Dahlia Falz's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Dahlia Falz had waited fifteen centuries to touch this gate, and now her hand shook against the iron. The manor stood behind it, dark and swallowed by weeds. This was where her mother once lived, before the townsfolk drove her out and forced her to raise three infant daughters in hiding. Dahlia wanted it back. She wanted the walls that might still hold word of her lost daughter, Phyllis, gone three centuries now. But the gate stayed shut, and she could not make herself push it alone. Boots crunched on gravel behind her. "You've been standing here an hour," Cynder said. The eldest triplet stepped past her, red hair catching the gray light. She grabbed the gate and shook it. "Rusted. Not locked. You always overthink the easy ones." Cynder was a vampire, quick to anger and quicker to shield her sisters from any harm. She bared her teeth at the rust like it was an enemy. "Wait," Dahlia said. "It isn't the lock I'm afraid of." A third shape moved from the tree line, hood drawn low. Luna, the middle sister, walked without sound. A werewolf, she read the land the way others read faces. She knelt and pressed her palm to the dirt beneath the gate. Her silver eyes narrowed. "Someone warded this," Luna said. "Recently. The ground remembers a hand that wasn't ours." Dahlia's chest tightened. "Mother's been dead a thousand years. No one else knew this place." "Someone does now," Luna said. She stood and faced her sisters. "The three of us together can break it. But once we cross, whoever set the ward will know we've come." Cynder laughed, sharp and glad. "Good. Let them." Dahlia looked at both of them. Fifteen centuries, and they had never let her carry a thing alone. That was why she'd waited for them. She reached out. Cynder took her right hand. Luna took her left. Their power moved through her, hot and cold at once, until the air over the gate bent like heat above a fire. "Now," Luna said. Dahlia pushed. The gate screamed open. The ward split with a sound like ice cracking on a lake, and a cold wind rushed out to meet them. They stood inside the grounds at last, three sisters on the stone their mother had lost. Dahlia took one step toward the door. Then she stopped. The weeds near the threshold were flattened in a fresh, narrow path. Small bootprints led up to the manor and did not come back. Someone had walked inside recently and stayed. Cynder went still. Luna sniffed the air and frowned. "White hair," Luna said quietly. "I know that scent. It's her." Dahlia's breath caught. Only one person left tracks like a ghost and spoke to the dead in empty rooms. Her daughter was not lost. Phyllis was here, inside the house, and she had claimed it first.