Chapter 197

[ 1,017 words ]

Emilia’s POV

It was blank.

Just a plain white sheet of paper. Not a single word on it.

“What?” I whispered. I turned it over. The back was blank too. I held it up to the lamp, angling it toward the light, searching for the faintest indent of a pen. Nothing. Just paper.

Rage surged through me, hot and fast. “Did Henry destroy it? Did that bastard tear out whatever she wrote and leave me an empty page?”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something across the room.

My mother had left me a letter. Words meant only for me, the last thing she’d ever say. And Henry had taken that too.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, the paper trembling in my hands.

The door opened. Sebastian stepped in. One look at my face and whatever he’d come to say died on his lips.

“Emilia.” He crossed the room and crouched in front of me. “What happened?”

I shoved the paper at him. “This. My mother left me a letter, and it’s empty. Henry read it and destroyed it. The last thing she wanted to tell me, and it’s gone.”

Sebastian took the page and studied it, turning it over the same way I had. His jaw tightened. But he didn’t look angry the way I expected. He looked like he was thinking.

“Your uncle Chuck said your mother was a powerful witch,” he said slowly. “If she went to the trouble of writing this for you, don’t you think she’d have made sure you were the only one who could read it?”

His green eyes lifted to mine. “There’s another way. There has to be.”

The fury in my chest cooled all at once, sharpening into something else.

Hope.

“You think it’s hidden,” I said.

“I’d bet the whole pack on it.”

I let out a breath. He was right. My mother had spent her whole life protecting me. She wouldn’t have left something this important sitting in the open where Henry could take it. She’d have buried it somewhere only I could reach.

I reached for my phone. “Then I need to call my uncle.”

Chuck picked up instantly, his voice careful. I told him everything. He was quiet for a long moment.

“I don’t have magic in me, Emmy, you know that,” he said. “But your mother left some of her things with me before she passed. Books. One of them might help you.” A pause. “Can you come by tomorrow? I’d put it in your hands myself.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Morning?”

“Morning’s good.”

The next morning, I arrived on time. His house was small, tucked at the quiet end of the pack’s territory. He opened the door.

“Come in, come in.”

We sat at his kitchen table, and he set a worn leather-bound book between us. The cover was cracked with age, the pages soft at the edges from handling.

“This was your mother’s,” he said. “I kept it safe all these years. Didn’t know what else to do with it.” He slid it toward me. “I can’t make sense of a word. But maybe you can.”

“Thank you.” I pulled it close, both hands flat on the cover like I could feel her through it.

Chuck rubbed the back of his neck. “I heard about Henry. What happened to him.” He shook his head slowly. “Sebastian did right by you, Emmy. Better than right.”

“He did.” I met his eyes. “I’m happy now, Uncle Chuck. Really happy. For the first time in a long time.”

His eyes went damp, and he looked down at the table. “I never could help you back then. Half the time I was just one more mouth you had to worry about. One more problem.” His voice cracked. “I’m sorry. For all of it.”

I reached across the table and took his hand. “We were barely getting by. All of us. You did what you had to do to survive. I never blamed you for that.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“How’s Aunt Mindy?” I asked.

“Better.” Some of the weight lifted off his face. “Sebastian paid for her to move to a real hospital. Good doctors, the treatment she actually needs. She’s stronger every week.” He squeezed my hand. “Thank you. Both of you. I don’t know how to repay it.”

“You don’t.” I gave him a small smile. “We’re family, Uncle Chuck. That’s what this is.”

Back at the pack house, I shut myself in my study with the book and a pot of tea gone cold beside me.

The language was old and archaic, half of it in a script I didn’t recognize. But pieces of it surfaced the longer I looked, like words rising out of deep water. Spells for protection. Spells for healing. Charms to keep a home warm through winter. I ran my finger down each page, and somewhere in the margins of it I could feel her, the careful loops of a hand I barely remembered.

Then, tucked into the bottom corner of one page, I found it.

A short notation on concealment magic. How to hide a thing in plain sight. How to reveal it.

I read it three times, until I had every word by heart, then set the blank letter flat on the desk and spoke the incantation.

Nothing.

I tried again, slower this time, shaping each syllable the way the book laid them out.

Still nothing.

“Come on,” I muttered, frustration climbing my throat. “Work. Please work.”

A third time. I pressed my fingertips to the paper and poured everything I had into it, every ounce of will, every year of wanting.

Nothing.

My shoulders dropped. Maybe Henry really had destroyed it. Maybe there was nothing left to find and I was just torturing myself over a blank page. I sat back, ready to give up.

Then Eve stirred in my mind.

“Wait,” she said softly. “I feel something.”

I went still.

Slowly, faint golden script began to bloom across the page.

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