House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)

And Sathia had refused to be left alone, even with the safety of her married status now granting her the right to move freely. I’m not going to be locked up in some room to rot, she’d said, and stomped after Bryce, who had begun explaining everything she’d learned about Theia and her daughters and the Fae history in and outside of Midgard. She hadn’t spoken a word to Tharion since they’d exchanged their vows—and the mer had seemed just fine about that, too.

It was all fucking nuts. But Ruhn had heard what Lidia had said to Bryce—about never having had anyone to fight for her. It hadn’t sat well.

Ruhn dared a look over at where Lidia stood, peering up at the towering entrance to the archives. He hadn’t failed to note Morven’s shock upon realizing she stood in his throne room. And as they’d departed, the Stag King had seemed poised to speak to Lidia, but the Hind had breezed past him before he could.

Her golden eyes slid to Ruhn’s, and he could have sworn pure fire pulsed through him—

He quickly looked away.

Sathia asked Bryce, “What if you don’t find the answers you seek?”

“Then we’re fucked,” Bryce said plainly, and finally laid her palm flat against the doors to the archives. A shudder seemed to go through the metal.

On a groan, the doors swung inward, revealing nothing but sunlight-dappled gloom beyond. Ruhn swapped glances with Dec, whose brows were high at the display of submission from the building. But Bryce breezed through, Athalar and Baxian on her heels.

“So you really intend to go into the Cave of Princes?” Sathia asked Bryce as they entered the dim space.

“I know my female presence will probably cause the caves to collapse from sheer outrage,” Bryce said, voice echoing off the massive dome above them, “but yes.”

Ruhn snickered and peered up at the dome. It was a mosaic of onyx stones, interrupted by bits of opal and diamond—stars. A crescent moon of pure nacre occupied the apex of it, gleaming in the dimness. Eerily similar to the Ocean Queen’s sharp nails.

Sathia trailed Bryce and asked softly, “And—that’s really it? The knife?”

“Shocking, I know,” Bryce said. “Party girl bearing the prophesied—”

“No,” Sathia said. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

Bryce paused, turning, and Ruhn knew Athalar was monitoring every word, every move from Sathia as Flynn’s sister clarified, “I was thinking about what it means. Not just in regard to the Asteri and your conflict with them. But what it means for the Fae.”

“Whole lot of nothing,” Flynn snorted.

“We were told our people would be united with the return of that knife,” Sathia countered sharply. Her tone gentled as she asked Bryce, “Is that part of … whatever plan you have? To unite the Fae?”

Bryce surveyed the rows and rows of shelves and said coldly, “The Fae don’t deserve to be united.”

Even Ruhn froze. He’d never thought about what Bryce might do as leader, but …

“Come on, Quinlan,” Athalar said, slinging his arm around her shoulders and decisively changing the subject, “let’s get to exploring.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bryce muttered. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for a digital catalog here, so … I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” She pointed ahead, to the entire wall taken up by a card catalog. “Look for any mention of the sword and knife, anything about the mists guarding this place, Pelias and Helena … Maybe even stuff about the earliest days of Avallen, either during the First Wars or right after.”

“That is … a lot to look for,” Flynn said.

“Bet you’re wishing you’d learned to read,” Sathia trilled, striding for the catalog.

“I can read!” Flynn sulked. Then mumbled, “It’s just boring.”

Ruhn snorted, and the sound was echoed nearby—Lidia.

Again, that look between them. Ruhn said a shade awkwardly to her, “We should get cracking.”

A catalog that massive could take days to comb through. Especially since there was no librarian or scholar in sight. Come to think of it, the entire place had an air of neglect. Emptiness. The castle did, too, as well as the small city and surrounding lands.

It had all seemed so mysterious, so strange when he’d come here decades ago: the famed misty isle of Avallen. Now he could only think of Cormac, growing up in the gloom and quiet. All that fire, dampened by this place.

And yet he’d loved his people—wanted to do right by them. By everyone on Midgard, too.

There had to be something good here, if Cormac had come out of it. Ruhn just couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.

The Fae don’t deserve to be united.

Bryce’s words hung in the air, as if they still echoed off the dome above. And Ruhn didn’t know why, but as the words settled into the darkness … they made him sad.

After a few tense minutes, Declan declared, “Well, this is interesting.”

He stood at the nearest table, what looked like a stack of maps unrolled before him. A large one—of Midgard—was spread across the top.

Ruhn strode for his friend, grateful for the break. “What is?” The others followed suit, gathering around the table.

Dec pointed at Avallen on the map, the paper yellow with age despite the preserving spells upon it. “I thought looking at old maps might give us some hints about the mists—you know, see how old cartographers represented them and stuff. And then I found this.”

Athalar rubbed his neck and said, “At the risk of being ridiculed … what am I looking at?”

“There are islands here,” Declan said. “Dozens.”

It clicked. “There shouldn’t be any islands around Avallen,” Ruhn said.

Bryce leaned closer, running her fingers across the archipelago. “When’s this map from?”

“The First Wars,” Dec said, and pulled another map from the bottom of the pile. “This is Midgard now. No islands in this area except the one we’re on.”

“So …,” Baxian said.

“So,” Dec said, annoyed, “isn’t it weird that there were islands fifteen thousand years ago, and now they’re gone?”

Tharion cleared his throat. “I mean, sea levels do rise—”

Dec gave them all a withering look, and pulled out a third map. “This map’s from a hundred years after the First Wars.” Ruhn scanned it. No islands at all.

Across the table, Lidia was silently assessing the different maps. She lifted her eyes to Ruhn’s, and he couldn’t stop his heartbeat from jacking up, his blood from thrumming at her nearness—

“All those islands,” Bryce murmured, “disappeared within a hundred years.”

“Right after the Asteri arrived,” Athalar added, and Ruhn looked away from Lidia long enough to consider what was before them.

He said, “Well, despite its mists, Avallen clearly has had no problem revealing its shape and coastline to the Asteri for the empire’s official maps. Why hide the islands?”

“There are no islands,” Sathia said quietly. “The ones on that first map …” She pointed along the northwestern coast. “We sailed in from that direction. We didn’t see a single island. The mists could have obscured some of them, but we should have seen at least a few.”

“I’ve never seen or heard any mention of additional islands here,” Flynn agreed.

Silence fell, and they all glanced between the three maps as if they’d reveal some big secret.

Dec finally shook his head. Something happened here a long time ago—something big. But what?”

“And,” Lidia murmured, the cadence of her voice sending shivers of pleasure down Ruhn’s spine, “is this knowledge at all useful to us?”

Bryce tapped a hand on the oldest map, and Ruhn could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

“Silene said something in her memories about the island that had once been her court.” Bryce’s face took on a faraway look, as if she were trying to remember the exact words. “She said that the land … shriveled. That when she started to house those monsters to hide the Harp’s presence, the island of the Prison became barren. And the Ocean Queen said islands literally withered into the sea in despair when the Asteri arrived.”

“So?” Flynn asked.

Bryce’s gaze sharpened again. “It seems weird that two Fae strongholds, both islands, were once archipelagos, and then both lost all but the central island in the wake of the arrival of … unpleasant forces.”

Ruhn raised his eyebrows. “I can’t believe you actually told us what you were thinking, for once.”