Chapter 1 The Pages Stir Again
She was tall, sleek, in a dark green coat and black gloves. Auburn hair swept into a low twist. Familiar eyes, too familiar, hazel eyes slightly more golden than my own.
“Miss Thorne?” she asked, voice like tempered steel beneath silk. “Angela Hawthorne. I represent a new literary agency. I’ve been hoping to speak with you about your next book.”
My heartbeat once. Twice. Slower.
The bell above the bookstore door jingled softly, followed by the chill of the evening air brushing my back. I hadn’t turned around yet. My fingers were stilllightly curled around the edge of the book Angela Hawthorne had just placed on the counter—my own name embossed in gold leaf across the jacket.
K. Thorne. My name. My lie. My truth.
Beside me, the baby gave a tiny, breathy sound, not quite a coo, not quite a laugh. His eyes—Lucian’s eyes—had locked on the tall woman in the doorway as if something ancient had stirred within him. Angela stood motionless in the entrance, the lamplight behind her casting her in silhouette.
Angela’s smile was thin but warm. “I had a feeling you’d remember me. My hunch was right.”
I swallowed. “Angela.”
The other woman approached slowly, like one would approach a startled animal. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I let out a soft, humorless laugh I said, “I think I became one.”
Angela tilted her head as if listening to something beyond the walls of the shop. Her eyes dropped to the child, then to me.
“There’s a reason you remember everything as do I.” My breath caught.
Outside, just beyond the bookstore’s frost-dusted glass, Lucian (Levi) stood still as a statue, posture straight as a blade. One hand braced against the window frame, his gaze burning through the glass and into me.
He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked. Possessive. Silent. A shadow with a pulse.
Angela followed my gaze and smiled faintly. “He has not left your side. Not once. I think he found his way back the moment you remembered.”
I looked down at our child, voice trembling. “The baby?” Iasked.
Angela’s smile didn’t falter, but something flickered beneath her expression. “Safe. For now. The boundary between our world and the bookworld is thinning, Kristen. It’s not over. Something old is stirring. Older than either realm, older than ink itself.“
The baby whimpered again, and I drew him closer to my chest, my pulse thudding wildly.
Angela’s expression didn’t soften. “You rewrote a tragedy into a love story,” she said “but stories have their own memory. Now something in that world remembers the truth.”
A flicker of cold shimmered over my skin—like the memory of candlelight against stone.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“You will.” She reached into her coat and pulled out something strange. Not a manuscript. Not a contract. A page. Ripped. Old parchment, yellowed and stained.
The words on it were wrong. They were bleeding, literally oozing red where letters should have formed.
I looked up, suddenly chilled. “You said something is stirring?”
Angela’s tone dropped. “The narrative wants itself back. It doesn’t like being rewritten. it is trying to correct what we broke.”
It’s rewriting itself,” Angela said. “If we don’t stop it, your happy ending won’t last. Not here. Not there. Not even in memory.”
I exhaled slowly. “It wants me gone.”
“It wants everything to end as it was first written. Your death. Lucian’s grief. The child—” Angela hesitated. “Erased.”
My grip tightened on my son, “NO!”
Behind the glass, Lucian finally moved. He turned his head, not toward me, but toward the baby… and smiled. It wasn’t sweet but it was promising violence.
Angela stepped closer. “Then we go back. We go back into the book. Into the story. You, me, Lucian… the child. We find the source of the corruption and cut it out.”
“What of Beatrice? Does she remember?”
Angela gave me a half-smile. “She’s been preparing for this far longer than either of us.”
My breath hitched. I stared at the bleeding page. My hand moved without thought and I took it. The baby giggled once, gleefully. The page burned cold against my palm.
Outside, the wind howled once, sharp, and sudden, rattling the bookstore window. Lucian watched through the glass; eyes locked on me like he knew everything. He raised a gloved hand and pressed it to the window.
Something—someone—was waiting.
We were going back.
