Chapter 34
The western corridors were nearly empty by the time I reached them.
Dinner had ended more than an hour ago, leaving the Sanctum to the quiet of its oldest wings: wards humming inside the walls, stone settling, my footsteps carrying too far.
The blue lamps woke as I passed. Kieran waited beneath the last one.
I noticed his mouth before anything else.
Apparently nearly being crushed beneath the Sanctum had done very little to improve my priorities.
He had changed since this morning, though only into another version of black, sleeves pushed to his forearms and hair still damp at the ends. His eyes found mine, held them, then dropped. To my mouth.
So we were both idiots.
Yesterday returned with uncomfortable clarity: his hand beside my head, stone cold against my back, the taste of him, and the moment after that first kiss when I’d decided that whatever damage we had already done, I wanted more.
I stopped several feet away. Footsteps sounded from the adjoining corridor.
Vareena appeared carrying rolled parchments against her chest, Emrin behind her with a satchel over one shoulder.
I looked at Kieran. “You invited them?”
“We need more than two people if we’re going through twenty years of records.”
“They’re my friends. You could have asked.”
Emrin stopped beside Vareena and glanced between us. “If this was supposed to be only the two of you, I can go.”
There was no irritation behind it. She meant it. “No. Stay.” I rubbed my thumb against the side of my hand, already regretting how sharp I sounded. “I just would have liked warning.”
Kieran inclined his head. “Next time.”
Vareena had not said anything. That worried me. I looked at her and found her attention moving slowly between Kieran and me. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
Her brows rose. “I haven’t said a word.”
“You were going to.”
“I was thinking that both of you look tired.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
A smile pulled at one corner of her mouth.
Kieran opened the archive door. “If everyone is finished examining everyone else’s face, we have work to do.”
Vareena’s gaze snapped toward him. I walked through the door before she could hear anything in that sentence that would create another problem for me.
The restoration room we had borrowed was off the western rotunda, tucked behind a pair of rooms the Archivists used for repairing old bindings.
It was private enough that no one would casually wander past us, and, more importantly, it was above the foundations.
After what happened with Emrin in the lower archives and then with Kieran beneath the Crucible, I was willing to spend one night somewhere that had windows and only one floor.
The table inside was already covered. Copies of the record we’d found below.
Eiryx’s transcription from the Umbra stacks.
Old maps of the western Sanctum. Several candidate ledgers and a stack of loose pages held together with faded ribbon.
Near the center sat the reconstruction of the nameless Aurora record.
I had read it so many times I could have recited it.
Seventeen at admission. Elyndor. Light affinity.
Advanced placement. Exceptional control.
Recommended private instruction. Everything except who she had been.
Vareena set her parchments beside it. “I went back through the Aurora admission ledgers.”
I pulled out a chair. “How far?”
“Twenty-one to twenty-four years ago. I started with twenty-two because it matches the record we found below, then worked outward in case the date had been copied incorrectly during restoration.”
Emrin sat beside me and untied her satchel. “Did you find anything that matches?”
“Not exactly. That’s the problem.” Vareena flattened two pages.
One contained annual admission totals. The other was a placement roster, names copied neatly into columns by affinity and instructional level.
She pointed to the totals. “Forty-three Aurora candidates completed initial assessment that year.”
Her finger moved to the placement list. “Forty-two names.”
I counted despite knowing she already had. Forty-two. “One missing.”
“Yes.”
“Could someone have withdrawn before placement?”
“I checked. Withdrawals had their own registry, and every other discrepancy I found in surrounding years is accounted for there. This one isn’t.”
Kieran leaned over the opposite side of the table. “What about deaths or medical dismissal?”
“Recorded separately too.”
I stared at the number. It was exactly the sort of thing I would never have noticed before crossing the Veil.
A missing number in an old ledger. A line out of place.
Nothing important unless you already knew someone had gone to considerable effort to remove a name from history.
“One missing candidate doesn’t make her the woman from below,” I said.
