60. Harlow

Harlow stages a private dinner, having sent the staff away, and confronts her parents as Kellan arrives. She forces a reckoning over Rafe’s orchestrated attack that killed Aidia, exposing their inaction and control over the city. When her parents minimize it as a warning, Harlow demands accountability.

With Kellan’s subtle compulsion already in place, Harlow orders her parents to whip each other and then to attack with their magic, making them feel a fraction of the coercion they enabled. As they near death, Kellan urges Harlow to stop; she refuses to relent until it is clear she must deliver the final blows.

Harlow kills her father first by channeling the poison Asher’s Anthem through her hands, cursing him to be forgotten. She then poisons her mother, condemning her vanity and cruelty. After both bodies fall, Harlow reflects on the tunnel key and the lost plan to escape with Aidia.

Kellan offers to dispose of the bodies and shifts to practicalities: using well water to defend the walls and temporarily sealing gates. Pressed by Harlow, he admits Able and Electra knew of Rafe’s crime, and that the wider family believes Aidia jumped. Harlow challenges Kellan’s years of inaction.

Kellan defends his constrained choices under their father’s tyranny, reveals he knew Harlow was the Poison Vixen but protected her, and recounts racing to the house after Libby’s vague foresight—arriving too late. The siblings share raw grief without reconciliation.

As Kellan asks if his soup was poisoned, Harlow withholds comfort. She leaves him with a final, unsettling admission—she did what she thought would bring her peace—implying she poisoned him while walking away to face what comes next.