"An hour after lunch," Alistair said, addressing Kestrel but keeping his eyes fixed on a point just past Elissa's shoulder—deliberately evading her eyes, as if direct contact might betray the turmoil churning beneath his frost. "Take the Princess to the High Library. I have flagged several volumes in the East Alcove. They are the primary records of the Starwind Prophecy and the original pacts of Aethelgard. It is time she understands the weight of the blood she carries."
"Reading?" Kestrel peeled from the pillar, brow arching in wary amusement laced with sibling defiance."I thought you wanted her to be a warrior, not a scholar."
"A warrior who doesn't know what they are fighting for is merely a mercenary," Alistair replied coldly. "She needs to see the original texts, not the fairy tales told in the South."
With a sharp nod, he turned and strode toward the Great Keep, his cloak snapping in the wind like a funeral shroud.
After a quiet lunch, Kestrel led Elissa up the winding, narrow stairs of the North Tower. The High Library was a place of silence and shadows, where the air felt thick with the scent of vellum, leather, and something faintly like cold stone hung in the air, like the library had been breathing secrets for centuries.
Kestrel led her to a private alcove tucked away from the main halls. In the center stood a heavy oak table, and on it, several massive books lay open or half‑propped, their covers bound in dark leather and iron. The spines looked worn, as if they'd been pulled down from the shelves by too many restless hands over too many years.
"He's serious about this," Kestrel whispered, running a hand over the embossed leather of the topmost book. Her voice softened, almost like she was reminding herself as much as Elissa. "My brother doesn't usually share the royal records with anyone. These are the books of the 125 chapters—the long saga of our two houses , all the promises and blood that got us here. If he's letting you read them… he wants you to understand what you're carrying, not just what you're fighting."
Elissa sat down, the old chair groaning softly under her weight, as if even the furniture here was used to long silences. She opened the first volume carefully, the pages thin and brittle like dried leaves, covered in looping, archaic script that seemed to crawl across the parchment. As her eyes followed the lines, she came across a passage about the crystalline, incandescent blue eyes of the pure‑blooded vampires—how their bodies turned the life essence they took into a kind of inner flame, something almost sacred.
But it was a note tucked into the middle of the book that caught her attention. It was written in Alistair's sharp, precise hand:
"The Shadow cannot exist without the Spirit. Page 412. Read the section on 'The Soul's Refinement' and do not let Kestrel distract you with her chatter."
Elissa blinked, then looked up slowly.
Kestrel was across the table, balancing a quill on the tip of her nose with the seriousness of someone testing a dangerous spell. She caught Elissa's stare and tilted her head.
"What?" Kestrel asked, seeing Elissa's expression.
"Nothing," Elissa murmured, turning to page 412. "Just... realizing how much he sees when he's watching from that wall."
The high library was silent, save for the rhythmic scratching of Kestrel's quill as she doodled in the margins of a lesser ledger and the low, gutteral snores of the pup at Elissa's feet. The air smelled of old ink and candle wax, and the light from the sconces flickered gently over the worn spines on the shelves.
Elissa ran her fingers over the heavy vellum pages of the book Alistair had marked, the parchment fragile under her touch. When she finally reached page 412, her hands trembled without her meaning them to.
The ink here was different—darker, infused with crushed gemstones that caught the flickering candlelight.
At the top of the page, the title stood out in bold, solemn script:
The Siege of the Frozen Heart, Year 412 of the First Frost.
"Kestrel," Elissa whispered, her eyes widening as her fingers skimmed the ink. "Who was Mira Starwind?"
Kestrel's quill stilled, the scratches fading into silence. Her usual playful expression slipped away, replaced by something quieter, more thoughtful. She looked up slowly, measuring Elissa's face before answering.
Kestrel stopped her doodling, her expression turning uncharacteristically sober. "Mira? She's a legend in the North, though the King doesn't like us talking about her. She was a High Witch of Aethelgard during the Great Schism. Why?"
Elissa swallowed. The parchment felt warm under her fingers, as if the words themselves carried a pulse.
"It says here," she began, her voice catching, "that when the mountain turned against the Bastion—when the ground cracked and the black walls started collapsing into the abyss—it wasn't the vampire lords who held everything together. It was her."
She took a breath and read the passage aloud, letting the old words flow into the still air of the library:
".....And as the foundations groaned, Mira Starwind stood upon the precipice, her silver hair whipping in the storm. The Prince of the North stood at her back, his hand locked in hers, the cold gleam of his blade resting against the stone. They did not face the Hollow as two separate forces, one of Shadow and one of Spirit, but as one bond stretching between them."
"The Shadow alone would have shattered the mountain further. The Spirit alone would have burned bright and then faded. But together, the Prince's power cut through the Hollow's dark, holding it still, while Mira's golden fire wove itself into the very mortar of the fortress, sealing the cracks with star‑lit light. For three days and three nights, they stood side by side, blood and magic streaming into the stone, until the earth stilled and the Bastion remained—scarred, but standing."
Elissa's voice softened on the last line, almost in awe. The air around her seemed to thicken, the candlelight dimming and brightening as if stirred by the words.