“No,” Emrin said. She pulled the placement list closer, studying it. “But if the same number disappears somewhere else, we’ll know it wasn’t just a copying mistake.”
That was Emrin. No reassurance she couldn’t give honestly.
No attempt to turn possibility into certainty because she thought certainty would make me feel better.
We divided the records between us. For a long while, nothing happened.
That was probably how real investigations worked, though no one ever included it when telling stories about them.
There were no sudden revelations every few pages.
Mostly there was cramped handwriting, irrelevant names and the growing realization that someone twenty years ago had been exceptionally committed to recording which candidates damaged furniture.
I found three notices involving broken windows.
Vareena found a complaint from an Aurora instructor about candidates using an upper gallery after curfew.
Kieran translated a section of Umbra shorthand that turned out to be an inventory of lamp oil.
Emrin worked through the maps. My eyes started burning.
Somewhere during the second hour, Kieran leaned across me to reach one of the older ledgers.
His forearm brushed mine. My body recognized him before my mind caught up.
I remembered his hand around my waist. The roughness of the stone behind me.
His mouth opening over mine. My fingers stopped on the page.
Kieran’s did too. For half a breath, neither of us moved.
Then Vareena shifted across the table. I pulled my arm back and continued reading as if nothing had happened.
Emrin glanced at me once, but didn’t ask.
Vareena nearly did. One look from me convinced her otherwise.
It was Emrin who eventually found a detail worth stopping for. She had two maps laid side by side, one old enough that several of the current Sanctum wings didn’t exist yet. “This chamber disappears.”
Kieran came around the table. I leaned closer.
Emrin pointed to a small rectangular room buried along the western edge of what had once been an Aurora residential level.
On the older map, a narrow corridor connected it to both Aurora and an access stair descending toward Umbra.
On the later map, the corridor ended at solid wall.
“Could they have removed it during renovations?” I asked.
“They could have sealed the entrance.” Emrin traced the surrounding lines. “But not without changing the load here and here. This section supports the gallery above it. There should be a structural report.”
Kieran pulled a facilities ledger toward him. “Western restorations?”
Vareena was already reaching for another pile. “Those should be in the grey-bound set.”
We found the chamber twelve pages later. The entry itself was almost nothing. Private access granted to western chamber. Aurora authorization. Several lines below it: Umbra authorization appended. I read both twice. “Why would an Aurora chamber need Umbra permission?”
Kieran studied the notation beside the second entry. “Because someone from Umbra was given access.”
Vareena shifted the lamp closer. “And after curfew.”
I looked at her. She pointed to the small symbol beside the authorization. “Night classification. Private cross-division access was much more restricted then.”
The correspondence Eiryx found sat at the other end of the table.
I didn’t need to pull it closer. I knew the lines.
An Aurora candidate repeatedly meeting an Umbra candidate despite a formal order separating them.
The old foundation reacting when both were present.
Private contact. The same period. Vareena followed my attention toward the transcription but didn’t comment.
Neither did Kieran. I was grateful. “Is there a name attached to the chamber?” I asked.
“No,” Vareena said.
Of course there wasn’t. Kieran turned the facilities page over, then paused. “There was a seal here.”
He moved the lamp. A flattened remnant of wax had survived near the bottom edge.
Most of it had broken away, leaving only part of the impression: the curved edge of a circle and several rays extending from a shape at its center.
It meant nothing to me. Vareena’s reaction did.
Her hand stopped halfway across the table. I looked at her. “What?”
She bent closer.
Kieran glanced at her face, then at the wax. “What do you recognize?”
“Give me a second.” Vareena turned the page slightly beneath the lamp. The longer she looked, the more serious she became.
“Vareena.”
She sat back. “This isn’t Sanctum.”
“I gathered that.”
“It’s Elyndorian.”
I waited for the rest because she knew perfectly well that meant very little to me. She hesitated, and that was when my stomach began to tighten.
“It belonged to the royal household.”
The room went quiet around us. I looked again at the broken impression. “That?”