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He met us halfway down the main aisle, inclining his head slightly. "Can I help you find anything specific?"

"I know my way around," Aether said. "No need to interrupt your lesson."

"Nonsense." Talon's eyes fixed on me. "It would be awfully impolite not to be of aid to our new Duskbound."

Heat crept up my neck at the title, but I managed a nod. "Thank you."

"I'll be in the classified records section," Aether said, already moving toward one of the spiral staircases. "When you're finished here."

Talon led me through the maze of shelves, occasionally gesturing to different sections as we walked. His movements were delicate, reverent almost, as if each book and scroll was precious beyond measure. Given the state of their realm, perhaps they were.

"Most of our older texts are kept in temperature-controlled rooms," he explained, his voice carrying through the space.

I followed him, trying to memorize the layout as unease sank into my gut. I was going to need far longer than a week to sort through the sheer volume.

"Do you have any records about arcanite?" I asked. "Its properties, its uses?"

Something flickered across his face—interest, maybe, or wariness. "We do." He studied me for a moment. "What exactly are you looking to learn?"

"Everything," I said. "If I'm going to help stop this war, I need to understand what started it."

Talon glanced around the aisles before lowering his voice. "Umbrathia was never home to large deposits of the mineral. We depleted what stores we did have nearly a century ago. Some texts, I would have to assume, have also been lost to time..." He shook his head. "What remains is fragmentary at best."

"Just point me in the right direction, and I'll see what I can find."

I droppedthe stack of books onto the table with a dull thud. Aether sat at the other end, legs propped up, deeply engrossed in whatever he was reading. His casual uniform hugged his frame in a way the combat leathers didn't, the fabric pulled tight across his thighs. His head was tilted back, square jaw tensed.

What caught me off guard, though, was the pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on his nose, shadowing the contour of his cheekbones. Something about seeing him like this—the brutish warrior wearing scholarly spectacles—struck me as utterly absurd. I laughed out loud.

He looked up, one eyebrow raised over the frames. "Something amusing?"

"I didn't realize you wore glasses." I gestured vaguely at his face, still fighting a smile.

He sighed, turning his open book face-down on the table. I caught a glimpse of the text—impossibly small print that made my eyes hurt just looking at it.

"Ah," I said, moving back to my own stack. "Found anything of interest?"

"There's a lot to sort through." His eyes returned to his page, black hair falling down over his forehead. I found myself staring longer than I should have. "Most of it irrelevant."

I nodded, turning back to my stack of books.

“And how old are you?” Aether asked as I sat down.

“I was born twenty-three years ago, on the sixth day of Ainthe.”

Aether tapped a quill against the table and I glanced over at him. He studied me with a curious expression.

“Your birthday was a few weeks ago. That would make you twenty-four now.” He raised an eyebrow.

How had time passed so quickly? Twenty-four. My mind drifted to the year before—what I had done to celebrate. I was never big on birthdays, but Osta would usually drag me out of the apartment and buy me dinner. Last year, I’d been so out of control I hadn’t even allowed that. She had picked up food on her way home from work and we played card games on the floor. I bit back a smile.

“Well, then twenty-four, I guess,” I said after a few moments.

“That will help tremendously, thank you.” He turned his attention back to his records.

I pulled out one of the books on arcanite, trying not to think too hard about what he might be searching for in those records. Did I even want him to find anything about my parents? I'd gone my whole life not knowing who they were. Learning the truth now felt dangerous—like it might shatter whatever fragile understanding I'd built of myself.

The leather binding creaked as I opened the book, its pages yellowed with age. The first few chapters covered various minerals and their properties. Some I recognized from Sídhe—precious stones used in crafting, metals that could enhance enchantments. Others seemed unique to Umbrathia, their uses foreign to me. I found myself getting lost in the descriptions.