I can’t say as much about the omnidraught. The queen has been asking about my progress, and I am too embarrassed to tell her about my failed first attempt. I told her I need more time to work through Ragglestaff’s notes, which isn’t a lie. But I doubt she’d be impressed if she knew I’ve attempted the recipe nowfourseparate times—each ending in another round of failure. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is an ingredient missing. What that could be eludes me. I’m very close to enlisting Cygnus’s help, but I don’t trust him that much quite yet.
I find myself wishing I could talk to Finn, but the prince is still avoiding me. His absence aches more than the skakabri’s venom. Why won’t he just talk to me? I am tempted to seek him out directly, but the impulse deflates when I remember the truth about the Frumentari. According to Cygnus, his entire job is to find and hunt people like me, so why do I still miss him?
Cygnus turns the page he’s examining. “The reason you’re getting nowhere withthatparticular text is because it was written by an imperialist simpleton.”
I push aside my thoughts of Finn and refocus on our work. “How do you know?”
“Check the colophon.” He gestures toward the back of his volume. “There’s information about who made it and when. The inscription should tell you whether the book was printed or copied AV or BV.”
“BV?”
“Before Verdin.”
I flip to the symbols, studying the curling script.
“Anything stamped AV is probably pure propaganda,” Cygnus explains in a whisper soft enough for only our ears to detect. “Verdin the Vanquisher liked to reimagine events the way he’d havepreferredthem to happen and recordthatas truth. When his dragons razed Evermore, they hit the libraries first. That was deliberate. Elven knowledge: the runic language, spellcraft, wellsprung potioneering…it was always our most powerful asset. So Verdin went at it the hardest. Muddling the past is still their strategy today.”
He reaches for one of the books stacked between us, an old leather volume with a glossy black cover. Then he flips to the colophon. “See this? Read the inscription.”
By my mother’s blood and my father’s name: I seal these words.
“And the date—there.” He points. “That’s where the librarian has stamped the year.”
345 BV.I try to imagine an Elven scholar roaming these halls. It’s hard to fathom.
“After the war, runes and spellcraft were banned in schools,” Cygnus explains. “Verdin ordered anything with explicit magical knowledge be burned. For the first hundred years or so, people resisted by passing on knowledge orally. But the Verdish caught on and criminalized that, too. I found a record of an opera singer in Westgard who performedTheHeir of Evermorein public, and they slaughtered her with her entire family. People eventually got scared, of course. Other than what was preserved in Sontaag and Ursandor, that knowledge was essentially lost.”
My teeth grind as I realize how much I’ve taken Mother’s spellbooks for granted. I never fathomed their value.
“Aren’t we wasting our time here, if every reference to the gates has already been burned?” I ask.
“You’ve got to read around the bullshit,” says Cygnus. “Like this one—look.” He slides a volume toward me.
I pick it up skeptically. “This is an encyclopedia of imperial sewage systems.”
“Right. It’s all the crap you have to read around. But check this out—page four hundred thirty-eight.” He flips through the book eagerly, stopping at a page that contains what looks like a map of Crown City with webbing over the top. He reads aloud:“‘When erecting Crown City, the resourceful king utilized a natural system oftunnelsbeneath the city to divert sewage from his castle toward thedesignateddumpingzones.’There is a chance that could be referring to what’s under the Everwillow.”
“You read four hundred pages of a sewage encyclopedia to get to that?” I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.
Cygnus looks offended. “I wanted to be thorough.”
“My mother wouldloveyou.” I sigh and shut my book. I’m pretty sure that the answers we need aren’t going to be found in books—let alone books in the royal library.
“Recite it for me one last time?” Cygnus asks.
I’ve repeated the translated riddle so many times I have it memorized.“‘I am always in your heart, and I can never be replaced. Once gone, I go forever, but you see me in every face.’”
Cygnus nods and starts muttering under his breath, repeating the riddle to himself. His brow is furrowed in concentration. Seeing him focused and hunched over a stack of books, I can picture him at Belshire—studious, determined, and thirsting for knowledge.In adifferentworld, would we have attended school together? Could we have been friends?
“It couldn’t be love, could it?” I guess, turning the riddle over in my head one more time. “I know a few recipes for love potions.”
His brows rise. “Setting that terrifying notion aside, love doesn’t make sense. Love doesn’t leave forever. People change their minds all the time. And how do you see love in every face?”
“Well, aren’t you romantic?”
“I’m not the one brewing love potions.”
“I’ve never used one!” My face burns. “Forget it. It was a stupid idea.”
