Chapter 46
She didn’t turn back. Not when she drew away, not when the fragile tension between them splintered like glass. He released a slow breath, his hand still hovering near the column where her hair had almost grazed him—where he’d stopped himself from crossing into something real.
Just for a breath, he had wanted something utterly foreign to him—
To be allowed back into that look just once more.
He shook himself, flexed his fingers, forcing the blood to move, to do something besides thrum with the echo of her nearness. Cedric caught his eye, of course. Arms crossed, one eyebrow up, a slow blink of condescension so sharp it could’ve cut glass.
“Okay… so… this place. Right.” Alaric cleared his throat, straightened. “We… we got here just before you did,” he said nervously.
The model of composure. Pay no attention to the man internally screaming behind the curtain.
His gaze snapped to the nearest shelf. The universe, generous as ever, sensed when he was on the verge of emotional catastrophe.
Books. Blessed, sanity-restoring books.
“This—this is extraordinary,” he burst. “Do you see it?”
He darted toward a sagging shelf, trailing his fingers carefully along cracked leather spines.
“Here—the Iron Verses. An original edition. The ink is still sharp, you can tell by the taper of the letters that this was hand-scribed, not printed. That means it predates the Sundering by at least two generations.”
He was painfully aware that he was rambling as though afraid the words might burn out of him if he didn’t get them all out at once.
Without waiting, he pivoted to a long cabinet.
“And this—look here.” He pointed to a wide vellum sheet pinned beneath glass.
“The first celestial chart of our system. That’s the sun.
Here are the moons—two of them.” His grin flickered, boyish and wild.
“Two, not one. Either they imagined it, or one was lost. But if lost, where—”
He glanced up mid-ramble—and caught Evelyne and Vesena exchanging a look. It was brief, a single second, but enough.
Brows slightly raised. As if wondering what, exactly, they were witnessing—and whether to stop it or let it burn itself out. Alaric cleared his throat. Pretended not to notice the way Evelyne’s mouth tugged like she was biting back commentary.
But he was in his element, half scholar, half adventurer, the boy who had spent his childhood breaking into archives and charming tutors into looking the other way. He never showed this part of himself often, never let the raw edges show—the eagerness, the joy. But he couldn’t help himself.
Cedric rolled his eyes but kept pace, muttering, “You sound like a child on the Night of the Lanterns.”
Alaric ignored him. “Cedric, this is history. This is the truth. And it’s been buried here all along,” he gestured widely. “Do you understand what this means? They didn’t—”
Alaric caught Evelyne looking again and cleared his throat, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… get so carried away. It’s just—this is a huge discovery.”
Evelyne pivoted from him, her attention drifting over the chamber instead. Paintings rested half-veiled in linen, statues missing limbs and faces, instruments that might have stepped out of myth. She spoke without meeting his eye. “These are pre-Sundering?”
“I believe so, yes.”
She turned to the nearest cabinet and began pulling out scrolls. “Vesena and I found a letter,” she said. “Buried in Ravik’s office. It mentioned something called divine purification. Signed by a scribe of the Celestial Assembly.”
Alaric listened but his gut knotted as he watched her handle the scrolls—like a child daring to steal from a reliquary. His arms jerked forward before he mastered the impulse, forcing them to rest flat against his thighs.
“Purification?”
She met his gaze without flinching. “Yes. The Maroon Slaughter. I need to be certain it wasn’t isolated. There was a similar case in Zharesh a year before.”
He hummed low in his throat. “And one more in Kelvar’s Cross. That means we’re talking mass murder disguised as ritualized cleansing.”
She nodded once. “That’s what it looks like.”
Alaric took scrolls from her hands and placed them on the table nearby, careful not to crush them. “We searched the hidden chapel,” he said quietly. “There’s a room beneath it. A cavern, connected to several tunnels. In the center, an altar, covered in blood.”
Her grip halted on a scroll.
“And that symbol,” he added, observing her expression. “The one carved into Dasmon’s mouth. Three vertical lines inside a circle. Painted on the wall in dried blood.”
The silence that followed shuddered through them both. He saw something in her face fracture—clench of a jaw, deep inhale.
“There was a book,” he went on. “Poetry. Prophecy, maybe. Unfortunately, someone took it.”
