Page 150 of Fate of the Sun King

It would bring me so much joy to see my brother find someone he could fall in love with.

“It says here that at the Beginning of Days, when the Artefacts were formed, other objects of power were also created,” Nerissa reads. “Each was intended to pair with an Artefact and could be used both to amplify and channel the magic of its realm.”

“That has never been a part of the origin stories of Ouranos,” Nadir says.

Nerissa shakes her head. “Because it seems like they were purposely hidden.”

“What do you mean?” Nadir asks. “Why?”

“From what I can tell, Zerra’s priestesses were actually created to retrieve them from each realm. When they tortured and killed in her name, they were trying to get their hands on the arks.”

Nadir folds his hands under his chin. “For Zerra?”

“So one might assume,” Nerissa answers. “It was all so long ago, but I suppose when the rulers realized she was after them, they hid them away well enough that they were mostly forgotten.”

“Is there anything that says where they might be now?” I ask.

“Nothing that is clear,” Nerissa says. “There are passing references to small rectangular objects, each carved with a woman bearing its corresponding Artefact.”

“An ark is like a chest or a box, right?” I ask.

“Yes, or sometimes a coffin.”

That answer sets the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

“So they’re big?”

“No. I think they are fairly small. More like an art piece you’d keep on a shelf. The way the books talk about carrying them would suggest they’re manageable. I suppose in the case of some of the larger and more unwieldy Artefacts, they were useful in channeling their power. They were created from a material mined in the Beltza Mountains.”

“What material?” Nadir asks.

“That I don’t know. But it also held magical properties.”

“Anything else?” Nadir asks with a frown. I suspect it’s taking everything in his power not to run home to find out what he can about The Aurora’s ark.

Nerissa shakes her head. “Eventually, the histories just stop mentioning them at all. Like everyone collectively forgot.”

“What about what Cloris said about the land reacting? Are all these incidents connected?”

Nerissa nods. “I think she might have been telling the truth about that.”

She holds up a book. A standard text on the history of Ouranos. Even I recognize it with my limited reading experience.

“This is the story we all know about the Beginning of Days. The one in which Zerra brought all the rulers together and bestowed the gift of magic and the Artefacts she’d created on each of them.”

“Right?” Nadir asks, leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees.

“Well, I found this,” Nerissa says, holding up another book. “It talks of an alternate history. This suggests that what we know as the story of the creation of the Second Age of Ouranos isn’t entirely the truth.

“Zerra didn’t create the magic, she just became a caretaker.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Magic was always here, but before the Beginning of Days, it—for a lack of a better way to describe it—began to spill over. The land could no longer contain it, and that’s when it was granted to Ouranos’s human inhabitants before they were ascended to High Fae.”

“Granted by who?”

Nerissa’s finger slides along the page. “Some higher authority. The author doesn’t seem clear on who or what actually made the Artefacts.”