The cottage sat at the edge of a forest so old the trees had stopped growing upward and started growing inward. Moss climbed the stone walls. Smoke curled from a crooked chimney.
I knocked once. The door opened before my fist could fall a second time.
Morgath stood in the threshold—smaller than I remembered, older. Her dark eyes found mine, and whatever she saw there didn't surprise her. She stepped aside.
"I wondered when you'd come." She moved toward the hearth without looking back. "Truthfully, I expected you sooner—you've never been the patient type, Lyralei, though I suppose the crown has taught you to pretend otherwise."
She gestured to a chair. "Sit. The tea is already made, because some things don't require foresight to predict."
I didn't sit. I stood in the center of her cluttered cottage and let the anger I'd been carrying settle into something cold and useful.
"You owe me answers, Morgath."
The words filled the small space between us.
"You created the false bond that stole my magic, my identity, my entire life. Twenty-three years I spent as a servant because your spell worked exactly as it was designed to—binding me to a man who was never my mate, suppressing the power that would have revealed who I was, keeping me invisible while the people who should have protected me believed I was dead."
My voice steadied into something harder.
"You contributed to every year of suffering, every moment of degradation, every scar I carry that could have been prevented if you'd made a different choice. So yes—you owe me, and I'm here to collect."
Morgath lowered herself into a chair by the fire. She didn't flinch from my anger, didn't deflect or minimize.
"I owe you more than answers, child. I owe you a debt that no amount of truth can fully repay, and I've lived with that knowledge every day since I cast the spell your mother begged me to create."
She met my eyes.
"But answers I can give, and if answers are what you've come for, then ask. I won't hide behind excuses or riddles—you've earned directness, at minimum."
"I need proof that the prophecy has been satisfied. That both twins can live without the realm suffering, without the magic destabilizing, without the Order having any legitimate claim that our survival is an abomination."
I stepped closer.
"I need something definitive—not scholarly interpretation, not historical precedent, not the educated guesses of priests who've been debating this for a thousand years without reaching consensus. I need truth that can't be argued with, and I need it before the Order uses the prophecy to justify killing me and my children."
Morgath was quiet for a long time. The fire crackled between us.
"The Blood Covenant—the true one, not the corrupted trials that generations of frightened wolves twisted it into—was never about death. It was about balance."
She leaned forward.
"Twin power is inherently dangerous, Kira. Not because twins are abominations, but because the magic is doubled—twice the potential for destruction, twice the potential for salvation, and no guarantee which direction it will flow."
Her voice dropped lower.
"The original Covenant demanded that one twin sacrifice to prove the power would be used for good. That's the core of it. Sacrifice. But death was the easy interpretation—the crude one, the version that frightened wolves chose because killing is simpler than understanding. Sacrifice takes many forms, and not all of them require a body on the ground."
I held still, listening.
"Willingness to die for each other—genuine willingness, not performance. Sharing blood and magic so completely that the power becomes indivisible. Merging souls so deeply that betrayal becomes structurally impossible, because harming the other would mean harming yourself."
She held up a gnarled finger.
"These are all forms of sacrifice the Covenant recognizes, and they are far more powerful than death because they're ongoing. A dead twin sacrifices once. Living twins who've merged their magic sacrifice every day—they carry each other's pain, bear each other's burdens, exist in a state of permanent vulnerability that requires more courage than any single act of dying."
"Damon and I did this," I said, and it wasn't a question. "During the blood rite. Our magics merged instead of fighting—they chose unity over destruction, and our souls intertwined so completely that I can feel his emotions from across the palace."
My hand pressed against my stomach.
"The Covenant should be satisfied."
"Technically, it is."
Morgath's confirmation carried a weight that came wrapped in warning.
"What you and your brother achieved fulfilled the true requirements of the Covenant. Your magic merged, your souls bound, your sacrifice was made and accepted."
She paused.
"But belief is its own kind of magic, Kira, and the Order's conviction that you've doomed the realm creates a force that doesn't care about technicalities. Being right won't be enough if you can't prove it in a way that silences the fear driving their hatred."
"Then help me prove it."
I closed the distance between us.
"You created the spell that stole my life. Use what you know to help me save it. There has to be a way to demonstrate beyond doubt that the Covenant is satisfied—something visible, something undeniable, something that even the most fanatical Order member can't dismiss as propaganda."
Morgath studied me, and something shifted behind her eyes—calculation giving way to decision.
"There is a ritual. Ancient, nearly forgotten—predating the corrupted trials by centuries. It was designed to confirm the state of the Covenant, to reveal whether the blood debt remains open or has been paid."
Her voice steadied with certainty.
"The ritual would show the truth for what it is, visible to anyone present, impossible to fabricate or deny. If the Covenant is satisfied, the proof would be absolute."
"And the cost?"
"Pain," she said simply. "For you and your brother both—the ritual reaches into the Covenant itself, and the Covenant does not submit to examination gently."
She held my gaze.
"Danger, because ancient magic is unpredictable and the ritual hasn't been performed in living memory. And truth, Kira—whatever it may be. If the Covenant is not satisfied, the ritual will show that too, and the consequences of that revelation would be devastating."
I didn't hesitate.
"I agree. When do we begin?"