The campus library was the one place Amara used to feel small in a good way.
Tall shelves. Dusty corners. Old, half-broken fans humming overhead. That faint smell of paper and ink and other people's stress.
Today, it felt like a war zone with better lighting.
She walked in with Dami, because arriving alone would look suspicious. Dami immediately veered toward the back to hunt for materials she would 100% not use until the night before the deadline.
"You sure you don't want to join me in academic procrastination?" Dami asked, walking backwards.
"Tempting," Amara said. "But I should actually pass this semester."
"Can't relate," Dami sighed, then grinned. "Text me if you die."
"Very comforting, thanks," Amara said.
Once Dami disappeared behind a wall of textbooks, Amara let her eyes sweep the main floor.
No Lucian.
Good.
She didn't want him to be early. That would mean he was more nervous than she was.
She headed for the second floor, where the study tables were usually occupied by serious people and couples pretending to study.
Her heart ticked faster with each step.
Normal day, she told herself. Just a library. Just books. Just a vampire you made a treason pact with.
When she turned the corner at the top of the stairs, he was already there.
Of course.
Lucian sat at a table near the far window, a stack of books in front of him, one hand doodling lazily in a notebook. Hoodie sleeves pushed up, headphones hanging around his neck, hair ruffled like he'd actually slept in.
He looked like any other stressed university boy.
Except for the way the air seemed to bend just slightly around him, like it knew he wasn't human.
He looked up before she got halfway to the table.
His eyes did that quick, full sweep of her he always did—not in a creepy way, but like he was checking she still existed.
No mark hum.
Her necklace was warm against her skin.
He feels quiet, she thought. Too quiet.
"Hey," he said softly. "You came."
"Yeah, well," she said, dropping into the chair opposite him. "I didn't want you to commit treason alone."
A corner of his mouth lifted.
"Nice to know you care," he said.
"I don't," she shot back. "I just want to be present when you incriminate yourself so I can deny everything later."
He huffed a quiet laugh.
The moment stretched.
The library's ambient noise faded a little.
"Okay," she said, clasping her hands on the table. "Let's do this properly. Rules."
He blinked.
"Rules?" he echoed.
"Yes," she said. "If we're going to share things that could get us both killed, I want terms."
He leaned back slightly, studying her like the negotiation itself was interesting.
"Go on," he said.
"Rule one," she said. "We don't repeat anything from here to our Courts. Not exact words. Not details. If we have to lie, we lie by omission, not invention."
"Agreed," he said without hesitation.
Her brows lifted.
"That fast?" she said.
"You think I'm going to go, 'actually, I prefer detailed betrayal'?" he asked dryly.
"Wouldn't put it past you," she muttered.
"Rude," he said, amused. "Rule two?"
She hesitated.
"Rule two," she said slowly, "no compulsion. At all. No mind tricks, no subtle pushing, nothing. If I'm here, I'm here because I chose to be, not because you nudged my thoughts."
His jaw flexed.
"That one cuts both ways," he said. "Witches are not exactly innocent of persuasion magic."
"Fine," she said. "Mutual. No mind-hacking, no emotional spells."
He nodded.
"Agreed," he said. "You'll have to trust me on the compulsion thing."
"Then take off your ring," she said immediately.
His expression shuttered for half a second.
"What ring?" he said.
She raised a brow.
"You're fidgeting with it," she said. "You've been rolling it between your fingers since I sat down. And I can't feel you anymore. My necklace reacts when you're near, but the mark doesn't hum like it did before. So either you got upgraded to 'less cursed,' or your daddy gave you a nice little limiter."
He stared at her, then huffed a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
"Your grandma wasn't kidding," he murmured. "You really are dangerous."
A spike of irritation went through her.
"Don't talk about my grandma like you know her," she snapped.
He sobered.
"Sorry," he said.
He slid the ring off.
It looked even more ordinary up close just metal, no runes, no shine.
Placed on the table, it pulsed once, faintly, like a heart losing its last beat.
Amara felt it immediately.
The hum.
Like invisible static between them.
Her mark flared under her collarbone, answering something in him.
