Chapter 26 #2
“But Calveran is under the Assembly’s authority now. We won’t be granted access without a formal request.” Evelyne mused. “It must bear the King's seal and be sent directly to the Prime Threnarch of the Celestial Assembly. Even then, there’s no guarantee he'll agree.”
For a long moment, they didn’t speak. If they didn’t find proof soon, the silence around the Maroon Slaughter would harden into myth. And she was not going to let her truth be rewritten to serve someone else’s legacy.
Finally, Evelyne leaned back, the chill of the archives sinking a little deeper into her bones.
“We’re going to need another way in.”
The realization had been creeping upon her for the last hour. They’d combed through everything the Archivist had provided. Which meant, by process of elimination, the answers lay exactly where they weren’t allowed to look. Just like he said.
Oh, for the love of silence.
Evelyne’s fingers hovered above the next page without turning it.
She needed to prove to herself that Ravik was doing his job. That he was loyal. That he was still the man who had served her father for three decades, who had stood guard at her mother’s funeral, who had once carried her, unconscious and fevered, down three flights of stairs.
She had to try. She had to believe there was still someone in that castle loyal to the morality. Loyal to her family.
She glanced toward Vesena, whose eyes had already narrowed in thought.
“We’ll need to get into the restricted wing,” she added.
Vesena didn’t blink. “What are we looking for?”
Evelyne hesitated, fingers stilling on the edge of a ledger. “My last engagement. The one to House Calveran. It lasted years—there were dowry discussions, sealed correspondence, territorial clauses.”
Vesena nodded slowly. “All right. But why go through all that now? What exactly are you hoping to find?”
“Some sign of disagreement,” Evelyne said.
“Anything that suggests the story we’ve been told isn’t the full one.
Calveran broke off the betrothal, then returned years later begging to reenter negotiations.
It was public humiliation—and yet it passed with barely a ripple.
That doesn’t happen. Not here. My father, the Council…
they wouldn’t have let it go unless something happened behind closed doors.
Something they couldn’t admit. Or chose not to. ”
Her voice dropped further. “Maybe it was nothing. But if there was a reason—if they had cause—then I need to understand what it was.”
A beat. She looked Vesena fully in the eye now.
“We should also search under The Vaults. Everyone always whispered about them, especially after the Maroon Slaughter. Look for anything filed under that term—The Vaults, and the Calveran–Edrathen Alliance.”
Vesena gave a small nod. “Where?”
Evelyne tilted her chin toward the iron bars near the First Archivist’s desk.
They weren’t locked. They didn’t have to be.
In Edrathen, if something was forbidden, it stayed forbidden.
Not because of locks or guards, but because obedience had been bred into the bone.
You didn’t ask. You didn’t stray. And you certainly didn’t push through barriers that had been there longer than most noble houses.
The gates stood open, wide enough for a person to slip through sideways.
No one ever did.
There were only two other people in the archives now beside them: the First Archivist, seated at his heavy desk, and the Ninth, shelving scrolls.
The archives only permitted a few visitors at a time.
Something about humidity and air circulation.
The enforced stillness however, didn’t work in their favor. Any noise would be noticed.
And so would absence.
“I’ll distract him,” Evelyne said, stacking tomes one on top of the other. “Can you get in there without being seen?”
Vesena’s answering smile was dry as dust and twice as sharp.
“Of course,” she assured.
When Evelyne closed the final ledger, she looked up and raised her hand, “Excuse me, my lord! We’re finished.”
The older man looked up from his desk. “Very good. I trust the materials were helpful?”
Evelyne nodded, as if her pulse weren’t pounding behind her ribs. “Yes. Quite.”
By the Rhyssa, we’re really doing this.
The man signaled to the Ninth with a flick of his fingers, and the boy moved immediately, stacking the ledgers in neat, reverent piles. Respectful to the point of vanishing.
The First stepped out from behind the desk, folding his hands behind his back. “Would Your Highness permit me a word about the Silence-era indexing system? There’s been some inconsistency in how the annotations are logged in the newer volumes—something I’ve meant to address for some time.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Evelyne replied, smoothly stepping into the role of engaged nobility. Rhyssa was on her side; she didn't even have to come up with a topic. “I’d be very interested to hear about that.”
