Chapter 30
LYRA
By morning, I had decided there were exactly three reasonable ways to handle the discovery that Kieran Nyxara was the son of the Shadow King.
The first was murder. The second was pretending I had never learned it.
The third was asking him why the fuck he had neglected to mention what most of the Sanctum apparently considered common knowledge.
Unfortunately, Kieran had chosen a meeting place where murder would have been inconvenient.
The western archive rotunda was nearly deserted when Vareena and I arrived.
Not the archives I knew. Those belonged to the upper levels, where candidates spent afternoons buried beneath assigned histories and Archivists hissed at anyone who breathed too loudly near the restoration tables.
This section sat farther west, beyond the halls most candidates had reason to enter, where pale Sanctum marble gave way to darker, rougher stone beneath our boots.
The lamps were different here too. No glass globes.
No visible flame. Pale blue light clung to iron brackets sunk directly into the walls, brightening as we passed and fading behind us until the corridor seemed to close over our footprints.
The next lamp woke before we reached it.
Its light spilled across the end of the corridor.
Kieran leaned against the wall beneath it.
Of course he did. Black trousers. Dark shirt with the sleeves shoved carelessly to his forearms. No Sanctum uniform, no insignia, nothing that suggested prince, heir, royal pain in my ass.
He looked exactly the same. That irritated me more than it should have.
His attention went first to me. Then to Vareena. One dark brow lifted. “Kamari.”
“Nyxara.” Vareena’s voice was pleasant. Too pleasant.
Kieran pushed away from the wall. “You brought company.”
“I did.”
“You neglected to mention that.”
“You neglected to mention you were a prince.”
Silence. Vareena inhaled through her nose beside me. Kieran looked at me for a long moment. There. A flicker. Not surprise. Calculation. Which meant he had immediately understood exactly who had told me. His gaze slid toward Vareena.
She smiled sweetly. “Good morning.”
Kieran looked back at me. “I wondered how long that would take.”
My mouth fell open. “That is your response?”
“What response were you hoping for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps, Lyra, I’m sorry I failed to mention that my father rules an entire realm.”
Kieran’s mouth twitched. It made me angrier.
Mostly because I had spent half the night imagining this conversation, and in none of those versions had he looked quite so infuriatingly normal.
No crown had materialized on his head. No royal arrogance had suddenly become obvious in the slope of his shoulders.
He was still Kieran. Which was somehow worse. “You could have told me.”
The amusement left him. “Yes.”
One word. No excuse wrapped around it. I folded my arms. “Why didn’t you?”
His gaze held mine. “It wasn’t important.”
For a second, I thought I had misheard him. Vareena went very still beside me. “Not important.”
“Not to this.” He gestured toward the doors.
I laughed once, but there was nothing amused in it. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Lyra—”
“No. You don’t get to do that.”
His jaw tightened. “Do what?”
“Decide which parts of yourself matter enough for me to know.” The words left harder than I intended.
His expression shifted. Barely. But I had become too familiar with him not to catch it.
Good. Let it hurt. “You knew everything. You knew about my Shadow before anyone else. You knew about the Codex. You knew what Starborn meant while I was standing there looking like an idiot because everyone around me had apparently heard the word before.”
“You were never an idiot.”
“That is really not the part you should respond to.”
His mouth closed.
I stepped closer. “And every time I asked you about yourself, you gave me half an answer and acted like I was unreasonable for wanting the rest.”
“That isn’t what I did.”
“It is exactly what you did.”
“Lyra.”
“You stood in my room two nights ago and told me secrets had consequences.”
His eyes sharpened. Beside me, Vareena very carefully looked at the opposite wall. I didn’t care. “You said that while knowing I didn’t even know who your father was.”
“That is different.”
“How?”
“Because my father has nothing to do with you.”
The words settled between us. I stared at him. A muscle moved in his jaw. He knew. He knew exactly how that had sounded. Hurt curled beneath my ribs before I could stop it. “Right.” I turned toward the doors. “Good to know.”
His fingers closed around my wrist. Not hard. Enough. Heat shot up my arm anyway. I stopped. Kieran stepped closer behind me. “Don’t.”
I looked down at his hand. “Don’t what?”
“Take what I said and give it a meaning I didn’t intend.”
I faced him. He didn’t release me. We were too close now.
