Comfort later.
“Take me to the old archive,” she said.
Lysa blew out the lamp.
The archive’s oldest reading room sat below the public records hall, behind two locked doors and a stair narrow enough to make every footstep sound like trespass.
The air changed as they descended. Drier. Colder. Older.
Elara was waiting near an iron reading stand, her hair pinned severely, a dark cloak fastened at her throat. Beside her stood an older man with gray hair, ink-stained fingers, and eyes sharp enough to cut parchment.
“Elric Dorne,” Elara said. “Crown legal historian. He knows where records hide bodies when the living prefer them forgotten.”
Elric inclined his head. “Lady Sabine.”
His voice was dry and precise.
Sabine removed the linen-wrapped packet from her bodice and set it on the reading stand.
Elara read first.
Her face hardened line by line.
Elric took the pages after her, adjusting the lamp with one careful hand. He compared Isolde’s handwriting to a sealed folder of formal correspondence brought from a locked cabinet.
“This is her hand,” he said. “No doubt.”
“You are certain?” Sabine asked.
“I am paid to be certain after everyone else has become emotional.” He tapped one page. “The formation of the high letters. The pressure in the downward stroke. The habit of spacing before sacred nouns. Isolde Corven wrote these.”
Elara leaned over the stand. “And the references?”
Elric crossed to a cabinet banded in iron, unlocked it, and withdrew three ledgers.
“Chapel renovation accounts,” he said, opening the first. “Three months before Isolde’s wedding. Black basalt ordered.Ceremonial iron. Reinforcement of floor channels beneath the sanctification chamber.”
Sabine read the entry.
Her eyes caught on one phrase.
Projected ritual discharge.
Her skin crawled.
“They calculated it,” she said.
“Yes,” Elric replied. “Blood, water, heat runoff, and drainage volume. The language is obscure by design, but the material quantities are not. Someone expected the chamber to endure force.”
Elara opened the second ledger. “Succession notes after Isolde’s death.”
Sabine watched her turn pages.
The official line appeared in neat ink.
Lady Isolde Vhalor expired following sacred strain and fever after final consecration attempt.
Elric drew the lamp closer.
