Caelynn Silverbrook
Late mother of Leonard -- Late lover of Marcus Valebright
Age Seven
The portrait gallery stretched the length of the east wing, filled with paintings of Silverthorn ancestors going back six centuries. Caelynn walked through it every morning on her way to lessons, and every morning, she felt the weight of those painted eyes watching her.
They seemed to judge. To measure. To find her wanting before she’d even had a chance to prove herself.
“Caelynn, you’re dawdling,” Tutor Elara called from the music room. “We’re already behind schedule.”
Caelynn quickened her pace, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Lady Aeliana Silverthorn—whose portrait hung prominently at the gallery’s center—was watching her with particular intensity. The painting was three hundred years old, but the eyes seemed alive. Disapproving.
Her mother found her after the lesson, standing in front of another portrait—this one of her grandmother, who’d died before Caelynn was born.
“She was remarkable,” her mother said softly, coming to stand beside her. “Strong, wise, kind. Everything a Silverthorn matriarch should be.”
“Will I be like her?” Caelynn asked.
Her mother smiled and brushed a strand of silver-blonde hair from Caelynn’s face. “You’ll be better. You already are.”
At seven years old, Caelynn didn’t understand that her mother was giving her a gift—the belief that she could be more than what was expected. She only understood it years later, when that gift was gone and she desperately needed it back.
Age Nine
The Year Duty First Put Its Hands on Her Shoulders
Caelynn was nine when childhood stopped being simple.
It happened in the gardens—her mother’s pride, still bursting with moonlilies and night-blooming hyacinths that glowed softly at dusk. Caelynn had been practicing her curtsey posture, because at nine years old she was already drowning in exquisite etiquette lessons:
how to place a fork,
how to greet a Baron’s widow,
how to hide her true thoughts behind a smile that showed exactly six teeth.
Her mother insisted on it, because “a Silverthorn daughter must walk like she carries history.”
That evening, her mother corrected her spine with a warm, gentle hand—
“Shoulders back, love. Grace is a language.”
And that’s when the vision hit.
A flash of something too bright, too loud, too impossible behind her eyes.
A corridor not her own.
A woman chanting.
A circle of stones illuminated by blue fire.
A silver circlet—worn like a crown, but shaped like a crescent moon.
She stumbled, nearly crushing a moonlily.
Her mother caught her immediately.
“Caelynn. What did you see?”
Caelynn tried to explain the unexplainable.
Light. Chanting. A crown. A circle.
A voice calling her name—not her mother’s voice, not anyone’s she knew.
Her mother went very still.
Then she did the one thing that terrified Caelynn more than the vision itself:
She knelt to be level with her.
“Sweetheart,” she whispered, brushing a braid from Caelynn’s damp forehead, “you must not speak of this to anyone. Not even the tutors.”
“Why?”
“Because the Sight is rare in our line. Rare and watched carefully. And in this family…”
She swallowed.
“…great gifts come with expectations.”
It was the first time Caelynn heard the word spoken with such weight.
The Vision Returns
The next vision didn’t wait long.
During an etiquette session, while learning the proper grand high-Court greeting for Winter Conclave, Caelynn froze mid-bow. The world slipped sideways.
A mosaic floor.
Robed figures.
A ceremonial chalice.
Someone whispering, She will lead.
When her sight snapped back, her etiquette instructor gasped and grabbed her arm.
“Lady Caelynn! Control yourself.”
“I—I didn’t mean to—”
Her mother rushed in from another room, dismissed the instructor, and sent her to her chambers. But late that night, Caelynn overheard her parents talking through the cracked study door.
“…the Sight at nine is early.”
Her father’s voice—tired, tense.
“We hoped it would pass her by.”
“It never passes the eldest,” her mother whispered back.
“You know what the priests have said. The lineage. The prophecy. She could be—”
“Yes,” he said sharply. “grand high priestess. I know.”
Those words carved themselves into Caelynn’s bones.
She didn’t yet understand priesthood.
Rituals.
Or prophecy.
She only understood that her future was no longer hers.
Her Father Learns the Truth
Her father found out the hard way—during a midwinter dinner for visiting nobility.
Caelynn was sitting stiffly, practicing perfect posture, silently reciting “smile with poise, breathe with intention,” when the hearth flames flickered—
And suddenly she wasn’t in the dining hall.
She saw a ceremonial chamber.
The same circle of stones.
Robes embroidered with silver moons.
A voice chanting her name.
Welcome, child of prophecy…
“Caelynn!”
Her father slammed a hand on the table, jolting her back.
The entire room stared.
Her father ended dinner early.
Once the guests were gone, he brought her to his study—a room smelling of old vellum and polished cedar, filled with generations of Silverthorn secrets.
“Caelynn.”
He knelt in front of her, not as a Lord, but as a father.
“Tell me exactly what you saw.”
