Outside the door, the servant stood sentry, instructed to whistle if anyone approached.
“So,” Ronin began, rounding the large black desk in the center of the room and poking through the drawers, “what exactly are we looking for?”
Mireille shrugged, stepping over to one of the bookshelves. “Anything of interest.”
“Helpful,” he grumbled as Mireille examined the titles.
Two entire shelves were taken up by a collection of encyclopedias, the recorded history of Ethyrios dating back several centuries before the war. There were also travelogues, collections of the mythologies of the High and Lesser Gods, plus an entire shelf full of folk stories and fiction.
Based on the state of the spines, many cracked and worn, she had no trouble believing Otto had read every one.
She pulled one of the mythology collections from the shelf, stories of the High Gods. Entire paragraphs had been highlighted, sections crossed out in violent, ink-black strokes. Scratched notes and odd symbols decorated the margins—the scrawlings of a mad, obsessed mind.
She returned the book, her gaze snagging on a thick folio on the bottom shelf. It contained an assortment of maps, including an ancient one that showed the continent several centuriesbefore the war. Before the Empire had come into power, and before the land had been divided into its current territories.
Mireille hauled the folio over to the desk and spread it open. Ronin came up behind her, placing a palm on the surface and curving over her back.
She dragged a finger across the symbols littering areas that were now portions of present day Akti and the Desolation.
“What do those symbols mean?” Ronin’s breath kissed the back of her neck and she fought to suppress a shiver.
She pointed to an upright triangle. “This one must mean fire. It’s the same symbol that was etched onto the wall beside the fireplace in the crypt.”
Ronin nodded, his chin grazing her shoulder. “And the others?”
“Safe assumption that this one”—she pointed to an upside-down triangle—“means water. And this one?—”
“Lightning,” Ronin finished as she gestured to the tiny bolt. “They’re concentrated in the areas where the guests are from.”
“Not all the guests. Neither you nor I are from there.”
Sympathy softened Ronin’s eyes. “You don’t know that for sure though, do you? Your father could be from one of those towns.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Mireille muttered, that familiar, empty ache hollowing out her stomach as she closed the folio and returned it to the shelves. She continued to peruse them as Ronin resumed rifling through Otto’s desk.
“Come look at this,” Ronin called a few moments later. He’d opened a thick leather ledger.
Mireille stepped up beside him. “What is that?”
Ronin flipped through the yellowed pages, hundreds of them, with handwritten names scrawled beneath branching lines.
“Looks like family trees,” Ronin murmured.
“Did Otto compile all of thesehimself?”
“It’s all in the same hand-writing. It must have taken him years to record all this.” Ronin flipped the ledger over, scrolling through the pages then stabbing his finger on one at the back. “Here.”
Mireille leaned in, reading the bottom of the page.
Larissa Bisere.
Above her name, her lineage was scrolled out in lines of black ink, dating back at least five generations. At the top, what would have been Larissa’s great-great-grandfather’s name had a star next to it.
Mireille traced a finger over it. “What does the star mean?”
Ronin scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Perhaps they were the last of their family members to possess elemental magic?”
“If that were the case, why is he labeling them with stars instead of the elemental symbols?”