It wasn't overwhelming, but it was there.
Real.
Unfiltered.
"Happy?" he asked quietly.
"No," she said. "But I trust this more than whatever that thing was doing."
He nudged the ring toward her.
"Keep it," he said. "Your Council might want to study it."
She blinked.
"Your father will notice it's gone," she said.
"Let him," Lucian said. "He already thinks I'm compromised."
She snorted.
"He's not wrong," she said.
"You're not supposed to agree," Lucian said. "At least pretend to think I'm very scary."
"You're very tall," she said. "That's scary enough."
He gave her a look.
She ignored the warmth in her cheeks and leaned forward.
"Rule three," she said. "If either of us gets ordered to kill the other, we say so."
His brows shot up.
"You think we'll get a formal order?" he asked. "Like: 'Dear Lucian, please murder the witch heir after lunch'?"
"You know what I mean," she said. "If it becomes clear that our side wants the other dead now, not later, we share that. No surprises."
His eyes darkened.
"That's not a rule," he said quietly. "That's a death sentence. If I tell you they want you dead and you tell your Court that I told you—"
"I won't," she said.
Silence hummed between them.
"You're asking for a lot of trust, Amara," he said.
"You're the one who suggested we work together," she shot back. "What, you thought we'd do that with vibes and eye contact?"
He almost smiled.
"Those are your main weapons," he said. "I assumed you'd lean on them."
"Don't confuse me with your vampire charm playbook," she said. "Witches use sarcasm, not seduction."
"Bold of you to assume those are different things," he said.
Her lips twitched against her will.
"Fine," he said after a moment. "Rule three: if the kill orders come, we warn each other. Even if there's nothing we can do about it."
"Especially then," she replied.
He nodded once.
"Your turn," she said. "Any rules from your side?"
He thought for a moment, fingers drumming lightly on the table.
"Don't risk your life for me," he said.
She blinked.
"What?" she said.
"That's my rule," he said simply. "You can be reckless with your own people if you want. With mine. With yourself. But don't die for me. Not on purpose. Not as a gesture. If this ends with you on an altar, it won't be for some romantic suicide pact."
"Wow," she said softly. "You really think highly of me, huh?"
His gaze sharpened.
"I think you'll do anything to protect people," he said. "Even when you shouldn't."
She looked away.
Her stomach twisted.
"Too late," she murmured.
He frowned.
"What do you mean?"
She toyed with the edge of the ring.
"Your cousin wouldn't have a nice bloodfire party trick in his palm if I didn't jump in front of that spell," she reminded him.
"That was different," he said. "You were defending yourself."
"And Dami," she said. "Don't erase that. I wasn't alone."
Something softened in his face.
"Right," he said quietly. "Your friend."
Their friend, a stupid part of her wanted to say. Because Dami had sat with Lucian once, teasing him about his handwriting, and he had actually smiled.
She swallowed the thought.
Silence.
The fan overhead creaked.
A student at the far end of the room coughed.
"Okay," she said. "We have rules. Now we actually… share something."
He nodded.
"What do you want to know?" he asked.
She thought of all the questions stacked in her head like books.
Why did you really talk to me the first day?
How many people have you killed?
If I asked you to walk away from all of this, would you?
She picked a smaller one.
"Tell me what your Court wants the curse to look like after," she said. "Best case scenario. If everything goes their way and I don't die, what's their dream outcome?"
He let out a slow breath.
"They want a world where we can walk in the sun again," he said. "Where the hunger doesn't gnaw so deep. Where turning isn't a coin flip between monster and corpse."
She watched him carefully.
"That sounds… not evil," she said.
"It's not," he said. "On paper. In practice, it gets worse."
He laced his fingers together, knuckles pale.
"They want numbers," he said. "Our birth rate is… you know. Undead. We have to turn to grow. But the curse made new turns weaker. Thirstier. Unstable. Many don't survive. The old ones hoard power. The young ones are cannon fodder. They want to fix that."
"And to fix it, they need more of you," she said slowly. "More stable vampires. Stronger. Not hiding in shadows. Out in the world."
He nodded.
