Chapter 40 #2
“My temple request was accepted,” Raiden said as he sat.
“They haven’t found the restoration ledger yet.
It’s in sealed storage, which apparently means someone has to spend half a day arguing with a door.
” He handed the response to Lidia. “They did send their preservation standards. Material lots, binding resins, thread changes. Thought it might help you date repairs even if Elyndor used different conventions.”
Lidia read in silence for a while. “Useful.” Raiden looked pleased enough by that single word that Vareena had to hide a smile behind her hand. She shifted a chair toward him with her foot. He sat beside her.
I left them to it.
The courier notice in Emrin’s hand confirmed the Balethorn family had found the old boundary chest. Their father was sending two land ledgers, a private survey copy, and an older route register to the Sanctum. “Before Solstice?” I asked.
“If the roads stay clear,” Emrin said. “The courier should arrive through the western receiving vaults.”
That gave us a few days. Outside, preparations were already swallowing the Sanctum. Inside, the old room felt insulated from all of it. Kieran arrived carrying a narrow black volume wrapped in dark cloth. Eiryx came with him and immediately disappeared toward the far shelves without explaining why.
Dax watched him go. “Does he ever enter a room normally?”
Kieran set the wrapped volume down. “No.”
“Good to know. I thought I was being judgmental.”
“You are.”
“But does that make me wrong?”
Kieran ignored him and removed the cloth. The book beneath was small, black leather reinforced at the corners with tarnished metal. No title. The script inside looked older than the Umbrael records we had seen before, with cramped notations packed into the margins.
“A crown catalogue,” Kieran said.
Vareena leaned closer. “From Umbrael?”
“A restricted copy kept here for state-history instruction. The actual records remain under royal custody.”
Dax glanced at him. “And you’re allowed to have this?”
Kieran turned a page. “No.”
Dax smiled. Emrin closed her eyes.
I moved beside Kieran. He had already marked one section. “This is the correspondence Eiryx traced,” he said. “The Sanctum copy carried a transfer mark showing it passed through Umbrael court custody before reaching a private collection.” His finger rested beneath an entry I could not read.
“What does this say?”
“Restricted diplomatic exchange. Elyndorian royal household on one side. High-court Umbrael family on the other.”
My attention caught on the dates. They overlapped Aurenya’s final years at the Sanctum. The unnamed Aurora candidate. The forbidden relationship.
Maerox.
“Can you tell which family?”
“The name was removed.” Kieran said it cleanly. Too cleanly for me to hear anything underneath.
I looked at the black marks again “Can names be removed from a royal catalogue without leaving more than this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Depends who ordered it.” That was all he offered. I had learned when pushing Kieran produced information and when it produced a wall. This was a wall. Eiryx returned from the shelves with several acquisition ledgers stacked against his chest. Kieran looked at him. “Find anything?”
“Not yet.” He set the books at the far end of the table and began working without explanation.
Somehow, that was more convincing than describing his method.
The room settled into work. For a while, nothing happened.
The Council copies Damon gave me were mostly household authorizations, personnel references, and restoration inventories—dry enough that Emrin threatened to make Dax copy them by hand if he complained again.
Then Vareena found one of her father’s numbers.
“Here. Look.” She laid his letter beside the Council index.
The reference matched one of Damon’s copied household series exactly.
I leaned over her shoulder. “Did you tell your father Damon had this?”
“No. I didn’t know Damon had it.”
“Could he have known the archive series anyway?”
“He was at the Sanctum then. He’s been around Council records most of his adult life.” She said it as though that settled the matter.
Lidia reached across us and took the copy. “Domestic provisioning.”
The phrase from Vareena’s father’s letter. The record was mundane at first glance. Oil. Linen. Winter stores. Healer supplies.
Then a private suite number repeated across three separate authorizations.
Vareena traced it with one finger. “That room doesn’t exist on the current palace plans.”
I looked toward the old maps we had copied earlier. “Was it on the older ones?”
“Not the version we have.”
Emrin pulled our map notes closer. “It might have been removed from both.”
Lidia was less interested in the room than the paper itself. She lifted the copied image toward the lamp. “This one isn’t enough. I need the restoration notes.”
