All Chapters of I Married My Mate's Enemy : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

  Lana’s POV Halver’s ledger was a puzzle — fragmented and encoded in quiet notations more than entries. But thanks to Mara’s instincts and Warren’s contacts, we unearthed a lead: a river courier listed by alias, who specialized in moving small, sensitive items along the coastal route. The courier was named Jorren — or that’s the identity Halver’s records suggested. The coastal route was the kind of place that hummed with trade. Barges creaked, fishmongers shouted, and the wind carried salt like a promise. We found Jorren at a riverside tavern called The Trawl, where men and women hauled nets and traded stories in equal measure. He was smaller than I expected, wiry and quick-eyed, with hands that had seen rope more than coin. He laughed too readily, a sound like broken glass held to light. When we approached, he studied us with amusement. “Yo

  Lana’s POV Carrying the disk back into the earth felt like returning a wounded thing to a surgeon's hands. The path back to the archive beneath the roots was longer than I remembered; the forest seemed different — older, as if it had filled in the gaps we’d left behind. The sentinel waited at the arch, face unexpressive, as if the stone itself had few surprises left. “You return with an artifact bound by sigils not native to the archive,” he observed. “This will test the archive’s tolerance. The Codex does not often see foreign bindings.” Bastion arranged wards around our camp, and the scholars from the hermitage helped cradle the disk in linen wrapped with runes. The journey was a vigil of sorts; we moved like people carrying something fragile and dangerous all at once. When we stepped into the archive again, the air felt li

Lana’s POVLord Marek’s holdings sprawled across a gentle plain, hedges clipped like the teeth of a measured saw, and slate roofs that caught the sun in metallic flashes. From a distance, the manor was tasteful and prosperous. Up close, there was a sense of curated life: servants polished surfaces, guards stood in formal lines. Anything that wished to be hidden wore a veneer of civility here.We came with Iva’s careful note and a plan that balanced stealth and guile. Dren’s quick hands and Mara’s theatrics let us pose as traders and guests. Warren kept the ledger of exits and entrances in his head, and Bastion positioned outside as a ready reserve. Kael and I moved through the manor like a pair who belonged to comfortable lives — practiced smiles, practiced half-truths.Marek welcomed us with the smooth courtesy of a man practiced at masks. He had, indeed, the look of a patron — a man who paid for favors as if he were purchasing a refined dish. We were led through chambers perfumed wi

Lana’s POVWe carried the amplifier in pieces and a sense of precarious victory. The tide had taken the keepers long ago, but tonight, the sea’s witness felt like blessing. We’d closed a chapter others had written and opened the chance for a new page — one where the Red Moon lineage might be guided by truth rather than a hidden hand.Kael squeezed my fingers as we climbed the wet stones. “We keep going,” he said.“We do,” I agreed.The road away from the beacon was quiet as if the sea had taken with it more than just sound. Our group moved like a single organism: Bastion scouting, Mara and Dren carrying supplies, Warren cataloguing what we’d taken and planning the next moves in a ledger that never stopped. Iva and Sera had agreed to travel with us, at least a little, helping identify maker's marks and half-finished runes that might otherwise be overlooked.At the hermitage, Maris stitched wards into linen and recited the slow phrases scholars used to steady dangerous things. The disk

Lana’s POV Success never felt as clean as I imagined. The demonstrations and the hearings had coaxed the market to flinch, but the more we pulled at threads, the more we discovered the tangles beneath them — old wounds stitched over with new lies. It became painfully clear that the manipulator’s work had not relied solely on greed; it had been built on people’s fears and on the kinds of compromises that felt rational in a hard world. We lingered near the hermitage for longer than necessary, partly to rest, partly to gather witness testimony and partly because the hermitage had become something like a home. People who had once been strangers were now allies with faces I could name from memory; Rowen moved like a shadow inside the archives, Vorrin’s watchers were a tacit guard in the lanes, and Sera scanned remnants for the forger’s mistakes with an artist’s precision. There was comfort in familiar fac