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“You think?”
What I wouldn’t give to be invisible too.
Alaric leftme at the entrance to the library, having seen the back of Finn, hunched over a heaping pile of texts from across the room. He muttered something about needing to keep tabs on Edris even though I specifically said I wanted him to rest. He left before I could argue, squeezing my hand before dropping it quickly—but not quickly enough. Desire and apprehension crashed over me like a rogue wave into a tidal pool. I didn’t have time to wonder if he’d done it on purpose, or if he ever accidentally pushed his own emotions through to others with his Grace.
Finn spun in his chair as though he could sense me standing there even though I hadn’t made a sound.
“Your Majesty,” he said by way of greeting, “Where’s Alaric?”
“Resting, I hope.” I pulled out the chair across from him at the long table, overwhelmed at the amount of parchment before me. “Have you found anything?”
He ran a hand over the scruff on his jawline, “No. Nothing really. There was this one scroll though,” he lamented, digging through a pile of parchment on the right of the table, “Ah, here.”
I took it from his outstretched hand. It was ancient—written in the language of old, marking it as being aged around five hundred years.
“I can only read bits and pieces. I’ve been teaching myself Melîn, but I haven’t mastered it yet.”
Lucky for him, Icouldread it. Thana thought it would be a useful language to know, since there were still some Fae—who lived in the villages far to the north, who still spoke it. I studied the scroll, squinting at the faded looping script. It was written by a scribe and documented the Blessing Ceremony of Morgana. It was a copy, then. Every few centuries the scribes who worked in the archives copied the older scrolls before they could become tattered and illegible.
This was from before Morgana was crowned, and that was likely why it wasn’t in the royal archives—even though at the time, Morgana was still the daughter of the King.
Though, if Thana was right, theychangedwith each copy. Like the whisper game I loved to play as a child where the seven sisters and I would sit in a circle. I would whisper something to the sister next to me, and she would repeat it to the next and so on. By the time it reached the seventh, and they spoke it out loud, it would be something entirely different—and usually funny.
“It documents Morgana’s Blessing Ceremony,” I told Finn.
“That much I gathered. But it was this part here that caught my eye.” Finn came around the table and leaned in over my shoulder to point out a section of text about halfway down the page.
I read it aloud, translating as I went, “The results of Morgana’s Ceremony were indeterminable.” I narrowed my eyes at the scroll, “But Morgana was Graced with fire, wasn’t she?” I asked Finn.
“Keep reading.”
“The ground shook not a moment after she drank of the Sidhe. She feinted and was carried from the Great Hall by His Royal Majesty, King Ricon II.”The Mad King.
I set the scroll back down on the table, “Do you think my Grace is fire then? Like hers?”
“That was not her only Grace,” a scribe who was putting tomes and scrolls back to their places on the many shelves said, turning to address us. “Your Majesty,” he said bowing. The male was thick around the middle, andold. It was strange to see someone who looked beyond the mortal age of thirty, with wrinkles and silver in their hair. Very rare, but it had been known to happen—where a Fae didn’t complete their transformation until later in life.
“There was a scroll once, many years ago that described Morgana on the front-lines of battle at Mount Noctis. The scribe detailed her charge into battle and wrote how he witnessed the queen-to-be use the Graces of air, strength, and earth as well as her documented Grace of fire.”
I had never heard that story before and was sure it was one Thana would have told me. She always told me tales of Morgana to soothe me to sleep. “And where is this scroll? In the royal archives?”
The old scribe huffed, “You won’t find it now, majesty. It was lost long ago.”
Well that’s helpful.
“Though,” he said, “I suspect you may find what you’re looking for in the royal chambers. It was Morgana who had those chambers built, surely there are answers to be found within.”
Finn and I shared a look. “What do you—” I started, but the scribe was gone. Vanished.
Finn shrugged his shoulders, “What do you suppose he meant?”
“I have no idea.”
After coming up empty handed,Finn escorted me back to my chambers. “There must be something,” he said, exasperated. “Perhaps, if you would give permission, I could look through the royal archives?”
“Of course.”
His lips twitched up into a bashful half smile, and he looked at me as though he was only now seeing me for the first time. “Maj—”
