Thorns & Twilight

Chapter 5 : Someone Tore Out Every Page About Her

Ryan talked like silence made him nervous.

He walked me through the palace the next morning, pointing at things, naming them and explaining Court customs with the relaxed ease of someone who had grown up here and found it all perfectly normal.

I walked beside him, listening and watching his face. I could hear the shimmer sitting under his words, showing up at random moments.

Not everything he said was a lie.

That’s what made it complicated.

Most of it was true. Most of it was actually helpful. The lies were small, specific, and placed carefully, like someone who’s had a lot of practice hiding them inside bigger truths.

"The corridors rearrange at night," he said. "Don't navigate alone in the dark for the first week."

"What happens if I do?"

"You end up somewhere you don't want to be." He glanced at me. "Trust me on that one."

No shimmer. True.

"The Court has rules," Ryan said.

We were walking through a long corridor with tall amber walls. Through the windows I could see gardens I didn’t even know were there.

"Most of the rules are about deals," he went on. "Fae law runs on agreements. If you say something here, you mean it. If you make a promise, you keep it. Words have weight."

"What happens if you break a promise?" I asked.

"Depends on the promise," he said, glancing at me. "Small promises cost you small things. Big ones....." He stopped.

"Just don’t make promises you can’t keep."

"My mother made a promise she couldn’t keep," I said.

The corridor went quiet between us.

Ryan looked at me carefully. "I’m sorry about that."

His voice didn’t shimmer when he said it.

Just that once, those four words were completely still and completely true.

I filed that away too.

He showed me the practice courtyard at ten.

The courtyard was wide and open, with pale stone under my feet. On two sides, living vine walls climbed up, covering most of the palace’s outer walls.

Training dummies stood lined up along the far side.

Weapons I’d never seen before hung on racks along the near wall.

"The trials begin in three weeks," Ryan said. "We should start preparing."

"What do you know about it," I said. "The first trial."

He picked up a training blade from the rack, turned it over in his hands, then set it back down.

"The Maze of Forgotten Things. It's alive. It feeds on memory." He looked at me. "It will show you things that didn't happen and make you believe they did."

"What kind of things?"

"Your worst fears. Your worst memories." A pause. "The people you lost."

I kept my face completely neutral. "And how do I get through it?"

"Most people don't."

"Mr Ryan, that's not an answer."

"I'm serious, Violet. Most contestants never reach the center." He faced me properly.

"The ones who survive are the ones who can tell the difference between what's real and what the maze wants them to believe."

"How do you tell the difference?"

He was quiet for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "I've never been inside it."

No shimmer. Completely true.

I nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Okay?" He looked surprised. "That's all you're going to say?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Most people panic when I explain what the maze does."

"I'm not like most people," I said, my voice a little shaky. "I'm asking questions so I know exactly what I'm getting into."

I picked up the training blade he’d set down and held it. It was too heavy for my grip at first, so I adjusted my hold.

"Show me something useful instead."

He stared at me for a second.

Then he smiled, genuinely this time with no shimmer underneath it at all, and picked up his own blade.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s start with how to not get killed."

He left me at noon.

Said he had court business and would be back at two. He said it with a shimmer, so small and specific that I knew it wasn’t really court business at all.

I waited until his footsteps faded down the corridor.

Then I went the opposite way.

I wasn’t trying to find anything. I just walked, letting the corridors take me where they wanted while the daylight kept everything honest. My hand ran along the amber walls as I thought about everything Ryan had told me, picking apart the true parts from the shimmering parts in my head.

I turned left when I meant to turn right.

I pushed open a door, expecting a storage room.

And then I saw it was a library.

The library was warm and gold-lit, smelling of old paper and something beneath that smell I didn’t have a name for.

Shelves ran from floor to ceiling on every wall.

Books older than anything in Mr. Sebastian’s shop.

Lanterns burning without flame.

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then I went in.

I ran my fingers along the nearest shelf but didn’t pull anything out. The books were in languages I didn’t recognize, except for one shelf near the window. Those titles were in English, and it felt intentional, though I couldn’t say why.

I pulled one out.

History of the Twilight Court. Official. Published in the reign of Queen Eleanor.

I opened it and read the preface.

Something felt off about it.

It felt like it was incomplete. Like someone had written a version of events that answered every question except the ones that actually mattered.

The gaps were too clean. The explanations were too smooth.

Real history doesn’t move that neatly. Anyone who’s spent enough time being lied to know what a carefully managed story feels like.

I put the book back.

I stood there looking at the shelf for a long moment.

"What are you doing here, standing there like that?"

I turned around.

The Prince was already in the room, sitting in a chair by the window with a book open on his lap. He was wearing a dark shirt and dark trousers, and his hair was a little less neat than yesterday. He looked at me with those silver eyes.

The same way he’d looked at me across the throne room. Steady, silver-eyed, and giving nothing away.

"I got lost," I said.

"Nobody finds this room by accident."

"But I am telling the truth," I said, a bit scared, trying to clear myself.

"Is that so," he said, looking back at his book. "Close the door."

I closed the door, walked in and stopped at the nearest shelf and ran my finger along the spines without pulling anything out.

He was quiet for a moment. He looked at the shelf I’d been standing at. In the history book I’d put back slightly crooked.

"They find it," he said slowly, "when they start asking the right questions."

He looked back at me.

"Can anyone use this library?" I asked, curious, daring not to meet his eyes.

"No."

"But I can?"

"Apparently."

I pulled out the book: History of the Twilight Court. Official record. Published in the reign of Queen Eleanor.

I opened it, read three pages, and felt that specific wrongness, like a story that had been managed, not told.

"This is incomplete," I said.

Silence from the chair.

"The history," I went on. "There are gaps. Clean ones." I turned a page. "Someone edited this."

"Many things in this Court have been edited," Prince Lucas said. His voice gave nothing away.

I looked at the shelf and found a chapter titled :The Reign of Queen Ivy. I opened it.

Every page was blank.

I turned them one by one. All empty.

"Your Majesty...uhm... Prince," I said quietly, not sure what to call him.

"Yes."

"Why is this chapter blank?"

The room was very still.

I turned around.

He was looking at me from the chair. Not in the book. At me. With an expression that was neither cold nor warm, but something in between I didn’t have a name for yet.

"Because someone removed it," he said.

"Do you mind if I ask who?"

A pause, exactly three seconds.

"The same person," he said carefully, "who removed your mother."

The book felt heavy in my hands.

My mother.

"What does that mean?" My voice came out steady and scared at the same time. I needed it to be steady.

"Your Majesty, what does that mean?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he stood up.

"Come back here tonight," he said. "Midnight. Alone."

He walked past me to the door.

"Prince, but I was told not to navigate alone in the dark for the first week."

"Midnight," he said. "And bring the book."

The door closed behind him.

I stood in the empty library holding a book full

Of blank pages. My heart was doing something complicated. It felt like I’d just pulled a thread I wasn’t supposed to find, and I couldn’t figure out whether to keep pulling or let go.

I kept the book.