Close enough that the blue light caught the gray hidden inside his green eyes.
Close enough that I could remember exactly what his hands had felt like on me in my room.
His thumb shifted once against the inside of my wrist. Maybe accidentally.
My body did not care about the distinction.
“You don’t get to tell me how to take it. ”
“No.” His voice had gone quieter. “But you do get to let me finish.”
I waited.
“My father has nothing to do with why I helped you. He has nothing to do with why I kept your Shadow quiet. Nothing to do with the southern ring. Nothing to do with the Codex.” His fingers loosened around my wrist but did not fall away. “And nothing to do with what happened in your room.”
Vareena made the smallest choking sound. My face burned. I refused to look at her. Kieran did not look away from me. “So no,” he said. “I didn’t think being his son mattered.”
“You’re heir to Umbrael.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Succession in Umbrael isn’t a birthright the way Elyndor’s was.”
“That somehow makes this better?”
“No.”
“Wonderful.” I pulled my wrist free. The absence of his hand was immediate. Annoyingly so. “You still should have told me.”
This time there was no argument. Kieran looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded. “I should have.”
That was worse. I had been prepared to fight him. I had not prepared for an apology hidden inside four words. Vareena shifted beside me.
“Are we finished?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Kieran said at the same time.
I glared at him. His mouth almost curved.
“Temporarily,” he amended.
“Better.”
“Can we please break into the forbidden archives before the two of you start whatever this is again?”
“There is no this,” I said.
Kieran turned toward the doors. “Obviously.”
I wanted to throw the nearest available object at him.
Unfortunately, that was Vareena. She seemed unlikely to appreciate it.
The doors stood at the end of the rotunda, taller than any doors had reason to be.
Up close, the blackened wood looked less burned than aged into darkness.
Bands of metal crossed it in uneven intervals, their surface mottled by centuries of tarnish.
There were no handles. No keyholes. Only a circle carved where the two doors met.
Several lines crossed through its center, so worn that whatever symbol they had once formed was nearly gone. Vareena moved closer.
“Those aren’t current Sanctum wards.”
“No,” Kieran said.
“How old?”
He tipped his head back, studying the stone above the frame. “Older than this wing.”
“The door is older than the building?”
“The Sanctum wasn’t built all at once.”
I knew that. Everyone knew that. Knowing it while standing in sunlight beneath the gleaming towers was one thing.
Standing here was another. The Arcane Sanctum had existed in some form for longer than anyone could agree upon.
Parts of it had been rebuilt after wars no one remembered correctly.
New halls had swallowed older ones. Towers had been raised over foundations that descended so far beneath the mountain that even the maps stopped pretending to know where they ended.
There were stories candidates told at night.
A stairwell in Verdant Hallows that occasionally gained a thirteenth step.
A room beneath the Pyra Enclave that could only be entered during an eclipse.
A corridor in the eastern tower where a second set of footsteps followed anyone foolish enough to walk it alone.
Most of us laughed at those stories. Mostly because the alternative was admitting they sounded plausible.
I looked again at the doors. “What happens if someone catches us?”
Vareena stared at me. “That is only occurring to you now?”
“I was distracted.”
“By the prince?”
Kieran glanced over his shoulder. “Careful, Kamari.”
“Oh, please. Apparently your title isn’t important.”
I pressed my lips together. I loved her. Kieran looked like he regretted allowing either of us to come.
“There won’t be anyone to catch us once we’re below.”
“That did not answer my question.”
“If someone catches us out here, we’re curious candidates who took a wrong turn.”
“And if they catch us inside?”
He looked at the door. “They won’t.”
A cold line worked its way down my spine. “That answer was ominous.”
“It was meant to be.”
He reached toward the faded symbol. I caught his hand before he touched it. Kieran’s gaze dropped to my fingers wrapped around his, then slowly lifted to my face. I became painfully aware of Vareena beside us.
“What?”
“What does it do?”
“The ward?”
“Yes, the ancient magical ward you were about to touch like a normal fucking doorknob.”
“I’ve done this before.”
“That is not comforting.”
He reconsidered. “Once.”
“That is even less comforting.”
Vareena moved nearer without touching anything. “You’ve been inside the Restricted Archives?”
“Not this section.”
I stared at him. “You brought us somewhere you’ve never been.”
“I brought you to the entrance.”
“That distinction feels useless.”