"In the old days—" he started.
"You ruled," she finished. "Right."
He didn't deny it.
"The dream," he said, "is a 'balance' where vampires walk openly as a superior species. Humans become… clients. Cattle. Witches are handled or bought or broken. The sun doesn't kill us anymore, and the hunger is manageable. A new golden age."
"For you," she said.
"For us," he agreed.
Her stomach turned.
"And what do you want?" she asked.
He hesitated.
"Less grand," he said. "I want to not watch my younger cousins lose their minds in their first fifty years because the thirst drives them to rip out throats they didn't mean to touch. I want to not know exactly what someone's heart sounds like from three rooms away. I want…"
He stopped.
"What?" she pressed.
His eyes met hers.
"I want to be able to touch you without worrying that the wrong ritual, the wrong circle, the wrong word will turn it into the trigger that kills you," he said roughly. "If the curse has to break, I want it to break around us, not through us."
Her breath caught.
"That's oddly specific," she said, voice a little unsteady.
He gave a humourless smile.
"I've had time to think about it," he said.
She looked down at her hands.
"My turn," she said. "Witch Council dreams."
He nodded.
"Yara and the Court want a world where magic isn't hunted," she said slowly. "Where witches can exist without hiding. Where our kids don't have to pretend they're just 'good with herbs' or 'lucky with the weather.'"
"Also not evil on paper," he said.
"Mm," she said. "Now for the ugly bit. To them, the curse is justice. A painful, messy, extreme justice, sure, but it stopped the Age of Crimson Reign. It made you pay."
She took a breath.
"Some of them think the safest thing is to let it deepen," she said. "To make it worse. To twist it so that every time a vampire feeds, it burns a little more. So fewer of you risk turning. So eventually you vanish quietly, not all at once. No war. Just… extinction."
He stared at her.
Her words echoed between them.
"Do you agree?" he asked finally.
"No," she said. "I don't want genocide by slow curse. Even if the people it kills are people who would happily drink me dry."
He swallowed.
"And your personal dream?" he asked.
She gave a humourless laugh.
"Smaller," she said. "I want my family alive. I want witches not to be afraid to be seen. I want to not feel guilty for existing if the curse ends and suddenly you all start multiplying like vampire rabbits."
A surprised sound escaped him.
"Vampire rabbits," he repeated. "That's a new one."
"You know what I mean," she said. "I don't want to fix the curse and watch the world burn. I also don't want to keep it and watch you starve."
She looked up.
"So I guess we're both aiming for 'somehow untangle centuries of trauma with zero casualties,'" she said. "Very realistic."
"Perfectly reasonable," he agreed.
For a minute, they just… sat.
Two cursed kids in a library, trading apocalypse fantasies between stacks of overpriced textbooks.
Amara glanced at the books near his elbow.
"Now tell me the real reason we're here," she said. "Because as much as I love moral philosophy, those are definitely not ethics textbooks."
He followed her gaze.
The top book's title read: Ritual Lattices & Blood-Linked Channels.
The one beneath: On Cursed Systems & Their Failsafes.
"They're research," he said. "On the curse. And on loopholes."
Her pulse jumped.
"Loopholes," she repeated. "Like… what?"
He hesitated.
"We don't have the full design of Serena's curse," he said. "We see the effects. We have fragments from old records. The witches destroyed most of the original work. But blood carries echoes. Some vampires can… taste the shape of a spell by what it does to them."
"That's disgusting," she said automatically.
"Accurate," he said. "We know the curse is anchored in three main pillars: sunlight, hunger, inheritance. Change one, the others react. Change all three…"
"Explosion?" she guessed.
"Maybe," he said. "Or freedom. Or both."
He slid a notebook toward her.
In it, his handwriting sprawled in quick, sharp lines. Diagrams of circles. Notes. Crossed-out sections.
Her eyes snagged on a phrase:
Shared anchor instead of single sacrifice?
She looked up sharply.
"You're trying to make the curse sit on more than one person," she said. "To spread it out so no one breaks under it."
