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.”