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Barney was already flipping through the journal, muttering, licking his thumb between pages like the answer might be hiding in the gutter margin. "Nothing," he said, after a minute. "Nothing. Nothing."

"Barney."

"I heard myself say nothing three times, Martha. I'm aware."

While he dove deeper into Research Wyvern Mode, Zelda had wandered a few feet off and crouched low near the spot where the creature had gone down. A thin streak of silver still clung to the mud, refusing to sink in with the rest.

She reached toward it.

Her Magic reacted — not violently, nothing like the blast that had taken the creature apart. Something softer. Something that felt, at least from where I stood, almost like recognition. Like two old friends catching each other's eye across a crowded room.

And then Aideen hit me with one of those inherited-memory gut-punches, the kind she couldn't fully control even when she tried.

Not a whole scene. Just flashes, fast and disjointed. A stone chamber, cold and close. Margaret — I knew her, somehow, the way you know your own reflection even in bad light. A crown, heavy and old, resting in her hands like it weighed more than it should have.

And a Witch, standing beside her.

“There was a Witch,” Aideen said.

I repeated what my Dragon Queen said aloud for everyone not in my brain, then added, "Of course there was."

Zelda straightened up so fast she nearly lost her footing. "Excuse me?”

"Nothing in my life has ever required fewer than three Magical species and at least one woman with attitude."

That, at least, got a real laugh out of her, short and surprised.

But Aideen couldn't give me a face. Just the shape of a woman standing at Margaret's side, present for something enormous, something that mattered.

“Margaret wasn't alone when the Door was closed,” Aideen said. “I don't know who she was. But she was there.”

I repeated that for everybody, too.

Which meant Zelda's role in all of this had just gone from Martha's terrifyingly powerful best friend to something that reached a whole lot further back than either of us had realized.

That's when Barney made a sound like he'd been punched in the gut.

"Barney?"

He didn't answer right away. He was staring at a page near the back of the journal. One he'd clearly read a hundred times before and never once understood.

"There are three symbols…” he said slowly. “They're all through this thing. I've treated them as separate references for four months — historical footnotes, nothing connected." He turned the journal around so we could see the faded, spidery handwriting crowding the page. "My grandmother wrote them down like this."

The Queen closes what should never open.

The Witch binds what cannot be held.

The Guardian stands between Below and the Queen.

Nobody said anything for a second.

Then, all of us moved in unison. Every eye in the clearing swung toward Kai.

"Don't," he said.

"Wasn't gonna say anything."

"You were."