"In theory," he said. "If the curse is currently pressed down on every vampire like a hand, I'm trying to see if there's a way to lift it off and… hang it somewhere else. Somewhere neutral."
"Like where?" she demanded. "A rock? Space? The moon?"
"Calm down, witch," he said, a flicker of humour slipping through. "I'm not trying to nail our problems to the moon."
"That would be on brand," she muttered.
"Symbols matter," he added. "If the curse was built on betrayal and love and blood, maybe it can be reshaped by choice and consent and…"
He trailed off.
"And what?" she pushed.
"Joint control," he said finally. "A shared key. Instead of you or me being the sacrifice, maybe we become… regulators."
"Regulators," she repeated flatly. "Like magical air-conditioners."
He couldn't help it; he laughed.
"Not the metaphor I'd pick," he said. "But close enough."
She flipped a page.
"So if this worked," she said slowly, "we'd be… living anchors for a weaker version of the curse? You get your sun, we keep our safety net, and you and I become two walking, talking stabilisers that everyone has a stake in not killing."
"In theory," he said.
"In practice?" she asked.
"In practice, we have no idea what it would do to our minds," he admitted. "Or our bodies. Or the world. Which is why I haven't exactly pitched it to the Court."
She leaned back.
"Do the witches know you're thinking like this?" he asked.
"No," she said. "They're still in the 'train you, hide you, hope you don't spontaneously explode' chapter."
He nodded.
"Maybe… don't show them this yet," he said, nodding toward the notebook. "They'll see it as another way for us to chain you."
She eyed him.
"Is it?" she asked. "Another chain?"
He held her gaze.
"It could be," he said honestly. "If we're the only ones designing it. If we don't let you tear it apart and rebuild it first. If I hand it to my aunt and she weaponises it."
"Then why show me?" she said softly.
"Because I'm tired of being the only one whose people expect him to fix this," he said. "You deserve to know what they want you for. Not just as a victim. As a participant."
Her throat burned.
"That's a lot of power you're offering me," she said. "You sure you're not just bad at being a loyal vampire son?"
"I'm excellent at being a disappointment," he said dryly. "Ask my father."
She smiled despite herself, then caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
Someone had just come up the stairs.
Tall.
Sleek.
Moving too smoothly to be human.
Amara's heart jolted.
Lucian saw it at the same time.
His face went still.
He closed the notebook in one swift motion and slid it back to his side.
"Don't look," he said softly. "Far right. By the encyclopedias."
"Too late," she whispered. "Already looked."
A woman stood at the end of the aisle, examining the spines of books with idle disinterest.
She wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a blazer too expensive for any actual student. Her hair was coiled into a perfect low bun. Her skin was a warm brown, her lips painted dark.
Her eyes, when they flicked lazily toward them for a second, were red at the edges.
Amara's mark flared.
Lucian's pupils thinned.
"Who is she?" Amara breathed.
"My aunt," he said. "Valeria."
Panic punched through her.
"Does she know—?"
"She knows you exist," Lucian murmured. "She doesn't know what we're doing right now, and she won't if you stay calm."
"Oh, sure," Amara hissed. "Let me just turn off my survival instinct."
"Rule two," he said quietly. "No mind tricks. Remember? Trust me now or walk away."
She held his gaze.
The urge to bolt was strong.
Her pulse hammered loud enough she was sure Valeria could hear it from across the room.
He'd warned me if they wanted me dead, she thought. Rule three. He's not stupid enough to bring me here into an ambush with witnesses.
Was he?
Valeria picked a random book off the shelf and flipped it open, not really reading.
Lucian's shoulders loosened a fraction.
"She's checking up on me," he said. "Not you."
"Oh, perfect," Amara whispered. "Family bonding. Love that for you."
"Look at me," he said.
She did.
"Breathe," he said softly. "In. Out. Pretend you're just a girl studying with a boy she maybe, possibly, slightly likes."
"I don't like you," she said automatically.
"Your heart is very loud for someone who doesn't like me," he said.
"That's panic," she snapped.
He almost smiled.
"Then panic quietly," he said.
She kicked him under the table.
His leg was annoyingly solid.
