Nicholas Stormholden had made three men love him, and he had wanted none of it. He stood on the balcony of his hilltop villa, wrapped in drifting mist, and remembered the gardener who had wept when Nicholas sent him away. One glance was all it took. His brown eyes did the work, and the man's heart bent like a reed. Nicholas hated that power. He wanted to love one man for real, chosen freely, not caught in a spell. But he could not break a curse he could not name. His raven landed on the stone rail. The bird's feathers caught green and violet in the pale light, and its dark eyes fixed on him with that watchful, knowing air. It carried something in its beak. A single black rose, pale-stemmed, its red thorns bright as blood. "Where did you get that?" Nicholas asked. The raven dropped the rose at his feet and hopped toward the door. It wanted him to follow. He had learned long ago to trust the bird's strange foresight. He picked up the rose, careful of the thorns, and went inside. The raven led him to the library, to a shelf he rarely touched. It pecked at the base of one heavy book until Nicholas pulled it free. The cover was old leather, bound in iron and wrapped in chains. Two hearts twined together on the front, ringed by runes he could not read. A lock held it shut. Nicholas set the rose on the table. He tried the lock. It would not turn. Then the raven pressed its beak to the black petals, and a drop of dark sap welled up. Nicholas understood. He pricked his thumb on a red thorn and touched the blood to the lock. The chains fell away. The book opened by itself, pages turning fast, then stopping. He leaned close. The runes shifted into words he could suddenly read. There, drawn in faded ink, was an eye ringed by thorns. Below it, a name. The Gaze of Bound Hearts. A curse laid on a bloodline, the page said, passed from parent to child. It forced love where none was chosen. And it could only be undone by the one who cast it, or by their living heir. Nicholas sat back. His hands shook. For years he had believed the curse was random, a cruel accident of birth. Now he had a name, and worse, a source. Someone in his family had cast this. Someone tied to him by blood. The raven watched him from the table's edge. Nicholas looked at the eye on the page and knew his search had changed. He no longer needed to ask what the curse was. He needed to find who in his bloodline had made it, and whether they still lived. He closed the book. The chains did not return.

The book told Nicholas one more thing before it went quiet. The caster had left a portrait somewhere, and the portrait held a clue. But the pages showed only a row of painted faces with no names. Nicholas did not know which ancestor to trust. He took the book to the old academy, where the records of families were kept. Someone there might read the faces he could not. He found a young woman waiting outside the records hall. She wore worn leather armor. A crossbow hung on her back, and she pressed one hand flat against the wall, as if listening through the stone. She did not look up when he approached. "They won't show you what you came for," she said. "They hide the pages that matter." "You've tried," Nicholas said. "I'm bound to a thing they want dead. They keep its name locked away." She turned. Her eyes met his and held. Nicholas braced for the pull, the sudden bending of a heart. It did not come. She only studied his book. "Two hearts. Old binding curse. My kind of trouble." Nicholas stared. No man had ever looked at him without falling. He had forgotten a woman could simply look. His relief came so fast it startled him. He opened the book and showed her the painted faces. "I need to know which one cast this," he said. "A portrait somewhere holds the answer. I can't tell the faces apart." Evren leaned close. She traced the row with one finger, then stopped. "This one's wrong. Look at the frame. The others match. This frame is fresh paint over old wood." She tapped a bearded man near the edge. "Somebody wanted him hidden in plain sight." Nicholas saw it now. The man's frame was newer, the corners too clean. The painter had disguised him among the rest. "How did you see that?" "I read tracks," Evren said. "Paint's a track. So is a lie." Below the hidden face, in a corner the fresh paint had missed, ran a line of small script. Nicholas read it aloud. "The one who bound them last still guards the villa on the hill." His hands went cold. The villa on the hill was his home. The caster's heir was not some stranger in a distant grave. The clue pointed back to where he lived. "Your trouble sleeps under your own roof," Evren said. Nicholas closed the book. For years he had searched outward. Now the search turned toward his own halls. Someone in the mist-wrapped villa carried the same cursed blood, awake and living, close enough to touch. "I have to go back," he said. Evren shouldered her crossbow. "When you find your locked page, I'll want mine." She left him with the book and the face, and the certain knowledge that his answer waited at home.