C9 The memory that wasn't hers

Vespera waited in the shadows of the parlor until her father’s bedroom door clicked shut down the hall. Slipping the parchment strip into her coat pocket alongside Corin’s iron key, she crept back to her bedroom, her mind spinning with Julian’s strange words before the faceless portrait.

It’s almost time. The fifty years are up.

She locked her bedroom door and sat at her desk