Chapter 27 #2
“My father has books about everything. He once made me spend an entire winter cataloging Council records because he decided I needed to understand the difference between governance and politics.”
Raiden glanced at her. “Is there a difference?”
“According to my father, yes. According to me, one involves more expensive chairs.” His mouth twitched.
I didn’t smile. “Vareena.” She looked at me. “What does Elyndor say?”
Candidates had begun spilling through the courtyard on their way to afternoon instruction. Two Aurora Candidates passed near the cistern and glanced at me. One whispered to the other.
She waited until they were gone. “Some are religious. Some political. Some were written to frighten children into behaving. The oldest agree on very little. A girl. Starlight. Some connection to balance between the realms. After that, they start contradicting one another.”
“What about the royal family?” That quieted her. Dax stopped picking apart his pastry. “You said your father keeps political histories. The monarchy fell, the Council took over. Deylan was talking about their records.” I hesitated. “Did the Starborn have anything to do with them?”
“People thought so.”
“What people?”
“Plenty, for a while.” Vareena rubbed her thumb over one of her rings.
“The palace was attacked. Aurenya, her consort and their daughters were declared dead. Witnesses reported Shadowkin inside the grounds, and people repeated that account until the suspicion became almost indistinguishable from fact.”
“There wasn’t proof?”
“Not of who sent them.”
“But everyone blamed Shadow.”
“Most did.”
Raiden shifted against the wall. “Still do.”
“Because Shadowkin were there,” Emrin said.
“Reportedly,” Vareena corrected.
Dax glanced between them. “That seems important.”
“It is if you’re accusing an entire realm of murdering a royal family.”
I looked back at Vareena. “And Starborn?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Aurenya married a Shadow wielder.”
I stared at her. “The queen?”
“Before she was queen. His name was Maerox Veylan.” The name meant nothing to me. Vareena noticed.
“He came from one of the old Umbraeli houses. Important enough that both realms had opinions about whom he should marry.”
“And instead he married Aurenya,” Dax said. Emrin sighed.
“They met here,” Vareena added.
I forgot about Dax. “Here?”
“At the Sanctum.” The words landed strangely.
Your mother walked these halls.
The Codex had shown me the silverleaf tree. A Light wielder beneath its branches. A man beside her in Shadow leathers.
I had never seen his face clearly. “Aurenya trained here?”
“So did Maerox.”
“Together?”
“For a time.”
“What happened?”
Vareena leaned one hip against the cistern. “The polite histories say their attachment became politically difficult once Aurenya’s place in the succession changed.”
Lidia snorted. “Meaning her family told her to stop fucking a Shadow wielder.”
“Lidia.”
“What? It’s not like it’s a secret.”
Vareena ignored her. “They refused to separate. Eventually they married despite society’s objections.”
“A Light queen married a Shadow wielder.”
“She still wasn’t queen when they married.”
“That hardly seems like it would have made anyone happier.”
“It didn’t.” Raiden gave a quiet laugh. “By the time she inherited the throne,” Vareena continued, “the marriage had already caused trouble on both sides. Elyndor didn’t want Maerox as consort. Umbrael wasn’t exactly celebrating either.”
“Because Light and Shadow,” I said.
Raiden answered. “Because powerful families don’t spend centuries teaching everyone to hate each other and then applaud when their children fall in love.”
Dax looked at him. “That was almost insightful.”
“Eat your burnt pastry.” I barely heard them.
Aurenya.
Maerox.
Light and Shadow.
The silverleaf tree returned with irritating clarity: pale hair caught beneath the leaves, black training leathers beside her, the unmistakable intimacy in the way they had stood together.
Not a queen in a history book.
A girl here.
At the Sanctum. “With people you know?” I asked. Vareena frowned. “Did they have friends here?”
“My father was at the Sanctum around the same time. He knew Aurenya. I think he knew Maerox too, but he doesn’t talk much about those years.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.” I sat back. That gave me more questions than I could fit inside my head.
“Why do you care so much about this?” Vareena asked. There it was. Because an impossible book had shown me a Light wielder beneath a silverleaf tree with a man dressed in Shadow leathers. Because it had told me my mother walked these halls.
Because I had spent weeks assuming those were separate pieces. I looked at my hands instead. “And they all died in the palace attack?”
“Yes. The whole family was lost.”
I thought of the mural and the stupid crown.
STARBORN painted across my chest.
“Were people calling one of the princesses Starborn?”
“The royal family attracted theories before the attack. Aurenya and Maerox gave prophecy scholars plenty to argue over simply by existing. After the palace fell, everyone rearranged the stories to fit what had happened.”
