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Books are everywhere. Strewn across the floor, stacked in corners, piled on tables. Some are sealed in glass cases that have long since cracked open. Others lie open on desks as if someone meant to return to them but never did. The air smells like wild thyme and old parchment. I wish I could bottle it.

Farron stands stricken beside me, mouth dropping into an O. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his thin, golden reading glasses. Oh, this is serious.

I take a slow step forward. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” I whisper. “There must be hundreds of thousands of books.”

“A million books,” Farron says, voice reverent. “It’s as if you combined all the libraries of the Vale and…and doubled them.”

We walk farther in. A vine cracks beneath my boot, and I wince as if I’ve disturbed something sacred. “You think anything in here could help with the forge?”

Ezryn seemed to be feeling a teensy bit tense, so I thought the best thing we could do was give him space. I’d sent Kel and Dayton off to scout a new spot for camp. Caspian, Wrenley, and Jack, I’d instructed to salvage supplies from the other trade halls. Which left Farron and I to find the library and Ezryn some peace and quiet in the forge.

“Maybe,” Farron says. “Or something that could help us in the fight against Sira.”

I walk to a table adorned with gold leaf. At least ten books are scattered over the top. I pick up one, flip open to a page. Who was the last person to read this story? Did they find what they were looking for within the pages?

I look down, scanning the parchment. “Except we have a problem.”

“Hmm?” Farron darts his eyes to me from where they were gazing upward.

I hold up the book for him to see. The words are an intricate pattern of strange characters. “We can’t read the language.”

Hours pass. I’m slumped on the floor, a barricade of books around me. Every single one is written in the ancient language of the Above. The only ones in the Vale who still speak it are the underfae and Justus. I’m sure Jack does, but the idea of corralling that strange man and then trusting his translations…

I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes. My mother loved languages. Everyone talks about how Queen Aurelia was a famed linguist. So talented was her ear that she created a spell across the Vale, giving the gift of universal language.

But this realm has not been touched by her spell. Or maybe this language is too old, too ancient. The characters match the note the assassin carried when he attacked my father months ago in Keep Wolfhelm. Whatever the case, this language is lost.

Just another thing Queen Aurelia could command that her daughter cannot.

I fling myself back against a bookshelf. “Surrounded by books and not able to read a single one. This has to be our personal hell.”

Farron’s hunched over a book, long legs splayed out under the table. He’s rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His hair is mussed, and his thin, gold glasses are askew on his face. Shutting his book, he stands and wanders over to me.

“Maybe we’re not looking in the right place.” He holds his hand out.

I take it, and he pulls me to my feet. I arrive flush against him and allow myself a deep inhale of his cinnamon and pumpkin scent. His fingers drift to my chin, guiding my face upward.

My breath catches in my throat as I gaze at his face, the soft pout of his lips. I stand up on my tiptoes, leaning toward his mouth⁠—

But Farron keeps guiding my chin up until I’m looking at the domed ceiling.

“There’s still knowledge to be gained here,” Farron whispers. “We just have to look at it differently.”

I tilt my head back.

The ceiling rises into a graceful dome high above us. The entire thing is covered in paint. A mural, somehow untouched by time or ruin.

My breath catches.

It stretches across the curve of stone in sweeping strokes of gold, indigo, and soft, shimmering pearl. Floating isles drift in the sky, connected by threads of woven light. Each one is different—some lush and green, others barren and spined with jagged peaks. Between them fly winged fae, their bodies graceful and long-limbed, wings fanning behind them in blurs of color. They’re delicate and silken, like butterflies or moths in flight. They shimmer in the painted light, alive with motion even as they stand still.

Each figure interacts with the world. One tends to a plant covered in teardrop petals. Another pours water from a floating urn, and it falls in a rippling shimmer over a grove of trees. A third kneels beside a winged horse and lays a shining hand to its muzzle.

My eyes dart between the painted fae to the plants to the animals. Every one has a halo of light around them. The glow flows outward from each one, stretching into the space until it all blends together. One great web of light. Interwoven and interconnected.

“Everything in this mural is connected,” I whisper.

Farron steps beside me, his voice low. “Linked together by magic.”