Page 117 of Veil of Night & Flames

The house is quiet, and without the music and the bodies and the press of people, it smells like floor polish and old paper and something I can’t place. We pass the sweep of that Scarlett O’Hara staircase as she leads us down a long hall that had been cordoned off during the party.

We pass several doors and a glass case full of old bound pages, most of them turning brown around the edges.

A moment later, we reach a set of double doors at the end of the hall, a brass plaque on one door acting as a silent announcement that we’ve arrived at the library.

She opens the door, and Vance rises as she ushers us in. He’s in dark slacks with a button-down open at the collar and no tie. And I think I see a bit more gray at his temples than the last time we met.

“Can I offer you coffee? Another beverage?”

Tia and I exchange a glance, then both shake our heads.

“That will be all, then, Gretchen,” he says, and she slips from the room.

“Ladies?” He gestures to an oval library table, and Tia and I settle in beside each other at one of the oval’s rounded ends. Vance continues to stand as I look around, both out of nerves and because I want to check the place out.

Mostly, the library looks like a library. Shelving that seems to go on forever, manuscripts in at least two cases that I can see. And on the far side of the room there’s a comfy-looking chair by a window.

That’s when I realize that this is the lesser library. The one where you can walk out with a book. The heavy-duty research stuff is somewhere else, hopefully in this house and not in a vault in Switzerland.

“Well,” he says, taking the seat on the far side of the oval, “you’re here about your bloodline. Where would you like me to start?”

“It’s just, well, at that meeting during the party, you mentioned that some bloodlines have the power to shore up the barriers.”

“So I did. The Imperial line. Why do you ask?”

In for a penny…

“Because I think…well, were you talking about me?”

“Cora, my dear. Of course.”

Even though I was expecting it, I am stunned. “Oh,” I say, because apparently my brain is now on hiatus.

“At least, we believe so,” he amends.

“Okay. Tell me why.”

“The Oneiroi’s working theory—which is supported by close to three centuries of evidence collected by people far smarter than I—is that the Imperial line, your mother’s line, has carried the power since before the emperor’s death. The line scattered after the emperor was struck down. Most branches died out. What survived went underground. Most changed their name, believing it was the assassin’s intent to completely destroy the emperor’s line. Your mother was the last documented heir we were able to confirm.”

“And me,” I say.

“And you,” he agrees. “Which is why our door has been open since you came to this campus. You are, as far as we know, the only living person whose blood fed the barriers. And, as such, the only one who can now shore them up.”

“Hang on,” Tia says, looking disgusted. “Fed?”

He chuckles. “Not literally. Upon creation, the emperor claimed the barriers as his own, and that claim was proven through blood. Much like a computer now does tasks for the fingerprint that guides it.”

I glance at Tia, who shrugs. “I guess that makes sense,” she says as I nod. Honestly, it makes perfect sense to me. Like something I’ve always understood but had temporarily forgotten.

“Explain what you mean by shoring them up,” I say. “How does that work, exactly?”

I expect him to answer just as casually and quickly as he’d answered Tia. Instead, he hesitates, as if debating with himself.

“Hello? I thought you said you were going to tell me everything.”

“That’s the trouble,” he says. “We don’t know everything.”

“Oh,” I pause. “In that case, just tell me what you do know.”