The air in the lower palace felt older than time. Thaelyn moved quietly down the spiral of steps, each one narrowing as it descended, until the torchlight from the walls above was only a whisper behind her. She had been summoned by name, not by title, and that alone made her chest tighten with unease.
The archivist was waiting. Not in the main library where nobles idled behind velvet-curtained alcoves, but beneath it, past wards that shimmered against her skin and a heavy door that required neither key nor command, just her presence.
When her fingertips brushed the carved storm-sigil etched into the blackened wood, it opened with a long, low creak like stone remembering a name it had not spoken in centuries.
The room beyond was cavernous and round, its walls lined with curved shelves of silver-laced tomes and sealed scrolls that hummed faintly in the dim light. In the center stood a single writing desk of scorched redwood, and behind it, Vaelen Solen, tall, spare, draped in robes the color of mourning fog.
He turned without surprise. “You’ve come.”
“Of course I have,” Thaelyn said softly. “You said it was important.”
Vaelen set the scroll aside, folding his hands with deliberate care. “This room is warded against listening ears, both human and not. Because what I’m about to show you was buried even from the royal record keepers.”
Thaelyn’s brow tightened. Her pulse began to quicken, and Nyxariel stirred faintly beneath her skin, an awareness more than a voice, like breath on glass.
“Then say it,” Thaelyn said. “What are you hiding from me?”
“How much do you know about your heritage?” Vaelen tilted his head, studying her face with a kind of tired affection.
Thaelyn hesitated. “Maeriel and Harven Marren, my parents, raised me in the quiet hills of Glenmere. I was nothing special.”
Vaelen made a soft sound, caught between pity and disbelief. “You were never nothing special.”
He turned from her then, crossing to a sealed cabinet at the far end of the chamber. With a precise sweep of his hand, he whispered a phrase in the old tongue, and the lock shimmered violet, then fell away. From the depths of the vault, he drew forth two things: a scroll wrapped in storm-colored silk, and a blackwood box bound in silver.
He placed both on the desk and gestured for her to sit.
“I’m not fond of riddles today,” she said quietly. “Please don’t drag this out.”
She nodded slowly. “Maeriel Marren is my mother.”
“And she loved you,” he said softly. “But she was never your true mother.”
Thaelyn’s spine stiffened. She had known, somewhere deep down, that she had felt it in the gaps that Maeriel never filled. Hearing it spoken aloud still left her cold.
“She protected you,” Vaelen continued, “because your birth was marked. Because your blood would paint a target on your back even before you learned to speak.”
“And my real mother?”
“She carried you in secret to a sworn guardian, Maeriel, a former Aether acolyte. She raised you as her own, but not even Harven Marren knew who you truly were.”
Thaelyn sat in stunned silence.
His gaze met hers. “The name you’ve carried, Marren, was given for your protection. You were not born Thaelyn Marren.” He reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a folded parchment, aged and cracked at the corners. “This was hidden in the final vault beneath Aeromir before it fell. It bore your mother’s sigil and her final command to those who remained loyal.”
He passed it to Thaelyn.
She opened it with trembling fingers, eyes scanning the elegant, looping script. Her breath caught as she read the closing line:
Protect the child of House Taranveil. The last living flame.
Her knees nearly gave out. “Taranveil…”
“Your name,” Vaelen said, “is not Marren. That was the shield. The truth is written in your blood. Thaelyn Taranveil, heir to a house long believed destroyed.”
Thaelyn stared down at the parchment, the letters swimming in her vision.
“They said House Taranveil was wiped out,” she whispered. “During the Rebellion. All records purged.”
