Chapter 10 Looking for Secrets
The first week at Elarion had nearly shattered me.It wasn’t the classes in Dragontail Legion I hadn’t been prepared for in Dragontail Legion, or even the humiliation from Marla Yung in the Hall of Mirrors, which weighed on me most. Everything else pressed in, all the changes, not just the obvious hardships.
The shift in my life came when I revealed my intentions to the Siren.
The weight of my mother’s conviction that I’d still take the Rionis throne, that I had doubled the classwork of any other student.
And the Siren’s words, quiet, but destabilizing: Solenharts hadn’t always belonged to Emberkeep.
That truth had lodged in my chest, and I hadn’t been able to breathe right since.
One night earlier that week, I’d told Shakari what the Siren had said.
She’d frozen mid-braid, eyes narrowing like I’d handed her a blade.
There was a Solenhart in Dragontail once, she’d said, and I was an idiot for not telling her sooner.
She warned me, sharp and serious, to be careful, to keep my distance from anything that might connect me to that history.
I’d promised nothing because I already knew I wouldn’t listen.
I was never alone again. I’d grown up in The Glass Castle, filled with silence and space; now I had a roommate.
Soehl was kind, too kind. Always tapping, humming, offering me tea or her latest herbal salve.
She meant well, but her constant presence chipped away at what little calm I had left.
I couldn’t cry without someone asking if I was okay.
Couldn’t think without feeling rude for wanting silence.
Shakari, at least, had drifted into her own world.
She was fixated on Rowan, the red-haired twin with dramatic jokes and a flirty smirk.
Most nights, I found her curled beside him in the common room, tossing pillows and laughing at his terrible impressions of our professors.
She barely noticed when I started slipping out after curfew. That, honestly, was a relief.
But Thalen noticed.
He kept finding me, after class, in shadowed corridors, in spaces between. He thought just being near me could heal the rift he’d carved open. His silence scalded, his metallic eyes heavy with regret, burning holes in me as if I owed him forgiveness. I refused to pretend it didn’t gut me. It did.
I didn’t care what he said now. I remembered how easily he’d chosen someone else. Even if we were betrothed and he’d recently started caring about me again, I had met her. I had seen her with my own eyes. And now I could never forget.
So I escaped. Quietly. After dark, when the dorms went still, and the island exhaled. I didn’t come to the library for pleasure. Instead, I sought peace, a space to think, to breathe, to stop feeling as if I might splinter apart.
But more than anything, I came to uncover the truth for myself. I needed answers, even if what I found would complicate everything I thought I wanted.
If the Solenharts had truly belonged to Dragontail, even once, Elarion would remember. The library held records older than the Court itself, older than the Hall of Mirrors. It was older than the version of the world I’d been raised to believe.
I asked the librarian for historical records of the legion. I didn’t explain why.
She looked up from her inkwork with a faint squint, pausing just long enough to recognize me. But she didn’t ask why I was there. Maybe she felt obligated to comply or simply didn’t care. Without a word of explanation, she set her pen aside and said, “Follow me.”
We walked through corridors and dimly lit stacks. We passed shelves that pulsed with age. The tall windows reflected the full moon. The scent changed, less parchment, more metal and dried herbs. We stopped at an archway, barely visible, behind the last shelf in the west wing.
The librarian, an Emberkeep third year, pressed her fingers to a rune as she stopped at the end of the hall.
The door creaked open.
Inside was a narrow chamber, scrolls stacked like toppling towers. Everything was leaning, disorganized, thick with time. It was a library within the library.
“These go centuries back,” she said, brushing her fingers along one of the shelves. “But no one’s been here in years. It’s practically forgotten, dusty, unindexed.” She gave me a glance, then added, “I’ll leave you to it.”
I nodded in thanks and watched her disappear through the doorway.
Already, I knew one thing for certain: I’d rather spend the night buried in dust than with Shakari and Rowan.
They couldn’t last a minute without elbowing each other and laughing as if nothing mattered.
Or with Soehl, whose humming and kindness filled our cramped room until I couldn’t breathe.
Or with Thalen, hovering in doorways, looking at me like silence could undo the damage.
So I stayed.
