“I was thirteen. I’m well over it.” Sel lets out a loose, wry chuckle, head still bent over a filing cabinet. “And everyone falls in love with Nicholas, Bree—it’s part of his insufferable charm.”

I want to know more, despite the complicated feelings this conversation is giving me, and Sel answers before I can ask.

“There’s so much baggage between Nicholas and me; there was never going to be room enough for anything else to grow.” Sel gives the paperwork in his hands a tight scowl. “When I think about that crush now, I remember how much of my life I sacrificed to protect a spoiled brat who didn’t even want his crown—and feel entirely grateful I moved on to more mature people.”

“Like Tor?” I reply without thinking.

Sel turns to me, raises a brow. “Among others.”

A confusing mixture of jealousy and curiosity and want swirls in my stomach.

Sel turns back to his work. “Any more personal questions or shall we get back to looking for a rogue, murderous mage?”

I open my mouth to shoot back another retort when he goes completely stiff. “What?”

“This is it,” he whispers, pulling a thick green hanging folder stuffed with paper out of the cabinet. “Stamped confidential with the Regents’ seal. ‘Documentation and affidavits about a spate of demon attacks on campus.’ Dated twenty-five years ago. Let’s go.”

The trip back to the Lodge goes just as quickly, but this time I’m on Sel’s back as he leaps up to the second-floor trellis, then yanks on a ledge to propel us the rest of the way to his open window.

Once we’re inside, he drops down on the floor and spreads the folder open, laying out stacks of paper in a row. His casual way of sitting and the deliberate movements of his hands catch me off guard, but then I remember that even though Sel is a Kingsmage, he’s still an eighteen-year-old junior in college. He has to study and do homework and write papers just like the rest of us.

Someone slams a door down the hall, and I hear voices. It’s almost dawn.

I kneel down across from him. This is it, I think. This is the moment when I find out what happened to my mother, and why. And who is responsible. I reach for the top stack of papers with a shaking hand, but Sel has already found what we need: a slightly yellowed affidavit, three pages long and handwritten in a formal script.

He looks up at me with a question in his eyes. I nod, and Sel reads aloud: