Page 105 of Embers of Ruin

“That is also true.”

I should be offended. I am offended. I’m also intrigued, which is unfortunate because intrigue has led me into nearly every terrible situation of my life.

“By all means, keep going. What importance?”

Brother Rivero clutches the book in his hands a little tighter. “Perhaps frightened was too strong a word.”

“Brother Rivero.”

He winces. “Right. Yes. Directness. I have been told it saves time, though in my experience it often creates more difficulties.”

“I think you should try it anyway.”

He exhales and gestures toward a narrower aisle between two shelves. “Silver hair.”

The words land and my entire body stiffens. Riven’s attention sharpens beside me.

Brother Rivero notices and lowers his voice. “I’ve heard that you’ve asked before about Queen Seraphine.”

“I asked because she had hair like mine. I saw the portrait down here.”

“Yes,” he says, moving down the aisle. “And that is where many people make the first mistake.”

I follow him, my stomach tightening with each step. “What mistake?”

“They assume blood.”

He pulls a heavy book from the shelf, then immediately struggles under its weight. Riven reaches over and takes it from him before it can crush his foot.

“Thank you,” Brother Rivero says.

Riven nods once.

Brother Rivero clears a space on a nearby table, and Riven sets the book down with a dull thud that echoes through the quiet archive. The cover is cracked black leather, reinforced with silver corners tarnished nearly gray with age. Symbols have been pressed into the surface, the same curling marks I’ve seen carved into the oldest corridors of the palace. Brother Rivero opens it carefully.

The pages are thick, yellowed, and covered in tight script broken by illustrations. He turns past kings, temples, and maps of a Solaris that looks far greener than anything I have ever known. Finally, he stops at a drawing of Queen Seraphine. Silver hair spills over her shoulders in painted waves. I hate the jolt of recognition it sends through me. Not because she looks like me. She doesn’t. But the hair is impossible to ignore. That bright, unnatural silver. The mark Elvora taught me to hide, the thing that made mothers pull children away from me and lower their voices when I passed. There it is, painted on a queen.

Not a cursed queen. A crowned one.

My throat tightens.

Brother Rivero watches me with gentler eyes now, which somehow makes me want to be sharp.

“What does this have to do with blood?” I ask.

“Old texts assumed that those marked with silver descended from Seraphine,” he says. “Some old noble houses used to claim connection to her whenever silver appeared in their lines, though most of those claims were political and poorly supported. The stronger records suggest something else.”

Riven stands a little straighter and I notice. Of course I notice.

“What records?”

Brother Rivero turns another page, revealing a fragment copied in red and black ink.

“Manifestation,” he says. “Not inheritance.” The word settles over the table.

I stare at him. “That sounds like something scholars say when they want to sound impressive.”

“It is,” he admits. “But in this case, it is useful.”