“Don’t wander too far. I’m going to find my sister,” Tethys said. “It’d probably be best if you stayed here.”
Araes, still with star-filled eyes, simply nodded and found a seat at one of the round central tables.
Tethys didn’t need to search row after row to find her sister. She knew exactly where the night goddess would be. Tucked beneath a heavy woolen blanket on the floor, at the furthest corner of the archives, was her sister with a thick book of fables propped on her knees.
Chapter 31
“Sister?” Polaris jumped to her feet as Tethys approached, her sleek, long hair wrapping itself around her like tendrils of the nighttime heavens itself. “Eos above, what are you doing here?”
“I needed to speak with you urgently,” Tethys said.
Polaris’s near-white complexion paled and her lips thinned as she stared at her younger sister.
“You’ve come all this way to speak with me? What matters could be so urgent you risked the journey?” she asked, pulling Tethys into an embrace. Polaris smelled like jasmine and winter melons. Her scent was so indescribably familiar it knotted the back of Tethys’s throat as she breathed her sister in. Polaris was almost half a foot taller than she was, her height an apparent trait of their father, and her long, graceful arms wrapped easily around Tethys’s petite frame.
“There have been lowborn kidnappings, and the Venian shades found something at the scene that you need to see,” Tethys said, finally pulling away from her sister’scomforting warmth. She pulled the orb from its hiding place and placed it into Polaris’s outstretched palm.
Polaris’s brow wrinkled as she inspected the stone. She twisted it in her hand and held it toward the flickering light of the lantern, now abandoned beside the opened book of fables and crumpled up blanket. Color drained from her face.
“Where did you find this?” Polaris asked, her voice low and serious.
“It was in a puddle where a little girl had been playing shortly before she vanished,” Tethys said, watching her sister’s expression shift from curiosity, to concern, to something far too similar to fear.
“Was there anything else with it?” Polaris asked, her usual collected composure faltering.
“No. Everything was as it should be. Except for this. Take a look at the other side,” Tethys said, pointing to the orb once more. Polaris rolled it in her palm and held it close to her eyes as she examined the ancient runes. “I can’t read it, sister. I was hoping you could translate for me. Maybe there’d be some indication of who’s taking the children. I suspected this little stone is their calling card of sorts,” Tethys explained.
“Tethys…” Polaris’s expression was grave as she faced her sister. “Let me show you something.”
Tethys followed her past rows of dusted hardbound books with marbled endpapers, and toward the archive’s central tables. Opposite them, a floor to ceiling mural of snow and mountains and night swirled with vibrant colors of the borealis—Polaris’s inherited power.
“Look at the inscription in the bottom left corner.” Polaris outstretched a slender index finger, guiding her sister’s eye to a set of runes small enough to easily be overlooked.
“What does it say? I’m not familiar with the ancient tongue,” Tethys said, kneeling beside the mural. Polarisjoined her and traced her fingers across the runes as she read.
“When winter and spring coincide, darkness’s heir brings the light of truth and the fall of vanity. Only embers of life can destroy visions of death.”
“I don’t understand…” Tethys’s brow furrowed at the nonsensical riddle of words strung together.
“It’s what’s carved into your orb, sister,” Polaris said, placing the gemstone back in her palm. “The ancient northern folk who built this place left it here as a prophetic warning for the future of the realms. Father thinks it the mad ramblings of a mortal whose mind was lost to time, but there’s something in its phrasing that has eaten away at me for as long as I’ve been here.”
“So, somehow, an ancient prophecy, inscribed in the most sacred of places in all of Ursae, managed to end up in a puddle hundreds of miles away. What do you make of that?” Tethys’s head spun with thoughts of the dark fables and folklore she and Polaris read about as children.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never been able to decrypt its meaning,” Polaris said, fixing her gaze on the mural.
“And what of this place? This lake and cabin?” Tethys ran a finger across the rigid strokes of dried paint. It was clear the artist had replicated every painstaking detail of the landscape.
“At first I thought maybe it was a place in the northern realm, but I’ve scoured the entirety of the region north of the city and there’s nothing like it. It isn’t our homeland, either. The mortal realm doesn’t have any lakes shaped like this.” The night goddess adjusted the thin bangle secured around her left bicep as she spoke.
“Could it simply be a painting from imagination?” Tethys asked.
Polaris shook her head, her midnight hair falling in front her face before carefully tucking the strands behind an ear. With the lighted chandeliers above, Tethys wasable to inspect her sister’s face more closely. Her eyes were sunken and her cheekbones were hollow. The complexion of her skin was a shade paler than usual, and the sleek pin straight hair that fell past her shoulders was disheveled as if she hadn’t brushed it in a few days.
“Polaris, what’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, bracing her elbows against the table.
“Not that I expected a response from Ursae, but why haven’t you responded to my messengers?” Tethys took the seat beside the northern queen.
