The commander’s words hung in the air.
“Every record connected to those names has been deliberately removed. The shelves are bare. The index entries have been struck through. There is nothing left.”
Alaric did not move for several seconds. His hands stayed on the back of the chair. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and hard.
“Someone inside the royal system did this.”
The commander waited. Alaric dismissed him with a short order to seal the archive section and report any further interference directly. The door closed. The two of us were alone again.
I stayed seated, the bandage on my arm pulling with every breath. The empty archive sat between us like another body on the floor.
Alaric turned to me. “You will stay away from this.”
I looked up. “What?”
“The records. The bord
