“Think about this logically. Ronin knows how precarious his position looks to the kingdoms. The more the Dead Wood grows, the more Thiy’s leaders will look for someone to blame, and Ronin is its self-proclaimed ruler. He wants to fix this. He wouldn’t withhold important information if he thought it’d help you. My father—” She pauses as the skin around her mouth tightens with pain. I look down; the guilt that always perches at my shoulder digs its claws into my skin. She clears her throat and continues. “My father says that there are some in each of the kingdoms who’ve tired of him reining in their ambitions.”

That her father should know this makes me wonder if he’s one of them. “When did he say that?”

“A few months ago, when I went home for my mother’s birthday dinner.” She says it casually, but only highborn students are given leave from the Company for something as mundane as a birthday. I certainly wouldn’t have received the same accommodations.

Knowing this makes me more curious about Theyen’s engagement to the Ember Princess. Why would the Nuvalyn Empire agree to bring a shadowblessed into their royal house? With the exception of a brief fifty-year period when they were temporarily usurped, the Yalaengs have ruled since the founding of the Empire, the longest dynasty in Thiy. And they’ve been enemies with Kazahyn for much of that time.

The enmity between humans and shamans is a childish spat compared to the feud between shamans and shadowblessed. It’s difficult to believe that such a union was even considered.

But an alliance between the Fireborn Queens and the Yalaengs could be enough to renew the old peace treaty. The fact one should even be needed, however, indicates Ronin might no longer be able to hold the peace on his own.

The Dead Wood runs vertically down Evewyn’s eastern border and both the Empire’s and Kazahyn’s western borders. But nothing separates Kazahyn in the south from the Nuvalyn Empire in the north. Only Ronin’s power and legacy—his defeat of the Soulless and the memory of that devastation—keep the two kingdoms in check.

Around midnight, we concede at last and agree to resume our research in the morning. But I don’t want to return to our room with nothing to show for the day’s efforts. I look down the empty aisles and then at a narrow window where moonlight spills over the frame into a silver puddle on the tiles. Not once has anyone disturbed us in here, not even Saengo’s guard, who’s even more rigid than Phaut.

“I want to look around the grounds without our guards hovering behind us.”

Saengo follows me to the window, the only source of natural light this deep in the library. I rap my knuckles against the glass to test its solidity.