Ivy POV

I did not want to believe it. Even as the words stared back at me from Mara’s final pages, part of me kept searching for another meaning, another answer that did not place such a heavy weight on my child.

But the truth did not bend.

I sat alone in the quiet room long after everyone else slept, Mara’s journal open on my lap. The candles had burned low. My back ached, my eyes burned, but I kept reading the same passage again and again.

When a guardian dies by choice, their power ...