Chapter 39 Old Stories
OLD STORIES
KIT
The sparrow dissipated into the ether before they’d even had a chance to try and craft a return message.
It wasn’t dramatic. No explosion of feathers and fire. Just a small poof. A puff of smoke on the library window ledge, where moments prior the shadowy messenger bird had perched.
“Rude,” Kit muttered, blue and green eyes roaming over the spot where the bird had disappeared. She drummed her long fingers on the table before her, brushing the parchment strewn across it with a rustle.
Beside her, Tenebris Nox blew out a long breath. “Looks like communication with the Revenant has just become strictly one-sided.”
Kit straightened, unrolling the sleeves of her tunic and smoothing them down her arm, suppressing the urge to shiver. The temperature in the palace had been dropping day by day, but as a wielder of water and ice, Kit was no stranger to the cold. No, this was a different kind of chill.
“Stars above, I hate this. I should have gone with her. Gone with them.”
The only thing that had kept her sane over the past week were those stars-damned little birds, the messages they brought with them.
Or rather, the fragments of them. Ellie’s voice had gotten weaker, her words blurrier, the more time that passed—the farther they got from Kingshelm. But they were still something.
“Still alive. Dawnspire tomorrow. Will send update.”
That was the last message they’d received, two whole days ago.
The wait since had been excruciating. So, it was to Kit’s great delight that the little shadowsparrow had found her as she and Tenebris Nox were parsing through yet another set of papers that Tenny had delivered from the palace archives.
Less delightful was the actual message it carried.
“Red trouble. Some injured . . . coming back. Do you . . . sanctuary? Going to El—”
And then it had cut off.
Kit sighed.
“I wish I’d had more time to work with her,” Nox murmured, not looking up from the pages they’d been perusing. “But given the newness of it all, she’s done remarkably well.”
“Of course she has. She does well at pretty much anything she attempts. Sometimes I think the girl was born with something in her blood that is just constantly telling her, ‘How hard could it be?’ ”
The nocterrian huffed a low laugh, and Kit tracked the glimpse of fang peeking through, a flash of white against indigo lips.
She cleared her throat. “What do you think she meant by ‘red trouble?’ And what sanctuary? Are they coming back or are they going to ‘El’? I assume at least that was supposed to be ‘Elderglade,’ but who’s to know for sure?
And, for that matter, what the fuck does ‘some injured,’ mean?
” She sucked in a breath. “Sorry. It’s hard, all this not-knowing. Patience was never my strong suit.”
Nox hummed thoughtfully, running a hand through their midnight-black hair, piled high in a bun between their horns. “I think if they did run into trouble, she was careful not to be too forthcoming in the message for fear of interception. Smart.”
“Yes, well, that’s Ellie too.”
There was a quiet pause between them. Just south of relaxed. Kit let her gaze linger on the nocterrian as they stroked a thoughtful finger down the side of one of their horns. Sharp, clever, enigmatic Nox. The nocterrian had been an oddly comforting presence over the past week.
They were alongside her in the wake of the rest of the delegation’s departure, always quick to notify her when a sparrow appeared. And as Kit’s anxiety grew with each increased interval between messages, when it had nearly reached a breaking point, they were there.
She couldn’t even blame Dentarius essentially banishing her from council after the last meeting, even if the frost that had crept uninvited across the table toward King Callum and Barcroff had truly been accidental.
Granted, if Lord Church had been there, perhaps it wouldn’t have been an accident.
The lord paramount or not, Tenny’s father and Cedric’s .
. . whatever he was to him or not, something about the man set Kit on edge.
Nox plucked a piece of lint from the wrinkled fabric of Kit’s sleeve, drawing her focus back. “We should be glad to have received a message at all. I’m sure another will follow.”
Kit huffed, even as warmth flooded her cheeks at the uncharacteristic contact. “Can’t wait to hear what the next one says. Maybe something like, ‘Chasm exploded. Multiple deaths. Horses fine.’ ”
“Well, as long as the horses are fine.”
“Noctis take me, was that humor, Tenebris Nox?”
The nocterrian drew their hand back, arms folding across their chest. “Lord Noctis has absolutely nothing to do with my real and very obvious sense of humor, Lady Ravenswing. I’m told I’m quite funny, actually.”
Kit gaped at them. “Who is telling you that? Because if it’s Thraigg, you know his opinion cannot be trusted. The dwarf thinks damn near everything is hysterical. Honestly, it worries me.”