I let the quiet wrap around me. The dust settled into my skin like memory. I turned parchment after parchment, unsure what I was searching for—a name, a reference to a Solenhart in Dragontail. Any sign that proved the Siren was right.
Time slipped past. One scroll blurred into the next. Nothing stood out, just brittle parchment and fading ink. I was probably wasting my time. There were too many names, too many years, too many legions. Nothing beyond three hundred years ago survived intact.
At least the scrolls were in alphabetical order. That had been my one small mercy. But after hours of dry, crumbling pages and dead ends, even that felt meaningless.
Boredom settled into my bones. The room felt colder. I blinked, and suddenly it was midnight. The torches had dimmed too low, just flickering pools of amber. My back ached. My fingers were ink-stained and stiff.
I needed sleep for my classes the next day.
With a quiet sigh, I rose, letting the last scroll slump closed. Dust drifted lazily in the torchlight.
I stepped back into the corridor and walked to the entrance, expecting silence. And that’s when I saw it.
A green jacket was casually draped across the chair by the central table.
On the table, almost swallowed by shadow, was a book that caught my eye. I got closer to read its title.
Ashes of the Sun, Tears of the Moon.
I knew this book. I opened it up and read a handwritten note on the first page: “To my …”
I didn’t even make it halfway through the page before a hand snapped the book shut in front of me.
The sound made me flinch.
“They didn’t teach you to stay out of things that aren’t your business, in the Glass Castle,” a deep, rough voice said behind me, low enough to send a shiver down my spine.
I turned too fast.
Lorik Draventh stood close. Too close. His shadow fell over the desk, his gaze steady, unreadable. I instinctively stepped back, but he didn’t move, just tilted his head, studying me like I was the one who’d done something reckless.
“I—sorry,” I stammered, blinking hard. “I didn’t know it was yours.”
My voice sounded small, even to me.
“It’s a great book,” I added quickly, trying to fill the silence between us. “A classic. Tragic, but… romantic, I guess. The Moonveil who falls for the Sunheart, and they both get hanged after the curse drives them mad.”
I gave a small, nervous laugh. “That doesn’t sound romantic when I say it aloud, does it? I thought you didn’t like romance books.”
He didn’t answer. Just looked at me.
A long, unreadable look. The kind that made my breath falter, not because I was scared, but because I could feel everything layered behind it. Grief. Rage. And something sharp and unspoken I couldn’t name.
He was gorgeous. That was just a fact. Not because of symmetry or sharp cheekbones, but because he wore his silence like armor. Jaw clenched, lashes thick over pale, unblinking eyes. Ink stained his fingers. His collar was uneven, like he hadn’t bothered to fix it. He didn’t try to be impressive.
And somehow, that made him more interesting. Impossible not to notice. I froze. As if a few paces might protect me from something I didn’t understand.
Was it the danger of noticing how striking he was?
I’d been raised never to admire the beauty of a Moonveil.
Or was it the danger of remembering what he could do? The danger that I believed I deserved to be punished for what happened to his family.
Either thought was a blade pressed mercilessly to my throat, sharp and cold, leaving me breathless.
So, I said the first thing that came to mind, trying to shove the moment away.
“I didn’t know Moonveils were so scholastic. I always thought most ended up in Dragontail,” I said, partly to cover my nerves, but also because I wanted to understand what set Lorik apart. The need to understand him had become tangled with my need to understand everything else unspoken around me.
I couldn’t believe I had said that. It sounded so stupid out loud.
He didn’t flinch. “You just ever stop talking, do you, Princess?”
I hesitated, then forced myself to hold his gaze. “Well… and you never smile.” He raised a brow, unimpressed.
Another long silence.
“I am sorry. I mean it. I am sorry about your family, but I promise I am not my family.” I said gently.
His expression didn’t change. Not even a flicker.
“It appears you did your research. But apologies won’t bring back my mother… or my sister,” Lorik said quietly, his eyes fixed on mine. “And in royal families, blood always bears the weight of its ancestors’ sins.”
I refused to look away.
He reached for the book, then his jacket, and walked towards the library entrance.
He hesitated at the door. “Be careful what you dig up,” he said, voice low, unreadable. “Some truths don’t stay buried.”
Then he turned and disappeared into the dark.