She told him.
Every flame.
Every chant.
Every circle of stone.
When she finished, he closed his eyes as if the words physically struck him.
“The priests warned us this might come,” he said softly.
“You are the eldest daughter. The bloodline runs strongest through you. And for centuries… the Sight has chosen one Silverthorn woman to rise as grand high priestess.”
Caelynn’s breath hitched.
“I don’t want to be—”
“It doesn’t matter what you want.”
Not cruel.
Not cold.
Just… true.
And heavy.
And inescapable.
His voice gentled.
“You are my daughter. My pride. My heart. But the traditions of House Silverthorn are older than either of us. Keeping them alive is my responsibility.”
He brushed a tear from her cheek.
“And now, part of that responsibility becomes yours.”
Lessons of Duty
From that day forward, childhood came with new layers:
Etiquette.
Courtly diplomacy.
Meditation to control the Sight.
Priestly history.
Sacred rituals whispered through closed doors.
Some lessons were soft—her mother’s hands guiding her posture, her father reading her ancient rites by candlelight.
Some were hard—hours of standing perfectly still, reciting lineage prayers, learning when to speak and when silence was power.
Through it all, her father’s love stayed steady, if strained.
When visions overwhelmed her, he held her until they passed.
When she shook from the intensity, he whispered, “Breathe, my girl. You are safe.”
When she wished she were normal, he said,
“Normal is not why you were born.”
Sometimes she saw fear in his eyes—fear for her, not of her.
But his love never wavered.
It simply existed beside duty, not instead of it.
At nine years old, Caelynn understood:
She was loved deeply.
She was expected to lead immensely.
And one day, she would stand in those stone circles not as a frightened child…
but as the next grand high priestess of her lineage.
The Pressure Builds
Every ceremony became a test of endurance.
Every diplomatic visit became a reminder of everything she’d been denied.
Every private moment became another tally mark in her internal ledger:
This isn’t what I choose. This isn’t who I am. This isn’t freedom.
But the Silverbrook line didn’t make rebels.
They made dutiful daughters.
They made spiritual weapons.
They made women who didn’t run — they endured.
So Caelynn endured… until the night the universe stopped cooperating.
It happened during one of the winter solstice rites, in the great hall where the Fey gathered to “renew the sacred ties between spirit and flesh.” Caelynn stood at the center of the chamber, radiating divine energy so bright the other priestesses swore they could see constellations swirling around her.
But internally?
She felt nothing.
No connection.
No spiritual rush.
No sacred ecstasy.
Just emptiness.
A hollow echo.
A silence she could feel scraping the inside of her ribs.
That silence terrified her more than any punishment the priesthood could threaten.
Because it meant the ancient powers weren’t responding.
Not to her.
Not anymore.
The old magics never abandoned without reason.
And the reason was simple:
She was lying with her whole life.
The powers knew what the council refused to admit — a woman cannot serve truth while living a lie. A priestess cannot channel divine unity when she herself has been forcibly divided.
For the first time in her life, the magic pulled back from her like a tide retreating from the shore.
She almost staggered.
The other priestesses noticed.
Thessaly — her mother, current high Priestess, her warden — noticed most of all.
And in that moment, under the glow of ancient candles and star-veined marble, Caelynn understood a truth that chilled her more than winter wind:
The vow wasn’t just killing her joy.
It was killing her magic.
AGE SIXTEEN
Her mother died in the spring, at the exact moment the gardens decided to burst into bloom — as if the world wanted to be beautiful out of spite.
The illness came too fast for the healers, too fast for the whispered prayers, too fast for hope. One month, her mother was planning the summer solstice celebration. The next, she was gone.
Caelynn stood in the portrait gallery staring at the newly hung painting, and understood for the first time the tragedy of painted eyes. They weren’t watching to guide her. They weren’t watching to comfort. They watched because they were trapped — frozen forever in a frame, powerless.
Her father stood beside her in brittle silence. Lord Theron Silverthorn had always been measured and composed, but with his wife’s death, something essential in him hardened into glass. Caelynn could see it in the way he held his shoulders — rigid, distant, terrified of feeling anything at all.
“The estate business continues,” he said at last. “Life continues. We have obligations.”
“Father—”
“The summer contracts need my review. The tenant farmers’ disputes must be resolved. The regional council meets next month.” His voice sounded hollow, mechanical, as if he were speaking from somewhere far behind himself. “Your mother managed the social matters. You’ll need to learn them now.”
“I’m sixteen—”
“You’re the eldest daughter of House Silverthorn. Age is irrelevant.”
He looked at her then — and his eyes were not cruel, merely empty. “Your mother had the luxury of warmth. Of caring about comfort, about feelings. That luxury no longer exists. Do you understand?”
Caelynn nodded even though she didn’t. Not then.
But over the next year, she watched her father calcify.