Valeria snapped the book shut with a soft thud and put it back.
She walked down the aisle, heels silent on the carpet.
Amara forced herself to shift a notebook closer, uncapping a pen with hands that felt slightly numb.
Lucian's posture changed.
Relaxed.
Casual.
Mask.
"Lucian," Valeria said smoothly as she approached. "I thought you hated studying anywhere noisy."
Her voice was low and warm, with a hint of an accent Amara couldn't quite place.
Lucian looked up lazily.
"Aunt Valeria," he said. "I thought you hated universities. Too many opinions."
A faint smile touched Valeria's lips.
"I make exceptions," she said. Her gaze flicked to Amara. "You must be Amara."
Amara's stomach tried to exit through her spine.
Play dumb.
Be normal.
"H… hi," she said, cursing the little hitch in her voice. "Have we met?"
"Not officially," Valeria said. Her eyes were kind, but there was a weight in them that made Amara feel like she was being x-rayed. "I've heard my nephew mention you. He said you're very good at borrowing notes and very bad at replying to messages."
Amara blinked.
"That… sounds accurate," she said.
Lucian gave an easy shrug.
"She's a busy person," he said. "Unlike some of us."
Valeria tilted her head, studying them.
The way Lucian sat.
The way Amara's notebook was blank.
The way the air buzzed between them.
She smiled.
"I'm glad you're making friends, Lucian," she said.
There was something in the word friends that made Amara's skin crawl. Like Valeria was tasting it and finding it amusing.
"Uni is meant for connection," Valeria continued, turning to Amara. "Just be careful. Some connections come with… expectations."
Amara smiled tightly.
"Story of my life," she said.
Valeria's eyes glinted.
"I imagine so," she said. "Well. I'll leave you to your… studying."
Her gaze lingered one fraction of a second too long on the closed notebook near Lucian's elbow.
Then she turned and walked away, disappearing between shelves.
Amara didn't move until she felt the hum of her presence fade.
Then she exhaled hard.
"I hate your family," she whispered.
Lucian's shoulders dropped.
"Fair," he said. "I'm not exactly their biggest fan either."
"Did she know?" Amara asked. "About… us?"
He shook his head slowly.
"She suspects something," he said. "But if she knew this was more than a university crush, you'd already be in a trunk."
"Reassuring," Amara muttered.
She looked at the ring on the table.
At the notebook.
At him.
"We're running out of time, aren't we?" she said quietly.
"Yes," he said.
The fan overhead creaked again.
Somewhere below, someone laughed too loud and got shushed.
"Okay," Amara said. "Then we work faster. We learn faster. We find a way to build your stupid shared-anchor spell without it killing us. And we do it before your aunt decides to come back with more than small talk."
He stared at her.
"You're really in this now," he said.
"I was always in this," she said. "I just didn't know I had a choice before. Now I do. I'm choosing."
"And what are you choosing?" he asked.
She held his gaze.
"You," she said. "For now. Over them. Over both of them. Not because I trust you more than my family. But because I don't trust what either side will do if we leave them alone with this."
His dead heart did that painful twist again.
"That's incredibly reckless," he said softly.
"I know," she said. "You said not to risk my life for you. I'm not."
He frowned.
"What are you risking it for then?" he asked.
She picked up his ring, weighing it in her hand.
"For the chance," she said, "that this story doesn't end the same way as Serena and Darian's."
She slid the ring into her pocket instead of handing it back.
"Come on, Silver Eyes," she said. "Teach me your loopy curse diagrams. Then I'll go home and pretend I spent all afternoon studying boring human law."
"And I'll tell my aunt I was doing what she wanted," he said. "Getting close to the key."
Amara's mouth twisted.
"Then let's make sure the key learns how to pick locks before anyone else tries to jam it into something," she said.
He couldn't help but grin.
"Bossy," he said.
"Efficient," she corrected.
They bent over the notebook together.
Above them, old lights flickered.
Around them, the library hummed with the ordinary weight of student life.
Between them, the curse tugged its invisible threads tighter
and for the first time, someone on each side began quietly, stubbornly, to unravel them.