37

Except she didn’t feel rested at all. She wanted closeness, other wolves, either the handmaidens or Fina and Adora, or better yet, the king. That wasn’t happening today, though. I padded over to my dresser and pulled out the fine silver knife Barion had given me, sheathed in its leather scabbard embroidered with the Daybreak crest. Sometimes a wolf’s instincts were just a little overactive. I’d been through a lot of stress—the dinner, the sparring, and having the king show up at my door. My wolf was on high alert. Having the little knife on my person would calm her down, certainly. I slipped it into the waistband of my pants.

It worked. My wolf settled, the weight of the knife a substitute for her bared teeth, and a tangible reminder of Barion, too. Then I tucked The History of Fae in Frasia into the crook of my arm and slipped out of my room. I didn’t leave a note for Amity and Rue, but I had a feeling they’d know where to find me.

I made my way through the halls of the manor undisturbed by the occasional staff I saw in both human and wolf form. The library was just as quiet as it’d been when I’d first visited: the fire burned low in the hearth, and the lights were dim, as if the room was waiting in stasis for someone to arrive. I was grateful for the quiet, and I immediately felt soothed, relaxed, by the presence of all the unfamiliar books.

I was here for a purpose, though. I climbed the stairs to the wraparound balcony and headed directly toward the archival maps. The cartography table was still in the same place it’d been when I’d first visited, except this time, I hurried to the door near the back shelf first. Delicately, I pressed my ear to the surface of the door and listened for any sounds of activity: the scratching of a pen, an exhale of breath, soft footsteps. But I heard no noise, and my wolf was still quiet—no prickling in my nape, nothing.

The king wasn’t using his study, or whatever that room was. I sighed with relief. Finally, I had the whole library to myself.

First, I opened the small book and peered at the map of Efra included in the front. The king hadn’t wanted me looking at these maps. What kind of information was hidden in them? There had to be some answers as to why the structure of Efra, and Frasia, had changed so much since they had been drawn. When had the city shrunk? When had the nation split into the divides I knew now?

I smoothed the book flat onto the table and then stood in front of the shelves biting back a smile. I’d have to work through these methodically. I’d have to look at all these maps.

It took a while, and a very serious handle on my self-control to not get sucked into the more unfamiliar and curiosity-piquing maps, but after an hour, I’d pulled two more of Efra that illustrated some of the differences.

Strange. I smoothed the first map out flat. In this one, Efra was similar to the city I knew from current maps, except the south side was much larger, with neighborhoods extending nearly to the Frasian border. Now, that territory was mostly wasteland. I hadn’t heard reports of any wreckage in the wastes, either—it was like the city had never been there at all. I rolled out the second chart to compare. This map was even closer to the survey in the Blaylock book, with the southern side full of city infrastructure, as well as a larger Efran reach to the north and east, towards Daybreak.

The strangest thing was—the surveyings weren’t that old. Both were dated to my grandfather Constantine’s reign, which ended a century ago. Why had the city grown smaller during that time? And why was there seemingly no mark of that shrinkage in Efra today?

It was so large in the front of Blaylock’s book that I wondered if it was a metropolis at all. Was I seeing Efra, when really it was just Frasia, unbroken into cities and pack territories? The mystery thrilled me. I didn’t have access to materials like this in Daybreak, and the questions unspooled endlessly in my mind. I was good at this kind of thing, I realized—good at research, good at reading maps, good at building connections. There was so much I had to offer the court of Daybreak that I was never allowed to do. The realization made me frown. At least once I was done with this competition, I’d have more freedom. Maybe less access to materials like this, but I’d be free to travel where I wished, instead of being holed up in the Daybreak Manor dreaming of the day I could leave.

For now, though, I needed an even earlier map—one that predated my grandfather’s reign. I went back to the shelf and raised up onto my toes, reaching up to the topmost shelf. If my guess was right, these were probably arranged chronologically, so the oldest would be the charts in the dirty archival tubes on the highest shelf. I reached for the maps with some effort, my fingertips catching on the leather as I attempted to nudge them off the shelf and into my hands.

I finally got one and was just about to pull it from safekeeping and spread it out on the table, when my nape began to prickle.

Someone else was in the library.

I turned around slowly, so slowly, hopefully not attracting any attention. I hoped it was just a servant or guard making the rounds, maybe even a librarian who might be willing to help me access the older maps.

On the stairs, a wolf of Nightfall paused in its slow ascent.

This was not a wolf making the rounds. This wolf was looking for me. It was obvious in the way its hackles were up, nostrils flaring, ears pricked forward. Its pelt was the deep brown and black of the Nightfall pack, and it wasn’t huge—not like the guards, nor the king, but not as small as Amity and Rue. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve assumed it was a she-wolf like Rona.