“Lena needs him in the watch rotation,” Jacia says. “And she needs him to read the shadows.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I say, even though I agree it’s too soon. But I haven’t seen Naito in several days. I want to see how he’s doing.
Aren looks at me. I think he wants to protest. Instead, he says, “I need to help secure the veligh. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
This is the problem with starting a relationship in the middle of a war. Including today, I’ve seen him only three times since I ended my relationship with Kyol. For us to work out, I need time to get to know him. The thing is, it’s very possible we won’t have that time. Despite the way Aren acts sometimes, he’s not invincible. I’m certainly not, either.
My gaze goes to Jacia. I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her view on human and fae relationships or if she would rat us out to a high noble if I wrapped my arms around Aren. That’s what I want to do. I want to forget our responsibilities and run away to somewhere remote and quiet, someplace where we can be normal and sit and talk and…do other things.
Aren must know the direction my thoughts are heading. The half smile he gives me is both an apology and a promise. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”
After he leaves with Jacia, I have to assure myself a dozen times that he’s going to be okay and that I will see him again. Then I start looking for Naito. Surprisingly, he’s difficult to find. A human with lightning-covered skin kind of sticks out in this world, but I check his room, do a quick walk-through of the sculpture garden, and search a few other locations where he’s likely to be, all without any success. I finally start asking the English-speaking fae—we decided it’s best that the high nobles don’t know I’ve learned their language—if they’ve seen him. After half a dozen negative responses, someone tells me Naito’s in the royal archives. I clarify that with the fae more than once, though, thinking he must have misunderstood me. Humans aren’t allowed in the archives. At least, they weren’t under Atroth’s reign. Eventually, though, I head in that direction because I don’t know where else to look.
“McKenzie.” Kavok smiles when he opens the door. I can’t help but smile in return. I’ve always liked the archivist. He’s dedicated to his job. So dedicated he didn’t leave the palace when Lena gave the Court fae the opportunity, and when I worked for the king, he was one of the few fae who was always willing to talk to me. That’s mainly because he’s so curious about humans. Whenever he had the chance, he questioned me about my life and my world, and sometimes, he told me a few things about his.
“Hi, Kavok,” I say, looking into archives behind him. Drawers line the walls of the large room. The symbols on them are illuminated by hanging orbs, which are lit with magic. The combination of blue and white lightning inside them creates a steady, slightly tinted glow that doesn’t damage documents like the sun or lights from my world would. But that’s not the only thing that preserves the records in here. Kavok can, to a certain extent, control the weather. It’s a useful magic, one that’s in high demand. Farmers employ fae who can tweak the weather if there’s a drought, and the former king used to use them to darken the sky when he thought it would give the Court fae the advantage during an attack. Kavok, though, uses his ability to regulate the temperature of the archives. He keeps humidity out, too, and from what I’ve heard, some documents in here look like they were created yesterday even though they’re centuries old.
“It’s good to see you,” he says. Then, his face brightens even more. “I found an earlier reference.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he turns to the desk that’s just to the left of the door. At least, I think there’s a desk under the mountains of papers, thick, leather-bound tomes, and haphazard stacks of anchor-stones. An entire alcove in here is set aside for storing the latter. Locations both here and on Earth are kept in drawers in case the king needed fae to fissure somewhere they’d never been before.
After a minute of shuffling through the piles, Kavok looks up.
“Come in,” he says.
Carefully, I step over the threshold. I feel the atmosphere change when I do. It’s dryer and cooler than the corridor. “I thought humans weren’t allowed in here?”
He shrugs. “New ruler, new rules. Ah, yes. Sixteen hundred ninety-one years ago—our years, not yours. That’s the earliest mention I’ve come across. It corresponds with…”
He begins describing some kind of agricultural process, but I’m only half listening because I’m trying to figure out what reference he’s referring to. I haven’t spoken to him in months. He might have an impeccable memory, but I don’t. I can’t even remember the topic of our last conver—
Oh.
“You found a reference to a shadow-reader?” I ask.
“Yes!” He looks up from the huge book in front of him and grins. “It’s 350 years earlier than Faem thought.”
Faem, I think, was the previous archivist. The silver in Kavok’s eyes practically sparkles. His giddiness makes him seem even younger than he already looks. If he was human, I’d guess him to be in his midtwenties, so that means he’s probably pushing fifty, still a relatively young age for a fae. His hair is blond, just a few shades darker than Aren’s—most likely because he locks himself in here all day, every day—and it’s just long enough to be frazzled.
In short, he’s the geekiest fae I know. I keep expecting him to push wire-framed glasses up on his nose.
“What does it say about the shadow-reader?” I ask, interrupting his lecture on agricultural practices.
“Oh, yes.” He clears his throat. “It doesn’t say this is the first shadow-reader, and I can’t validate the text’s authority, but it appears that there is little difference between his abilities and yours. The shadows only told him where a fae exited the In-Between, not where he entered it, and he, too, had to draw what he saw and name the nearest city or region out loud. But then, we come to a small discrepancy.”
“Discrepancy?” I move closer to his desk, but he closes the text and rises.
“Not with your abilities,” he says. “With ours. According to the author, only a few fae were able to fissure to the locations the shadow-reader mapped and named.”
Now, that’s interesting.
“Is it something fae learned to do over time?” I ask.
“It’s implied that the fae who could follow the maps had more…er, more contact with humans.” Kavok doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Sex?”
He lifts a shoulder, says almost apologetically, “It’s implied.”
Everyone who has the ability to fissure can make it to the locations I sketch, and since most of those fae would rather not touch a human at all, sex definitely doesn’t have anything to do with it.
“That’s all I’ve discovered,” Kavok says. “I found the reference a few weeks ago, but you were…Well, you were…”
“Things were different then,” I say, hiding a smile. It’s almost cute, how easily flustered he is. “I’m looking for Naito.”
He seems grateful for the change of subject. “Of course. He’s there.”
He points to an alcove that splits off from the main room.
After he takes a seat at his desk, I walk toward the alcove he indicated, and there, sitting at a table heaped with papers, books, and a few boxes, sits Naito.
He doesn’t notice me. He’s staring at whatever is in front of him. His left hand is clenched in his black hair, helping to hold his head up, and his forehead is creased. He’s wearing the same jeans and white T-shirt I saw him in a few days ago, and his shoulders are rounded and slumped. Oddly, though, he looks better than he did before. I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s the lack of anger in his expression. Maybe it’s the amount of concentration, of focus, in the way his eyes move back and forth, reading, I presume. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he’s not demanding someone fissure him back to Earth so he can murder his father.