Was it curiosity that kept me turning pages so relentlessly in the library, or was I searching for escape?
My gaze tracks upward. Light filters through, like sunlight piercing leaf cover. Damp stone carries a familiar tang, like dew on morning grass before the day warms. If I focus hard enough, the distant echoes might be the rustling of branches, neither friend nor foe until revealed.
My fingertips trail along the craggy walls as I move. I pass the portrait gallery, where Ace once spun tales of those who came before.Past the door where Vale so often greeted me when duty surrendered to his heart. Past the quiet alcove that holds our whispers safe.
This is not the forest, and yet it may well be just as much my home.
I continue deeper into the western halls. Rooms cluster more tightly here; men move in and out, exchanging quiet greetings and bits of business. They pay me little mind beyond returning my smile.
I turn a corner, and the air shifts: parchment, dust, and something older still. It reminds me of the library, yet with an undercurrent I cannot name. Then, like the mouth of the cave where I once sought shelter, a door stands ajar. Daylight spills across its threshold.
Curious indeed.
I slow, quiet and steady.
My palm glides against the grain of the wooden door as I lean, peering inside before I can be caught plainly in the doorway.
I see him long before he notices me. Bent over stacks of parchment, shifting piles of scrolls, scurrying about like a mouse. He pauses, one hand braced on his hip, the other pushing thin wire-framed spectacles back up the bridge of his nose.
“Lose something, Fenloris?”
My words slip out with gentle caution, more for his sake than mine. Like approaching a creature of the woods, I move slowly so as not to startle him. His head snaps up toward me, and I can’t help but laugh at how much he resembles a startled woodland animal.
My hands linger on the door, still a barrier between us. until his shoulders ease, softening beneath the warmth of my smile.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ilinger in the doorway, caught between the towers of parchment and the man who tends them. A face I have passed a dozen times without a second thought, a life unfolding in ink and stacked scrolls I never stopped to see.
He freezes at my intrusion. Whatever thought he’d been chasing falls away as he looks between me and the chaos around him.
“I didn’t mean to intrude.”
I tilt my head, extending a hand in quiet greeting. “I’m actually quite glad I found you.”
He looks puzzled, leaning in as if afraid he misheard.
I step farther inside. The light is brighter here than in the more formal rooms of the western wing. Sconces line the walls; I can almost feel how long they’ve burned—how easily time slips away when he works. The scent of oil and ink clings to everything. Maps blanket the room.
“I would love to learn more about Caerhollan and what lies beyond,” I say. “If you’d be so kind.”
His posture shifts, no longer timid. His shoulders settle, and his eyes brighten for a moment before he reins himself in again.
“Of course, my lady. Whatever you wish.”
The room is larger than I realized. Shelves rise nearly to the ceiling, filled with scrolls stacked in precarious towers. I barely spy the broad oak scribing bench near the window—ink pots and quills lined along the sill and measuring tools scattered across the surface. Chaos, perhaps, but with a structure he seems to understand.
He turns toward something on the far wall.
A map.
No—a world.
I move toward it, breath caught somewhere in my chest. Caerhollan sits bold among the mountains, the ink dark where the ridge lines break. Settlements mark the hills like constellations. North of the High Hold rests The Jewel, its name adorned with flourishes. At its heart, a small star: the Manor.
Something warm stirs inside me. A sense of home, perhaps. I wonder if I will ever see it.
Farther north, the pen work sharpens. Narrow paths carve through mountain breaks, leading toward a single word.