Strategy replaced compassion.
Efficiency replaced empathy.
Duty replaced love.
He cut ties with families who had been Silverthorn allies for generations because they offered nothing useful to him anymore. He formed new alliances out of convenience, not affection.
And when Lord Theron Brightwind expressed interest in a formal courtship for Caelynn’s seventeenth year, her father agreed without consulting her.
Because feelings did not matter.
Only advantage did.
Something in Lord Silverthorn died with his wife — and whatever survived was a man who could no longer afford a heart.
WHEN A PRIESTESS STARTS TO SEE THE CAGE
Once Caelynn saw the vow for what it truly was — not divine, not sacred, not holy, but a leash — she could never unsee it. And that’s the curse of clarity, right? Once the truth cracks the door open, the light doesn’t politely stay put. It floods the whole damn room.
By twenty-seven, Caelynn had mastered the art of being two women at once:
The woman the world believed she was.
And the woman she would become once the world wasn’t looking.
She wore the first self like ceremonial armor — silver robes, immaculate posture, voice steady enough to make mountains kneel. And the second? That version of her lived in the private corners of her mind, pacing, pressing palms against invisible walls, whispering, “There has to be more.”
There always is.
The thing about systems built to control women — whether Fey or human — is they rely on silence, on obedience, on the assumption that if they train you young and isolate you early, you won’t question the bars. Caelynn was supposed to be the perfect proof of their theory.
But they made one fatal mistake.
They taught her how to see.
When you raise a girl to perceive every current of magic, every lie in the wind, every subtle shift in intention… she’s eventually going to notice the contradiction between a vow designed to honor the divine and a structure designed to imprison the divine feminine.
They wanted a servant of the old powers.
Instead, they created a woman who could decode the architecture of oppression.
And oppression does not sit quietly once named.
The First Act of Rebellion
A few weeks later, during a diplomatic exchange with the human kingdoms, she met him.
Not Marcus — not yet.
The scholar.
The one whose mind touched hers like a hand on a locked door.
Talking to him didn’t break her vow. It didn’t come close. But it did something infinitely more dangerous: it reminded her she was a person.
Someone could look at her without seeing her as holy property.
Someone could speak to her without petitioning her title.
Someone could address her not as grand high Priestess but as Caelynn, the woman beneath the layered centuries of duty.
That alone was enough to spark a rebellion.
The Fey court had rules about the Grand grand high Priestess speaking “freely” during diplomatic functions. She was permitted to answer questions, not ask them. She was permitted to offer guidance, not seek understanding. She was permitted to listen, not connect.
And on that night, Caelynn broke all three restrictions.
It didn’t matter that she never touched him.
It didn’t matter that she never said anything forbidden.
It didn’t matter that they talked about magic, philosophy, and the nature of reality rather than intimacy.
Intent was enough.
Intent carried heat.
Intent carried longing.
Intent carried the first thread of the fate that would bind her to the one man who would change everything.
Later, she would realize:
That scholar wasn’t the catalyst.
He was the omen.
He was the whisper before the storm.
He was the sign that the universe was cracking open a space for her real destiny.
Because the moment she felt that spark of connection — weak, innocent, fleeting — the vow began to crumble.
Not because she betrayed it…
but because she finally understood she was capable of wanting something beyond her role.
And desire is always the first spell a prison cannot contain.
THE NIGHT SHE ALMOST RAN
The breaking point came quietly.
No ceremony.
No confrontation.
No grand rebellion.
Just Caelynn alone in her chamber, sitting on the floor beside her ceremonial robes, whispering to herself in the dark:
“I am not a vessel. I am not a thing. I am not a vow.”
The words tasted wrong in her mouth, like ancient sacrilege.
They were also the truest words she had ever spoken.
She felt her magic stir as if in agreement — not the old magic of the priesthood, but a deeper, older energy in her bones. Something ancestral. Something that remembered what freedom tasted like.
And for the first time, she contemplated running.
Leaving the priesthood.
Leaving the Silverbrook legacy.
Leaving the weight of expectation that had been braided into her from birth.
But where would she go?
Who would she become?
What identity would she have without the vow?
The world outside the temple walls wasn’t built for priestesses without purpose.
And the world inside the walls wasn’t built for priestesses who could think for themselves.
She was trapped in a paradox — and paradox is the birthplace of destiny.
Because fate, like desire, doesn’t wait patiently.
It hunts.
And destiny was already moving toward her — in the shape of a human man who questioned everything she wasn’t allowed to question.
Marcus Songweaver.
The one man whose existence would make every vow she’d ever taken tremble.
The one man who would unbind her magic instead of controlling it.
The one man she was forbidden to even look at.
Destiny was coming for her.
And Caelynn — trembling, exhausted, burning quietly under the weight of all the expectations she didn’t choose — was finally ready to meet it.
