Page 24 of Lore of the Tides

Diabolical. I would expect nothing less from you.

Speaking of world domination, are you any closer to finding the other grimoire?

Lore couldn’t wait to tell him.I have a lead. Sort of. It’s a riddle. I think it’s fromAuroradelitself.

You think?

Yes, I think. I haven’t been able to confirm it, yet...

Have you let this... entity into your mind?

We have linked—sort of like how we are talking now.She didn’tmention that she had been almost lost to the dark; there was no point in worrying him when there was nothing he could do from his own locked room.

There are some who can infiltrate one’s mind, sift through one’s thoughts, and even deposit their own. Please be careful. In fact, you might need to practice protecting yourself before you reach out to it again, just in case.

Lore grimaced. She had been thinking the same thing. She wasn’t ready yet to connect withAuroradel. After last time. Too afraid to be trapped again.

Finndryl continued,Tell me about this riddle.

Lore recited it to him and then told him about her plan to use the maps and ecological books to pinpoint the grimoire’s location. When she finished her explanation, she asked him,What do you know of griffins? Of a place called Ma Serach?

Unfortunately, being from the southern half of a continent an ocean away from Ma Serach, I don’t know much about the empire.He shifted in his seat.Griffins are rare beasts, large and territorial. As far as I know, they don’t migrate. They nest in the location of their birth and protect that land until their death, the cycle continuing for generations. Wherever griffins are found should be well chronicled as the fae tend to avoid those places–nobody wants to fight a flock of griffins over territory, they will lose.

Lore bit her lip.Rare is good, it might not be difficult to locate the correct location then.When the books arrived, she would scour the volumes, cross-referencing nesting grounds with mountains or cave systems on the maps.

What happens when you solve the riddle and find the book? Any ideas on how you will bond withAuroradelbefore Syrelle?

Lore was relieved that he saidwhenshe solved the riddle and finds the book and notif.Not yet, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

He nodded.Just make sure I’m with you.

If I have my way, you will be.

* * *

After saying their goodbyes, Lore returned to the suffocating silence of Syrelle’s office and set aside the scrying bowl. He was keeping things from her, and it was time he came clean. “Where exactly are we sailing to, Syrelle?” Lore had to stop herself from wincing; she hadn’t meant to sound quite so loud, but her voice had been jarring.

Luckily, Thadrik, their silent observer, hadn’t been disturbed by her question and still dozed in the corner. Coretha hadn’t bothered them again; now that it was made clear she couldn’t torture Lore or Finndryl, she left it to Thadrik the Despicable to monitor their sessions.

At her sharpened tone, Syrelle’s quill slowed on the parchment before him, and lines formed between his brows, a flicker of hesitation shading his eyes for a brief moment. But then, a silent acknowledgment passed between them.

It was time.

He owed her answers, and she was done playing his game.

Syrelle laid his quill down and closed the book he’d been marking in before he plucked the ink-pot lid off the desk. He took his sweet time pressing the corked lid into the pot’s mouth. “My grandfather Matleus,” he began, his voice low and measured, “was a powerful shapeshifter and an even stronger alchemist. He had a fondness for travel and spent decades searching for answers to Alytheria’s budding fertility problems. He eventually returned, hope in his wake, with a new power unlike anything our people had known.” His voice trailed off, a hint of sorrow in his eyes. “But he had changed. He became a hermit. Secretive. Paranoid. And our people still suffered.”

Lore listened intently, her heart pounding in her chest. The pieces were falling into place, but the picture they painted was still shrouded in shadows.

“I do not know why he cursed the library... or what prompted him to hideDeeping Lunewithin its walls. The night he placed the spell on the library,” Syrelle continued, “he left, claiming he was going to hideAuroradelwithin the Ma Serach Empire with instructions for my grandmother to tell only his descendants that we would be unaffected by the curse. I don’t think either of them suspected that would be the last time he would be seen alive.”

Lore’s eyes widened. “Is it known that he died? I know the fae’s lifetimes are vastly longer than humans’... a thousand years is too long, but what if his magic sustained him somehow?” A chilling thought crept into her mind: What if his grandfather was still alive, still in possession ofAuroradel? She would never be able to take such a powerful alchemist’s own grimoire from him. Nor did she think she had the constitution to try.

“Oh, he’s long dead,” Syrelle said, his voice flat. “Fifteen years after he journeyed to Ma Serach, an owl flew to my grandmother’s window with a bag filled with his ashes. They were confirmed by a priestess to be his. It became clear that her children and their children would never find the grimoires, that he had stolen their legacy from them.”

Lore’s mind raced. “Who sent Matleus’s ashes to your grandmother?”

Syrelle shrugged. “The owl did not have a note attached to it. Just another of my grandfather’s twisted games, I think.”

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