The Ninth picked up the entire stack of ledgers and walked towards the shelves. The First didn’t seem to pay attention, which was perfect. Vesena rose smoothly from her chair.
“I’ll help him,” she said.
It was delivered so mildly that it wasn’t registered as unusual. The scribe merely nodded, too focused now on describing the ink classification to question it. Vesena sauntered over to the Ninth, and lingered beside him just long enough to hand off a book.
Then she drifted past him.
Right through the bars. In the smoothest way she ever saw.
Evelyne forced herself to keep her eyes on the Archivist, nodding politely as he traced a particular line of ink with genuine scholarly frustration. Something about how dates were being abbreviated inconsistently. But all she could hear was the thunderous rush of her own pulse.
Every second Vesena stayed behind those bars, she was one step closer to something neither of them could walk away from easily. The Ninth was still shuffling scrolls, ascending one of the side ladders.
“I wanted to ask,” she interrupted, tone as level as ever, “about the logs from 1318. I noticed the margin codes have changed since the standardization edit. Was that under Marshal Ravik’s direction or the stewarding arm?”
The First Archivist’s expression brightened in that specific way scholars did when someone remembered the footnotes.
“Ah—an excellent question,” he quipped, diving into his explanation.
“That shift happened during the first quarter review of 1316, but the foundational decision was indeed authorized by the Marshal’s office.
I believe it began as a response to duplication discrepancies reported in the Eastern Watch archives, though it later became protocol. ”
1316… did something happened then?
Evelyne nodded along. “And the reissued orders—were they recompiled manually or based on previous entries?”
The Archivist looked as if someone had given him an estate in the countryside. He began to answer her question in detail, and Evelyne began to sweat. And stopped listening three sentences ago.
Her eyes drifted again toward the barred entry, where Vesena had vanished, and minutes stretched into a quarter of an hour.
Do hurry, Vesena. I’m running out of synonyms for ‘enthralling’.
The Ninth clambered down the ladder and dropped with just enough sound to make Evelyne’s pulse spike.
The scribe turned his head, slow and fogged. Evelyne held her breath, spine taut, mouth composed into a perfectly polite listening expression. And then out of the corner of her eye she saw Vesena slip back through the gate.
Almost. Her apron caught.
Just for a breath. A single, cursed second. The tiniest drag of fabric snagging on the edge of a rusted hinge. Evelyne felt her ribs tighten.
The Ninth stopped mid-step. And stared.
Mouth ajar. Eyes blinking slow and owlish as they tracked Vesena’s movement with the growing awareness of a man who very much wasn’t supposed to see what he was seeing.
Evelyne turned toward him. Look this way. Look only this way. He started to turn—likely to alert the First—when his gaze met hers.
Her heart thundered in her ears.
“Please,” she mouthed softly. “Don’t say anything.”
The Ninth froze, like a man caught in the path of a galloping horse.
His attention flicked to Vesena, then to Evelyne, and back again.
Very slowly, he inclined his head—just before the First’s attention shifted his way.
It lasted no more than three seconds. Whether he agreed out of loyalty, confusion, or sheer terror of doing something wrong in front of the king’s daughter, Evelyne didn’t care.
Vesena’s brows furrowed but she eased the fabric loose, like she’d simply adjusted her skirts, and moved into place beside Evelyne with the grace of someone not breaking at least five royal laws.
The elder blinked a few times, chasing the thread of his own monologue.
Evelyne exhaled slowly and gave the Archivist a brief, grateful nod.
“Thank you,” she said, pushing her chair back, “for your time and assistance. It was most enlightening.”
The Archivist bowed, hand to heart. The Ninth followed suit.
They walked away at a measured pace, the soft echo of their steps swallowed by the hush of the Archives. At the threshold, Evelyne leaned just slightly toward Vesena, her words no more than breath between them.
“Do you have anything?”
Vesena didn’t look at her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You’re not going to like it.”