And stars, he wanted it back. And also, this was the place he had always dreamed of stumbling into. Every inch of him ached to read, to let the world finally uncoil itself at his feet.
But Evelyne wasn’t here for awe or answers. She was here for proof. He dragged in a breath, taming the beast inside, forcing his curiosity back into its cage. Alaric steadied himself and surveyed the shelves before him. He reached for the nearest one.
“We should search the place. There must be something of value here. Thalen didn’t lead us into this ruin for idle talk.”
Vesena coughed.
“That’s what worries me,” Evelyne replied.
They advanced toward the racks, wary of stirring whatever lingered in the dust. Alaric brushed his palm along the shelf’s edge and cast her a brief look.
“What are we looking for?” Evelyne asked in a hushed voice.
“Something about symbols,” he murmured. “Rituals. Old magic. Anything that wasn’t supposed to survive.”
She gave a single nod and turned toward the nearest stack. With all the delicacy of someone raised in a castle but tempered by wariness, she reached out—and promptly snatched a scroll from the center of the pile.
Alaric choked. Actually choked. He was beside her in an instant.
“Be careful with these,” he cautioned. “Some are older than the realms we’re trying to keep standing.”
He saw her restraining an eye-roll by sheer will.
“May I?” he asked, his tone low.
She hesitated, then lifted her palm—an unspoken yes.
His fingers didn’t fully close around her hand. Just enough to guide the angle of her wrist, the pressure of her thumb on the wax. “Like that,” he murmured.
She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, her eyes never leaving his face.
Then the moment folded into motion. Evelyne bent slightly over the scrolls, brushing her gloves over the brittle ribbon, tracing the faint impressions of seals.
Nearby, Cedric crouched beside a cracked chest of stone tablets, muttering under his breath as he sifted through them. His brow furrowed as he held one up to the light and then promptly sneezed on the dust.
“Bless the past,” he grumbled.
Vesena approached a row of shelves lined with glass bottles, most clouded by time, their labels ghosted into near-erasure. Beside them, slim daggers rested in velvet-lined trays, the hilts polished smooth by long-vanished owners. She bent closer, examining each relic with reverent focus.
And through it all, Alaric and Evelyne worked side by side.
Not speaking much. Not needing to. He moved like a man returned to some lost cathedral of his boyhood.
Every discovery sent a thrill up his spine.
A scroll on the forging of Umashi Blades, describing how the Soulsteel was tattooed into the wielders’ skin, bonding weapon and warrior until death.
A brittle manuscript on the Glass Masters of Korrhynt, their cathedral-temples crafted from molten sand and whispered enchantments.
Alaric wanted to live there forever.
At some point, Evelyne drifted toward the paintings. She began lifting the covers one by one, fingers precise. Then—
A gasp echoed through the vault.
He turned just as she covered her mouth with her palm.
“Is everything alright?”
Evelyne didn’t look at him right away. Her hand still hovered near her mouth, as if afraid the sound might escape again.
“Yes,” she said at last. Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with something he couldn’t place. “It’s just… beautiful.”
Alaric watched her a moment longer, the torchlight gilding the curve of her cheek, the awe in her eyes unmistakable. Then he smiled and turned back to his own searching, the scroll still open in his hands.
He kept scanning books, until a faint glint caught his eye from the far corner. A pedestal stood there, not dusted which meant touched recently, a glass dome capping what looked like nothing more than a rolled piece of parchment.
His pulse jumped. No one hid a single scroll beneath glass unless it was meant to outlast centuries.
Alaric brushed his sleeve across the dome. He bent low, breath misting the glass, then lifted the glass and put it away.
“Here,” he called out.
Evelyne turned, skirts whispering against stone.
Alaric unrolled the scroll carefully, the parchment whispering against itself as it opened. There were no prefaces or ritual blessings. Only names, row upon row, the ink so dark and heavy it might have been mixed with blood.
Cedric leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the parchment. “Is that a list of mages?”
Each name bore a single word. Resolved.
And then he saw it, at the end—Dasmon Dvorenic. Resolved.
“I don’t think so” Alaric murmured.
Evelyne snatched the paper from his hands, her breath quickening. He followed her eyes downward to the last line.
Only one name left unmarked.
Evelyne Tresselyn.