“So nobody actually knows.”
“No.” For once, the answer helped. Because I didn’t need Vareena to know. Not yet. I needed to know whether what the Codex had shown me pointed somewhere real.
“Lyra?” I looked up. Everyone was watching me again. Apparently I’d gone quiet.
“You look ill,” Vareena said.
“I’m fine. It’s just…” I glanced toward the towers beyond the courtyard. “A lot to find out before lunch.”
Lidia leaned forward. “You still haven’t answered her.”
“I know.”
“Are you planning to?”
“Not here.”
She opened her mouth. Raiden spoke first. “Then leave it.”
Lidia turned toward him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard her.”
“I heard her avoiding the question.”
“And cornering her in the middle of the courtyard is going to fix that?”
“I’m not cornering her.”
“You’re trying.” Lidia stared at him for several seconds before leaning back.
Vareena kept her attention on me. “We can talk tonight.” I wasn’t sure how much I could tell her.
The Codex had already become harder to keep to myself now that Kieran knew.
Vareena knew about my Shadow, but bringing her into the rest meant trusting her with the one secret Halos could not be allowed to find.
But her father had known Aurenya And possibly Maerox. Keeping her out no longer seemed particularly useful. The western bell rang.
Emrin pushed away from the cistern. “I have practical.”
Dax looked offended. “We just had class.”
“That’s generally how schedules work.”
They began gathering their things. “Lyra Alerain?” I turned. A man stood beneath the covered walk bordering the courtyard. He wasn’t a candidate. The silver sun worked into the fastening at his shoulder told me that before I registered the pale formal coat or the careful cut of his clothes.
He looked only a few years older than most of us.
Light brown hair had been pushed neatly away from his face, though the wind was already undoing the effort.
He approached and offered his hand. “Damon.” Just Damon.
I looked at his hand before taking it. Most people who had approached me since the Crucible had stared first and spoken second. He didn’t.
Vareena came to my side. “Damon.”
He looked at her. “Vareena.”
They knew each other. I glanced between them long enough for her to notice. “Damon serves the Elyndorian Council.”
“Serves is generous,” he said. “They give me things no one else wants to read and occasionally allow me into meetings.”
“You sit in nearly every closed session.”
“And yet no one asks what I think. Very humbling.”
Vareena didn’t smile. “What are you doing at the Sanctum?”
“The Council heard about the girl who filled the Crucible with stars. They sent me to meet her.” His attention returned to me. “You were difficult to find, by the way.”
“I was in class. It couldn’t have been that hard.”
Vareena shifted closer. “Well, you’ve found her. What do you want?”
“Your father asked me to deliver correspondence after Halos submitted yesterday’s report.”
“My father read it already?” Vareena asked.
“Most of the Council did.” Wonderful.
I adjusted my satchel. “That was fast.”
“Halos submitted it before sunset.”
“What did he say?”
Vareena glanced at me. “Lyra—”
“No. If half of Elyndor has already read about me, I’d like to know what they read.”
Damon considered me before answering. “He described an unprecedented Crucible response during the assessment of a newly manifested Light wielder.”
“Newly manifested.”
“That’s the classification he used.”
“And the part where he ignored everyone telling him to stop?”
His amusement disappeared. “He called the second projection a continued evaluation following an anomalous magical event.”
Lidia made a disgusted sound. “That’s a creative way to say he nearly killed her.”
Damon looked past me. “I didn’t write the report.”
“You still haven’t told me what the Council wants.”
“At the moment? Information.” He tucked one hand into his coat pocket. “Halos’s report reached Elyndor last night. By breakfast, three different accounts were circulating through Alvaron.”
“Only three?”
“Four, if you count the one where you summoned a dead queen.”
Vareena folded her arms. “Information about what?”
“The Crucible. Her manifestation. Her background.”
That last word caught. “My background?” Damon nodded. “What does Edenlo have to do with anything?”
“Possibly nothing.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because several weeks ago, Lyra Alerain didn’t exist in any Elyndorian record the Council had reason to notice. Then she crossed the Veil, manifested Light, entered the Sanctum, produced a Crucible response no one can explain, and started conjuring stars.”
When he put it that way, I sounded exhausting.
Dax reached the same conclusion. “You have had a busy month.”
“Thanks, Dax. I hadn’t noticed.”
For the first time since Damon approached, I wondered what his actual place within the Council was. Whatever it involved, it was more than carrying letters and sitting quietly in meetings.