Page 79 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

This was utterly, infuriatingly pointless.

Lorelei slumped into the desk chair and allowed it to swivel her in a slow circle. If there was nothing in this office, there could still be something in Ziegler’s room.

As soon as she set the war room to rights, Lorelei drew the curtains and peered out into the darkness. No lanterns. No sign of Sylvia or Adelheid. She took the opportunity to slip back onto the balcony. It creaked and settled with every footstep as she made her way toward Ziegler’s room.

She paused outside the door, but her arm suddenly felt too heavy to lift. Her emotions were already simmering too close to the surface, and the very thought of going in there made her feel ill. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t paw through Ziegler’s effects like a common thief. How much more disrespect could she pay her? She’d sunk her body in the river, for God’s sake. But she had come this far in pursuit of the truth. Perhaps uncovering it was the greatest honor she could pay Ziegler now.

She forced herself to enter.

Lorelei lit the candles. Although she’d never been in Ziegler’s quarters before, she found it suspiciously in order. Her mentor had always been a messy person, the chaos of her space a mirror of her mind.Someone—probablyLudwig—hadcertainly been in here to tidy up.

All the same, there were odds and ends that suggested someone had lived here, even for one night. Her inkpot lay on the desk, along with an open jar of salt and a mug of tea caked with dried leaves. It was as though she’d stepped away in the middle of writing a letter. At any moment, she might step through the door again and smile to see Lorelei standing there.

Lorelei blinked back the humiliating sting of tears and crouched beside the bed. She felt silly as she peered underneath, like a child checking for monsters. When that turned up nothing, she stripped off the sheets and tossed them into a heap in the corner. She lifted the mattress from its frame, then probed the edges for any misplaced stitches.

Nothing.

With a sigh of frustration, Lorelei dismantled the desk with the same harried precision she had the one in the war room. Inside, she found a drafted chapter of the fourth volume ofKosmos, Ziegler’s latest and most ambitious project, bound in a delicate white ribbon. At least her killer had a modicum of respect, to leave this untouched.

Shutting it back into the drawer, Lorelei flung open the closet door. She was greeted with the unwelcome sight of more outfits than Ziegler possibly could have worn over the course of the expedition. She unceremoniously began tossing garments onto the floor. Silk and finely painted cotton puddled at her feet. At last, she found a coat that struck her as unusuallyheavy—andwas startled to realize that she recognized it. It was the same one Ziegler had worn on the night of the send-off ball. Draped over her arms, it looked like the shed skin of a serpent.

The temperature plummeted. Her breath plumed unsteadily in the cold.

From the darkest corner in the room, Lorelei swore she could feel those horrible eyes boring into her again. Her every muscle seized with primal terror. A wisp of silver slithered across her vision, but when she turned around, the room was still and empty.

“Leave me alone, damn you,” she muttered.

She laid the coat on the bed. Something sharp-edged had been stitched underneath the lining. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she retrieved a letter-opener from the desk and slit open the fabric. Nestled inside was a journal, bound in pristine leather and closed around a silk-ribbon bookmark.

This had to be it.

With trembling fingers, she opened the journal. The spine gave a satisfyingcrack, and although Lorelei knew Ziegler had been using it within the last month, it somehow felt ancient, like a fairy-tale witch’s spell book.

Upon first inspection, it contained nothing unusual: documentations of supplies Ziegler had requisitioned, reminders to herself on which work to delegate to Lorelei, absent-minded recordings of the weather. It was in the middle of these mundane entries that Lorelei found the jagged edge that fit perfectly against the sheet Ludwig had taken. What had he found so interesting? It was allso...ordinary.

Lorelei began thumbing through the pages more urgently. Halfway through the journal, Ziegler’s notes abruptly ended. What followed was nothing but blank pages marbled with water stains. The previous entries had been dated weeks prior to their departure, and Ziegler journaled daily. Why had shestopped?

Unless she hadn’t.

Distantly, Lorelei remembered one of the first “scienceexperiments”—orhad she called it a magic trick?—Ziegler had conducted with her. All it required was heat, parchment, and lemon juice. She couldn’t possibly have . . .

Lorelei tore out a page and held it above the candle sputtering on the writing desk. Words began to appear on the parchment as though written by a ghostly hand. They glowed the color of burnished gold and blackened around the edges.

“You absolute madwoman,” Lorelei muttered, caught somewhere between disbelief and admiration. Ziegler had written all of these entries in invisible ink.

She’d printed each letter absurdly large and with exaggerated care, but her shorthand was barely comprehensible. Eventually, Lorelei managed to translate it: her initial speculations on the Ursprung’s location. Every passage was rendered in her trademark style, full of overblown lyricism and yearning.

Lorelei missed her terribly.

She tamped down that thought by ripping another page from the journal. Each one did little to sate her curiosity. They painted a straightforward picture of a woman she already knew, one with a flair for the dramatic and a love for life. She considered feeding them to the fire out of sheerfrustration—untila peculiar abbreviation caught her eye.

Spoke again with AvW.

Lorelei waved the candle beneath the page with a newfound determination. With each word that appeared, her heart rate rocketed higher. The candle’s wax dribbled onto her gloves as she read.

Data suggest unlikely to find Source in Albe. However, evidence of high aetheric concentration in mountains should be enough to support A’s case.

The longer Lorelei stared at the pages, the more she willed it to make sense. Blood roared through her ears, drowning out everything else. Ziegler had known. Ziegler hadknownthey were chasing the wrong spring, and she misled them. It was as good as her dying a second time.