This used to belong to my grandfather," he said. "He was a physician. But he was also something else—a Keeper."
"A Keeper of what?" Larissa asked.
He looked at her. "Truth."
Inside the room, old books lined the walls. Most were journals, hand-bound and faded with age.
Lukyan crossed to a particular shelf, pulled down a leather-bound volume, and opened it to a bookmarked page.
There was a name.
One Larissa hadn't heard in over twenty years.
Ekaterina Dragovich.
Her mother's maiden name.
She grabbed the book from him and read the page. Her heart pounded with each word.
"She was one of the last Wives of the Flame," Lukyan said softly. "A secret order tied to the Volkov line. Their job was to protect… or destroy. Depending on who they served."
Larissa stared at him. "My mother wasn't just a lawyer."
"No," he said. "She was a guardian. And she knew one day, you'd be dragged into the same war."
Tears burned her eyes. "And you? Did you know all of this?"
"I only started to piece it together a year ago," Lukyan admitted. "But the moment I saw that name on the letter, I knew—this isn't just about me. Or the children. This is about you."
She felt the walls shift.
The marriage. The contract. The strange attacks. They weren't random.
They were a warning.
And she was right at the center of it.
"What happens now?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
Lukyan stepped closer, pressing his forehead gently against hers. "Now, we stop surviving… and start fighting."