Chapter 32
LYRA
Eiryx found the second record sometime after midnight. I knew because the Lumina Codex woke me to tell me.
He found what was left behind.
I came awake hard enough to drive my elbow into the stone wall beside my bed.
Pain shot all the way to my fingertips. “Fuck.” For several seconds, I lay there staring at the faint silver wash of moonlight across the ceiling, trying to decide whether I had actually heard anything or whether grief, exhaustion, and an increasingly invasive magical book had finally cracked my sanity.
Vareena slept across the room beneath a heap of blankets.
The Codex itself was nowhere near me. She had insisted on taking it back after we returned from the lower archives yesterday, arguing that keeping an ancient artifact capable of exposing half my secrets beneath my mattress had officially become too stupid even for us.
Apparently distance had done nothing to improve its manners. “Eiryx?”
Yes.
Sleep vanished. “What did he find?”
What they failed to destroy.
I sat up. “Who failed?”
Silence.
“Of course. You wake me with that and suddenly decide mystery is important?”
I crossed nothing.
“Somehow that makes you worse.” Yesterday’s argument with Kieran surfaced before I could stop it.
Eiryx had known. Kieran had told him about my Shadow weeks ago because he trusted him enough to put my life in his hands without asking whether I wanted another person holding the blade over it.
I was still angry. I was also beginning to understand why he had done it, which was considerably less convenient.
Three quiet knocks sounded at the door. I went still.
Another followed after a pause. Same rhythm.
I didn’t need to ask who it was, and the fact that I knew that should have concerned me more than it did.
I slid out of bed and crossed the room barefoot, careful of the floorboard near Vareena’s bed that complained whenever someone stepped too close to the wall. I unlatched the door.
Kieran stood outside in dark trousers and a black shirt, boots already laced, hair disordered enough that he had either come straight from training or spent the last hour dragging his hands through it.
His eyes moved over my face. Then down. I followed them.
Sleep shirt. Bare legs. Apparently we were developing a pattern. “Get dressed.”
I folded my arms. “You came to my room after midnight to give orders?”
“I came because Eiryx found something.”
Everything else disappeared. “What?”
Kieran glanced toward the empty corridor behind him. “Not here.”
I stepped back. “Give me two minutes.” I had almost shut the door when he caught the edge with two fingers.
“Lyra. Don’t forget pants.”
I stared at him. His gaze dropped once more to my bare legs, and this time the corner of his mouth actually moved. I shut the door in his face.
“You know,” Vareena said from the darkness, “for someone who supposedly hates him, you open that door remarkably fast.”
I nearly came out of my skin. Vareena lay exactly where I had left her, buried beneath her blankets with only the upper half of her face visible. Her eyes were open. “You were awake?”
“I woke up when you did. You seemed busy arguing with an ancient book that isn’t even in the room.” She pushed herself higher against the pillows, dark hair spilling loose over one shoulder. “What did it say?”
I grabbed the trousers folded across the end of my bed and stepped into them. “Eiryx found what was left behind. Something survived an attempt to destroy it.”
“And Kieran came himself.”
“Apparently.”
“You’re going.”
“Obviously.”
“I would come, but I have Calis at dawn, and after yesterday I’m fairly certain she has started counting how many times I mysteriously disappear whenever you do. Four of us vanishing into another forbidden section of the Sanctum would be difficult to explain even by our standards.”
Fair. I pulled a sweater over my head and tightened the second boot.
“Lyra.” The amusement had left Vareena’s face. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I know. I’ll come back.”
Her gaze held mine for another second before she nodded. “And if Kieran gets you killed, I’m bringing you back just so I can kill both of you myself.”
I smiled despite myself. “Go back to sleep.”
“Impossible now.”
I slipped into the corridor and shut the door quietly behind me. Kieran was leaning against the opposite wall. His gaze dropped immediately toward my legs. Covered now. “Disappointed?”
His eyes lifted. “Devastated.”
I started walking before Vareena could somehow hear him through several inches of stone and make my life unbearable tomorrow. Kieran pushed away from the wall and fell into step beside me. “Where’s Eiryx?”
“Waiting.”
“What exactly did he find?”
“An Umbra record from twenty-two years ago.”
My heart kicked. “And?”
“I haven’t read it.”
