“None of my ancestors since Sebastien could create Truths.”
Isa speared me with a familiar look, her eyebrow raised. “They weren’t able to, or they never tried?”
“No one who left a journal mentioned even trying, but Sebastien wrote about the fact that his children couldn’t create Truths.”
Isa held out her hand, palm up. “Show me.”
I blinked. “I don’t actually remember which journal it was in. Sebastien left quite a few. I only remembered the other passage because it was in the same journal that described the Truth that prepares food from a certain cookbook.”
“One of Sebastien’s more practical additions to his father’s more whimsical spells?”
I shook my head. “Valois wrote that one, actually. Being able to eat at odd hours and not dealing with a cook mattered to him.”
Isa looked over at the bookshelves lining the wall to the left of my desk. “If you don’t remember which journal, then we should both start skimming them. The faster we can find that passage, the better.”
???
“You are readingtoo much into a random comment.” My tail lashed back and forth as I stared Isa down.
She didn’t even look up from the journal in her lap. At some point while we worked, she had slipped off her shoes and curled her legs up under her on the chair. She looked at ease, a few strands of chestnut hair sliding loose from her braid, her body slouched at an angle that screamed comfort rather than propriety.
I liked seeing her that way in my home. My office. My chair.
Even when she argued with me over the most ridiculous things.
“He specifically said that Eloise saw the truth of the matter.” She looked up at me, her brows drawn together. “His daughter was a truth-reader.”
“I can say that someone saw the truth of the matter without meaning magically. She was insightful and paid more attention than her brother, that’s all.”
“Then why does Sebastien specifically mention Daniel’s lack of magic in the next sentence?”
“Fine. Let’s say you are right. What does it matter?”
“If she was a truth-reader, then the odds that she was also a truth-teller are minuscule. For Valois to have been a dual-power mage is already beyond belief. So, if I am right, neither of Sebastien’s children were truth-tellers. His father was. He was. Lady Cecily is.”
“You think that is the key to writing Truths?” Could it be that simple? “No. I know more of my ancestors were truth-tellers than just Valois and Sebastien.”
“But did they ever attempt to write a Truth?”
“Probably not,” I conceded, “but if we are working under the theory that you are right, I am also a truth-teller and I couldn’t write a Truth.”
“You couldn’t reverse the curse. That is a different problem. Did you ever attempt to write a Truth that had nothing to do with your curse?”
I hesitated, and that was all the answer Isa needed. She hummed, calling in the supplies she needed to write a Truth. Then she unrolled the scroll that had come out of the archives with her. To my surprise, she began copying the words on the scroll.
“How will it prove anything for me to make a Truth that already exists?”
“This Truth created a pen that doesn’t require an inkwell. We know the phrasing works—or at least we can assume it does—so it is a good test of your own power. You can create a new pen for me, since I can’t summon the old one thanks to it being made by magic.”
Once she finished the Truth, I signed it, and we made our way to the great hall. We only made it as far as the negotiation room before Marc interrupted us.
He entered from the other side of the room. “There you both are. I was beginning to think I was the only one who noticed the time.”
Isa and I both looked at the clock hanging on the wall, its pendulum slowly swinging back and forth. A quarter past noon.
With a twitch of a single claw, I sent the paper in Isa’s hands into the locked drawer of the desk in my private tower room. “Of course. I apologize for delaying the meal; we were caught up in a debate.”
I didn’t look toward the great hall as we passed the open doors, exiting the room instead on the far side, only a few doors down from the dining room. Marc had never before sought me out if I was late for a meal. I had skipped them without warning at least twice a weekthe entire time we had been alone together in the castle. It was the reason I had taught him how to summon his own food.
