chapter 4: Questions Without Answers
675 Words
I didn't see Ronan the next day. Or the day after that.
Three days passed in the east wing, marked only by Wren's visits and the same untouched tray of food appearing and disappearing outside my door. I told myself I didn't care where he was. I told myself a lot of things during those three days that weren't entirely true.
On the fourth morning, restlessness won out over caution.
The guard who'd brought me here had said not to wander past the library without an escort, which meant, by simple logic, that the library itself was fair game. I found it on my own, following the warmer torchlight deeper into the castle until I reached a set of doors taller than any I'd seen yet.
Inside was the first place in this whole mountain that didn't feel like it was trying to intimidate me.
Shelves rose three stories high, ladders on brass rails leaning against them. Sunlight, real sunlight, fell through a domed glass ceiling I hadn't expected this deep in a mountain. Dust moved lazily in the light, and for the first time since the carriage, I felt something close to calm.
I was halfway through a shelf of histories, looking for anything about the war, when I heard footsteps behind me.
"You weren't supposed to find this place so quickly."
I didn't jump, though I wanted to. Ronan stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite place.
"Nobody said it was forbidden. Just the wing past it."
"Clever."
"I've been told that too."
He moved closer, glancing at the books I'd pulled. A History of the Border Wars. The Treaty of Ash Hollow. His jaw tightened slightly.
"Looking for something specific?"
"The truth, maybe. Everyone keeps telling me a different version of this war. I'd like to know which one is real."
"Careful." His voice dropped lower. "Some truths in this castle don't make for comfortable reading."
"I didn't come here for comfort."
That almost-smile again, the one he seemed to catch and put away before it could fully form. "No. I don't suppose you did."
He reached past me, close enough that I caught the smell of woodsmoke and something underneath it, sharp and clean, and pulled a different book from the shelf. Old leather, no title on the spine.
"If you want the truth," he said, holding it out, "start here. Not the others. The others were written by people paid to make my family look like monsters."
I took the book carefully, surprised by the weight of it, surprised more by the fact that he'd offered it at all.
"Why are you helping me?"
He considered the question longer than I expected.
"I'm not sure yet," he admitted. "Maybe I'm tired of being the villain in every version of this story too."
For a moment, standing there in the sunlight with dust drifting between us, he didn't look like the man from the balcony, or the cold stranger from the hall on my first night. He looked tired. Young, almost, in a way that didn't match the stories at all.
"Ronan." It was the first time I'd said his name out loud to his face. He went very still when I did. "What really started this war?"
Something passed behind his eyes, gone before I could read it.
"Not today," he said quietly. "But I promise you'll have your answer."
He left before I could push further, the same way he had on the balcony, like staying too long in my company was a risk he wasn't ready to take.
I stood there with the old book in my hands, watching the door close behind him, and felt something shift in my chest that I didn't have a name for yet.
Whatever this war had been built on, I was starting to believe it wasn't what either of us had been told.
And whatever Ronan was hiding, I had a feeling it mattered more than either of us was ready to admit.
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