“You don’t have to be in a hurry,” she said.
My eyes nearly pitched out of their sockets. “Excuse me? Aren’t you the one always warning me off getting too close to royals?”
“I get the entire bed to myself. And Nheve feels bad I’m still in the manor, so she gives me more food.” She looked at me and smiled slyly. “We’re both being spoiled.”
When we’d eaten our fill, I escorted her through the palace to the library to show her what I’d found. It seemed there were fewer stacks of books and papers near the door, so maybe Talia had sent a servant to work on it while guests were at the party.
Wren walked inside and stared up at the jewel box ceiling, then the piles around the room. “Shame no one took care of it.”
“The palace is an archive, and the former prince apparently didn’t care.” I looked at her speculatively. “Talia offered me a job sorting through it. I declined. You want?”
“No,” she said. The word came out quickly, an automatic rejection. But her eyes—wide and hungry—told a different story. I wondered if she was imagining how many people she might heal with the knowledge contained there. “Are there healing tomes?”
Gods, it was satisfying to know someone so well. “No idea. You can search for yourself.”
“Well,” she said, casting her gaze across the room. And I marked it as the first time I’d ever seen Wren fall in love with something that didn’t have a blade.
“But first, prepare yourself,” I said. She followed me to the bookshelf and made a satisfied noise when I opened the panel.
She walked in first, then made an unsatisfied noise when she saw what it held (honestly, nothing). “It’s an empty room.”
“Nowit’s empty. But just imagine what it might have held before.”
“More books?”
“Secret maneuverings,” I said, spreading my hands for emphasis. “Rebellious plots.”
“Stronghold ledgers, locked up so the figures couldn’t be altered.”
“Let me have my intrigue, Wren.” I walked to the bookshelf, climbed the ladder, and pulled down the book. “There’s also a book in a secret language.” I handed it to her. “Maybe Eonian?”
She opened the book, flipped one page after another. “It’s not Eonian,” she concluded. “I mean, I only know a few words, but this is nonsense. The letters look Eonian, but these aren’t Eonian words.”
“Not words,” I said, and stared down at the pages. “Maybe it’s in code. One letter substituted for another.”
“Maybe. You’d need the key to read it—the list of substituted letters. And even then, they might still be written in Eonian, which you can’t read.”
“Damn it.”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “If it’s been in here for gods know how long, nobody needed it.”
“You’re probably right.”
She frowned, crouched down, and swept her fingers across the floor.
“It’s dusty in here, I know. Hasn’t been cleaned since it was emptied.”
“Not dust,” she said, and rose, then turned her fingertips toward me. They were smeared with something dark gray. “Ash,” she said.
I brought over a candle and crouched beside her. She was right. There was ash in spots across the floor.
“They didn’t just clean it out,” I said. “They burned things.”
“Now I’m interested,” she said. “But we can’t do anything without the code. And I bet the code was burned like everything else.”
She rose and dusted her hands.
“I just wanted to do something helpful,” I said. “The Aetheric practitioner is still out there, and Luna’s focus is on saving the god.”