Nox gave her a close-lipped smile.
Kit rolled her mismatched eyes. “Oh, but of course. How could I have missed it? You’re a laugh riot.”
“Do try not to forget it in the future.”
They ran out of reading material less than half an hour later. Which meant tracking down Tenny and seeing if she’d unearthed anything new during her most recent visit to the archives.
One benefit of having grown up amidst all these painted peacocks and noble buffoons was, Kit supposed, that access to things was incredibly easy for Tenny.
Perhaps being the daughter of the lord paramount didn’t hurt either.
She’d been able to get them stack upon stack of missives and letters—reports on the Arcanian communities strewn throughout Arcanis, mana maps of the Midlands, and more.
She even managed to procure the scrolls pertaining to sylvan magic that Cedric had apparently been hoarding in his room prior to leaving.
Granted, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows parsing through communications between humans that pertained to Arcanians.
Kit had been forced to take frequent breaks to ensure her blood pressure didn’t get too high.
Something about seeing one’s people referred to time and time again as “pixies” and “fairy witches” tended to grate on the nerves.
There had been a few nuggets of solid information amongst the hateful drivel, though, and for that, Kit was grateful.
She just felt so useless sitting around while Elyria was on the hunt.
Tenebris Nox placed their palm on the small of Kit’s back, ushering her into the archive room, where, sure enough, the two of them found Tenny perched cross-legged on one of the high tables inside.
A thick book was cracked open in her lap, her gown pooling around her, making it look like she was sitting atop a fluffy blue cloud.
“Stars above, Tenny,” said Kit with a low whistle, taking in the pages and pages of notes littering the floor around the table. It was like a paper bomb had gone off in the room. “What happened here?”
Tenny looked up, a bright sparkle in her amber eyes. “Whoops. I think I got a little too invested in what I was reading. Didn’t quite realize I’d made such a mess.”
Kit’s silver eyebrows shot up. “That riveting of a read, is it?”
Tenny snapped her book shut, then hopped off the table with a funny sort of grace—fluid, with just a little bit of a stumble.
Endearing. It was a perfect embodiment of what made her so damn likable, and Kit grinned inwardly as she thought about the way Elyria had ranted about that very thing a few nights after the welcome ball.
“Not riveting so much as, I don’t know, moving? Maybe that’s not the right word for it. And either way, it’s probably not particularly useful for your purposes. Nothing to do with the crown.”
“Isn’t that how it always goes,” Tenebris said, brushing dust off a nearby stool and taking a seat.
Tenny plopped down in a chair next to them, clearing space on the table and setting the book down with a heavy thunk. “I sometimes find my focus ends up honing in too much on the wrong thing. I suppose I should thank you for interrupting. Your timing is perfect, as always.”
“Flatterer,” Kit said with a smile. “So . . . are you going to tell us what you found that was so interesting? Don’t hold a girl in suspense.”
“Well, I’m not so sure you’d find it as such, but after a day of sifting through centuries of contradictory family trees and an entire accounting of the grain levy restructuring from four years ago, finding this”—she opened the cover of the book and pulled out several loose sheets of parchment that had been placed there—“was fascinating to me.”
Kit took the paper and ran her eyes over it. “Birth records?”
Tenny nodded. “Those are the recorded dates of mixedborn children born across Arcanis for the past two hundred and fifty years—since before the Shattering. Look at the change in frequency as time goes on. The massive decrease in reported births. Interesting, is it not?”
“Not precisely the word I would use for it,” Tenebris said, voice low.
Kit had to work very hard not to crumple the papers in her hand.
“Yes. Well. It’s not as though that doesn’t make sense.
After the humans”—she sucked in a breath—“I mean, after Malakar’s Great Betrayal, after Daephinia sundered the continent and the War of Two Realms began, human sentiment toward the fae changed very quickly, and in a .
. . very big way. I am sure that any parents facing a mixedborn pregnancy would hardly be eager to report it. ”
Tenny looked confused. “What do you mean?”
Nox blinked at her, cocking their head to one side. “Do you really not know what happened to mixedborn children during the war? After? What happens to them in Havensreach even now?”
Tenny frowned. Hesitated. “What do you mean? There are no mixedborn children in Havensreach anymore. And if there were, they would simply be taken to Nyrundelle like they were in the past.”