“We’re going to need another way in.”
The realization had been creeping upon her for the last hour. They’d combed through everything the Archivist had provided. Which meant, by process of elimination, the answers lay exactly where they weren’t allowed to look. Just likehesaid.
Oh, for the love of silence.
Evelyne’s fingers hovered above the next page without turning it.
Sheneededto prove to herself that Ravik was doing his job. That he was loyal. That he was still the man who had served her father for three decades, who had stood guard at her mother’s funeral, who had once carried her, unconscious and fevered, down three flights of stairs.
She had to try. She had to believe there was still someone in that castle loyal to the morality. Loyal toherfamily.
She glanced toward Vesena, whose eyes had already narrowed in thought.
“We’ll need to get into the restricted wing,” she added.
Vesena didn’t blink. “What are we looking for?”
Evelyne hesitated, fingers stilling on the edge of a ledger. “My last engagement. The one to House Calveran. It lasted years—there were dowry discussions, sealed correspondence, territorial clauses.”
Vesena nodded slowly. “All right. But why go through all that now? What exactly are you hoping to find?”
“Some sign of disagreement,” Evelyne said. “Anything that suggests the story we’ve been told isn’t the full one. Calveran broke off the betrothal, then returned years later begging to reenter negotiations. It was public humiliation—and yet it passed with barely a ripple. That doesn’t happen. Not here. My father, the Council… they wouldn’t have let it go unless something happened behind closed doors. Something they couldn’t admit. Or chose not to.”
Her voice dropped further. “Maybe it was nothing. But if there was a reason—if they had cause—then I need to understand what it was.”
A beat. She looked Vesena fully in the eye now.
“We should also search under The Vaults. Everyone always whispered about them, especially after the Maroon Slaughter. Look for anything filed under that term—The Vaults, and theCalveran–Edrathen Alliance.”
Vesena gave a small nod. “Where?”
Evelyne tilted her chin toward the iron bars near the First Archivist’s desk. They weren’t locked. They didn’t have to be. In Edrathen, if something was forbidden, it stayed forbidden. Not because of locks or guards, but because obedience had been bred into the bone. You didn’t ask. You didn’t stray. And you certainly didn’t push through barriers that had been there longer than most noble houses.
The gates stood open, wide enough for a person to slip through sideways.
No one ever did.
There were only two other people in the archives now beside them: the First Archivist, seated at his heavy desk, and the Ninth, shelving scrolls. The archives only permitted a few visitors at a time. Something about humidity and air circulation. The enforced stillness however, didn’t work in their favor. Any noise would be noticed.
And so would absence.
“I’ll distract him,” Evelyne said, stacking tomes one on top of the other. “Can you get in there without being seen?”
Vesena’s answering smile was dry as dust and twice as sharp.
“Of course,” she assured.
When Evelyne closed the final ledger, she looked up and raised her hand, “Excuse me, my lord! We’re finished.”
The older man looked up from his desk. “Very good. I trust the materials were helpful?”
Evelyne nodded, as if her pulse weren’t pounding behind her ribs. “Yes. Quite.”
By the Rhyssa, we’re really doing this.
The man signaled to the Ninth with a flick of his fingers, and the boy moved immediately, stacking the ledgers in neat, reverent piles. Respectful to the point of vanishing.
The First stepped out from behind the desk, folding his hands behind his back. “Would Your Highness permit me a word about the Silence-era indexing system? There’s been some inconsistency in how the annotations are logged in the newer volumes—something I’ve meant to address for some time.”
