She snapped her mouth shut, glancing at Jaren to silently ask What do I do? But he was too busy biting his lip to keep from laughing to answer.

Giving him a vulgar gesture, she muttered a quick thank you over the desk and practically ran for the stairs, suddenly grateful for the dark aisles she was headed toward.

How did Eithan deal with people floundering and bowing around him all the time? How had her mother dealt with it? Vera had only known who she was for a matter of weeks, and already she was panicking.

There were two sides of her warring against the other, one wanting nothing more than to crawl back into the armory and never leave it again, and the other wanting to see what her future could hold. She honestly wasn’t sure what she felt anymore.

* * *

“I think I found something.”

Stepping back from the most recent shelf she’d been looking through, she walked his way, hoping he’d finally found something worth their time and effort. Or, his time and effort, at least. She wasn’t much help besides looking for the few words she could recognize.

It’d taken longer than they’d thought to find anything on Queen Alean, and she was starting to grow frustrated.

There were numerous texts and scrolls about her family line as a whole, but it was almost like each account actively avoided talking about Queen Alean besides a casual mention on a family tree.

“Is this who you saw?” he asked, leaning the book down so she could see the portrait he’d found.

The depiction was old and faded, the colors having long since lost their luster, but she froze all the same. The head of dark curls, the pale, gray eyes. It was her. The same female she’d seen in her mind. Yet at the same time, she looked different. Her face was softer, the edges less sharp, and she looked younger. Happier.

“That’s who I saw.”

“You’re certain?”

She nodded. “Arenaris was engraved on her sheath, and I didn’t notice at first, but when she spoke…it was the same voice I’d heard the first time.”

My name is Alean Arenaris, and I seek entrance.

She frowned, staring down at the young, carefree face held within the book’s pages.

“She looked haggard and worn down, like her soul was already two-hundred years old, and she had dark circles under her eyes and deep, worry lines. But at the same time, she still looked young in a way. I’d guess around one-hundred years old, maybe?”

He was already shaking his head before she finished. “No. If who you saw was truly Queen Alean taking the crystal, she wouldn’t have possessed abilities yet. She would’ve still been human.”

She blinked, dumbfounded. She hadn’t even thought of that. She looked at it again. What on Aleron had Alean gone through to make her go from the soft, hopeful queen in the portrait to the distraught one she’d seen in the cavern? They were missing something, something their history was being very careful not to recount.