I handed her the inventory Damon had included. She spent nearly ten minutes moving between the two. Then another ten. Her concentration gradually gave way to irritation.
“What?”
She tapped the restoration entry. “The household copy was rebound after the palace fall. That part is normal. Half the archive was recovered wet, burned, or torn.”
Raiden shifted closer. “And?”
“And this section was repaired again.” She turned the copied image around. The reproduction was good enough that the binding seam showed along the inner edge. Even knowing where to look, I saw very little.
Lidia pointed. “The thread changes here.”
Vareena frowned. “You can see that from a copy?”
“I can see the twist. Four strands instead of six.”
Raiden immediately opened the Cindralith standards sheet. “They tracked material batches.”
“Elyndor might have too.” Vareena was already searching the restoration inventory.
Pages moved faster now. A supply record near the back listed archival thread issued to the recovered palace collection.
Six-strand linen had been used during the first restoration.
Four-strand replacement thread entered the archive years later.
Lidia sat back. “This page was altered after the original recovery.”
“How long after?” I asked.
She tapped the date.
Vareena answered before she did. “After Aurenya was dead.” The room went quiet. There was no revelation written on the page. No confession. No name. Only a repair that happened too late.
I moved closer. “What was removed?”
“Impossible to know from this copy.” Lidia traced the seam again. “There was another leaf here. The binding tension is wrong without it.”
Vareena reached for her father’s letter.
Do not trust the palace transcription dated after the fall. Compare the stitching.
Her thumb lingered over the sentence.
Dax was the one who finally said it. “Your father knew.”
Vareena looked up sharply. “He knew the transcription was unreliable.”
“That’s what I meant.” It wasn’t quite what he had meant. Everyone in the room knew that.
Vareena folded the letter and set it down. “My father has spent his life around Elyndorian records. He was at the Sanctum when Aurenya was here. He knows the palace archives better than I do. That isn’t strange.”
“No,” Emrin said quietly. “It isn’t.” She did not sound suspicious. That helped. For now.
Lidia had already moved to another copy. “If there’s one later alteration, there may be more.”
We searched again
This time it took longer.
Kieran stayed with the Umbrael catalogue while Eiryx moved between old accession ledgers.
Raiden cross-referenced restoration materials.
Dax actually worked without being threatened.
When Lidia stopped again, nobody needed to be told to listen.
She had found an Aurora personnel copy. The paper itself dated to before the palace fall.
The repair did too. She checked twice. Then handed the restoration entry to Vareena.
Vareena read the date. Her face lost color. “This was changed while Aurenya was alive.”
I stared at the record. The room around me blurred at the edges. I lowered myself into a chair. “They were hiding me.”
No one rushed to answer.
I was grateful. Damon would have asked whether the evidence proved intent. Halos would have asked who authorized it. The people in this room understood what I meant.
Emrin brought the earlier and later dates together on one sheet. “There are at least two separate windows.” Her fingertip rested beside the first. “This overlaps Aurenya’s lifetime.” Then the second. “This one is after the fall.”
Dax leaned over her shoulder. “So either the same person continued after she died—”
“Or someone else took over,” Raiden said.
I rubbed both hands over my face.
The first erasure made sense in a terrible way.
Aurenya and Maerox had been warned their child would be hunted.
They hid the pregnancy. Hid me. Removed records.
But the second erasure had no obvious author.
Aurenya was gone. Maerox was gone and someone still knew enough to keep removing pieces of me.
Vareena sat across from me with her father’s letter folded beside her hand. “Aurenya couldn’t have ordered the later one.”
“No.”
“Maerox either.”
“No.” The question sat there. Who had? My mind went to Maia before I wanted it to.
I hated that. I saw her in the healer’s cottage with herbs spread across the table, telling me to wash my hands before I touched anything.
I saw Ferin outside before the First Rite, sorting broken protective charms and watching the western road while Maia pretended not to be worried.
I had spent my entire life accepting that Maia protected me because she loved me.
That could still be true. It could also be incomplete. Vareena watched me. “What is it?”