I stopped so abruptly Kieran made it another two steps before looking back. “You dragged me out of bed over something you haven’t read?”
“Eiryx wouldn’t remove the original.”
I stared at him, then started moving again because arguing in the middle of Luminari Halls would only wake someone capable of asking questions I didn’t want to answer.
We descended the final stair and stepped into the cold night.
The Sanctum after midnight felt less like an academy and more like the ancient thing it had been before anyone decided to fill it with candidates and bells and schedules.
Most of the windows were dark. Towers rose black against the moonlit mountains, their roofs disappearing into mist. The Crucible sat beyond the central grounds in complete silence, which felt almost unnatural after everything I had seen happen inside it.
We were halfway across the northern path when Kieran caught my elbow and pulled me behind one of the carved stone arches.
A patrol crossed ahead. Two wardkeepers walked close enough that I heard one mention the western perimeter before their voices faded down the path.
Kieran released me. “Do you do this often?”
“Sneak women across the Sanctum after midnight?”
I looked at him. His face remained perfectly straight. “I meant avoid patrols.”
“Less interesting question.”
I walked ahead before he saw the smile I had no intention of giving him.
He caught up without effort and guided us off the central path toward Umbra.
The architecture changed gradually around us.
Pale stone darkened. Gold disappeared from the arches.
The lamps burned blue instead of white, leaving long pools of shadow between them.
“You’re still angry.”
I looked at him. “You really want to do this now?”
“No.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because you’ve been glaring at the side of my head since we left your room.”
“I glare at you regularly.”
“Not like this.”
I hated that he knew the difference. “I understand why you told Eiryx. That doesn’t mean I forgive you for doing it.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“Good.”
We reached the outer Umbra galleries before I could decide whether that made me feel better.
Eiryx waited behind a narrow iron door beneath the western stairwell.
He opened it before Kieran knocked. The room behind him was small and nearly empty, smelling of dust, old leather, and the remnants of candle smoke.
Bare shelves covered two walls. A single sheet of parchment rested on the table beneath a blue-glass lamp. “That’s it?”
“A transcription,” Eiryx said. “The original stays where it is.”
I stepped closer. The heading had been copied exactly as it appeared.
UMbrA INTERNAL CORRESPONDENCE — CROSS-DIVISION
Below it sat a date. Twenty-two years ago. My fingers curled against the edge of the table.
“I searched every reference from that year matching what you gave me,” Eiryx said. “Female. Seventeen. Aurora. Elyndor. Most of it was useless. This wasn’t.” He pointed lower.
Aurora candidate S-17 continues unauthorized contact with an Umbra candidate despite formal warning.
My breath went shallow. “Unauthorized contact?”
Eiryx nodded toward the next line.
Repeated meetings have been documented outside sanctioned joint instruction. Aurora requests that Umbra enforce separation immediately.
“Meetings,” I said.
“With a Shadow wielder,” Kieran answered.
I read farther. Part of the next sentence had been burned away. Not faded. Not magically erased the way the Aurora record had been. Burned. Whatever name once occupied the blackened section was gone.
Umbra candidate ——— refuses reassignment.
The next paragraph remained intact.
No evidence has been presented that either candidate has compromised Sanctum security. Continued intervention appears motivated by concern regarding the nature of the association rather than any violation committed within Umbra jurisdiction.
I read it twice before looking up. “They were trying to keep them apart.”
“Yes,” Eiryx said.
“Why?”
“That isn’t in the surviving record.”
“Who was he?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked back at the blackened name. An Aurora girl someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to remove from the Sanctum’s records. A Shadow wielder someone else had tried to burn out of Umbra correspondence. The Codex’s words returned before I wanted them.
Your blood is of two. Your father gave you power. But your mother gave you form.
No. I refused to build an entire life out of another missing name and one of the Codex’s carefully rationed truths. Still, I could not look away from that burned section.
The path remembers what the record does not.
I stiffened. Kieran noticed immediately. “What?”
“The Codex.” I looked at the transcription. “It said the path remembers what the record does not.”
Eiryx went still. Kieran’s attention shifted toward him.
“There’s a location notation,” Eiryx said. He turned the page slightly and pointed to a code near the bottom.
WCF—17.
Kieran swore under his breath.
“What?” He and Eiryx exchanged one of those silent looks that had begun irritating me on principle. “Stop doing that.”