44. Chapter 44 #2
Settling the two pieces of information I had beside each other was like trying to plant an oak tree in a flower pot; it just didn’t fit. And something was going to break.
I was Auroran. My family were Auroran. And they were all gone.
Silence filled the room, and I swore I could hear the plants breathing, it was so still.
“And my magic?” I knew Audrie wouldn’t have the answer to that. But some desperate part of me asked anyway.
“All fae have magic,” Audrie explained after a brief aside about my childish attempts to find magic in myself.
“Maybe it’s just faint. Buried deeper because you never had a chance to use it without instruction?
” she said, her eyes brimming with hope.
She was so sweet, and I didn’t understand how she put up with my dour and prickly disposition.
“I’m not like them.” That weighed heavier on me than it ever had before.
Years passed by for fae like they were seasons. Kaed would grow in perpetual youth, and each year, I would take on a new wrinkle, a new silver strand to my hair. And he had spent so long hating the very people I was meant to call family.
“I’ve never heard of a baby being born fae and not having magic.” Her round lips puckered to one side as she pondered her own affirmation, pulling me from the darker recesses of my thoughts.
I smiled weakly, sadness staining my voice. “Maybe I’m just the first.”
“Hey.” Audrie took a thumb to my cheek where a tiny tear had escaped. “I don’t care if you’ve magic or not. I don’t care that you’re Auroran. I’ve known it—and I’m sorry I didn’t say it—and I don’t care.”
Would Kaed care?
“It might be a nice change around here to have someone close by who can’t answer everything with magic.”
An hour later, the tea and biscuits were gone, and even Turnip had vacated the room, tired of our talking and my blubbering.
I’d lost Audrie to some far-off thought that had snagged behind her eyes.
As though her bed was as hot as coals, she hopped off the mattress and began rifling through stacks of books that were scattered about the room. She flitted from corner to corner, stack to stack, gathering as she went.
“Audrie?”
“I think I’ve got it,” she said. “Look at these.” She handed me a stack of books.
“Read them? I’m not that fast.” Incredulity had my eyes as wide as saucers.
Audrie huffed and flipped the books to their spines. “No. Look.” Her finger fell to the tiny gold letters and numbers inscribed on the spines of each. “What do you see?”
I puzzled her and then the books.
“Consecutive numbers.” She tapped the book with a finger, ensuring I was following even something that basic. “They fall in order. Each book has a number assigned in the library, which denotes its place and placement in the stacks. So you can find one with the reference card.”
I didn’t know that. And I was sure I’d have to ask Audrie how to navigate it someday.
“These,” she said, pointing to the books I held, “all make sense. They are in order. Right where they should have been in the library. But”—she turned to a stack that was four deep and balancing on her nightstand—“these”—she plopped them into my lap—“are completely out of order. See? The numbers jump a few. We’re the only ones on record taking them out; no one has checked out the books that should be here.
See, this one is missing?” She held up two books, one in each hand, and kept an air gap between them.
“I don’t understand.” I shoved the books off my lap, reluctant to be entombed in parchment. “What has this got to do with anything?”
Audrie chewed the inside of her cheek again.
“Auroran records were removed from all libraries and record houses when the king took the last Crown. Records missing aren’t unusual for Auroran history.
” I think she winced at the mention of my missing homeland, but she cleared it quickly and moved on.
“But these”—her fingers fanned over the books —“these are all the places we’ve been trying and failing to find faebane mentions. ”
A ghostly quiet fell over my body.
“You think someone has removed faebane sources from the library.”
Why would anyone do that?
“Someone is hiding something. Not well, mind you,” she continued as if I wasn’t even there, her words getting closer and closer together, shorter breaths in between. “And I think it’s why we haven’t found any sources that clearly point to where faebane is found in the Four Corners.”
A cold feeling spread down my spine like roots of ice burrowing into the earth of my flesh.
“We haven’t even found references to where I know there’s faebane.”
A knowing grin drew across Audrie’s face. “Luckily, I’m far too clever for whoever is pilfering books.”
“But who would want to do that? Who would even have the authority or power to erase history, records and all?”
That cold feeling grew and reached to my neck and toes.
“The council are the power in this city,” Audrie said. “Kaedian would have known if his father were removing faebane sources to Hayden?”
Surely, Kaed wouldn’t have had us search for faebane in the library if he knew they were gone?
“Whoever it is, they’d require the sources for their weapons and prisons …” I said, thinking of the Cage again. My eyes darted to Audrie, hoping she would refute my worries.
Her mouth pulled into a grimace. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“We have to tell Kaed.”