Page 355

Nyra starts walking. Fast. "Come."

"Where?"

"Response Quarters."

Cassian looks toward the dining hall. "Breakfast."

"Bring it."

"From where?"

"I don't care." He looks at me. I shrug. We follow.

The common room is almost empty when we arrive.

Most of the Response Wing is still at training or breakfast. Good. Nyra goes straight toward the cabinet beneath the western table. Locked. She pulls a key from around her neck. Opens it. Inside— paper.

Stacks of it. Copies. Our copies. The two days before the Council arrived. The weekend when the five of us barely slept. When we copied everything we could before the Council reached Varethia and decided what happened next. Reports. Maps. Testimonies. Partial Council records. Historical references. Lists of disappearances. Anything that looked remotely useful. We didn't know the Silent Archive would be sealed afterward. Not for certain. But apparently some part of us suspected access wouldn't last. We were right. The original documents are now behind Council seals. These aren't.

Nyra starts spreading them across the table. Cassian appears five minutes later with bread, fruit and enough coffee to support a small military unit.

I take one. Nyra doesn't notice.

"What are we looking for?" I ask.

"I don't know yet."

"Wonderful."

"Something Rhyven said."

Cassian pauses with bread halfway to his mouth. "Oh, gods."

"What?"

"He's infecting people." Nyra ignores him.

I sit across from her. "What did he say?"

"Stop relying on the Rider." I wait. "Read the dragon."

"Yes. I was there."

Nyra flips a page. "You're missing the point."

"Probably."

"The Rider is an interpretation." My hand stills around my coffee. Nyra continues. "The dragon is the original source." Oh. She starts moving through the copied documents. Fast. "We've been treating the Academy records like originals."

"Some are."

"Some." She pulls one page. "Not all." Another. "Look." She slides it toward me. The handwriting is mine. I remember copying this one because the original had been nearly impossible to read.

Near the bottom— Testimony reproduced from Varethian Civic Record, Volume IV.

I frown. "So?"

"This isn't the original testimony."