Page 95 of Fallen Nocturne

Last time I stumbled through it blind and breathless. This time I explore.

I pass a ballroom with a ceiling painted to look like a night sky, stars picked out in silver leaf. Beyond it is a hall lined with weapons, swords and spears, each one mounted on velvet. Farther on, I find a garden that shouldn’t exist inside a palace.

I am looking for him.

I will not admit it, even to myself, but I am.

The study finds me the way the throne room did the first time. I discover a door I do not remember seeing before, standing slightly ajar. Warm light spills through the narrow opening like an invitation.

I push it open.

The room is smaller than I expected. Intimate. A fireplace dominates one wall, cold and dark, but the candles are already burning, as though the palace knew I would come.

Bookshelves cover every available surface. Unlike the pristine leather volumes in the library, these books have been read. Their spines are cracked and softened, their pages marked and folded.

A heavy desk sits beneath the window, its dark surface scattered with letters, maps and half-filled pages.

This is his room.

Not the throne room where he performs. Not the altar where he...

This is where he lives. Where he reads and thinks. The private heart of whoever exists beneath the mask.

I should leave. Stealing a sculpture from a display is one thing. Entering this room is another.

This feels less like stealing and more like trespassing somewhere I do not belong.

I step inside anyway.

The desk draws me first. I do not read the letters, though the temptation itches in my fingertips. Instead, I circle slowly and study the objects scattered across its surface. A brass compass. Smooth black stones hold open a map marked with territories in an ancient human language, while a small sketch of a wyvern peeks from beneath a stack of correspondence.

Then I see the ring.

It sits in a shallow dish beside the ink pots, among other small objects.

I know this ring.

I have known it my entire life. It is the Wiolant family ring. Rainer’s ring. My family’s ring, passed through generations, meant to be given to whoever my husband is when I marry.

Why is it here?

My fingers close around it before the question finishes forming. The metal is warm, as though someone held it only moments ago. I turn it over and find the inscription inside the band, the same letters I traced as a child while sitting on Rainer’s knee.

The ring never fit him properly. He carried it with him but rarely wore it. Yet there is no mistaking it. This belongs to my family, and somehow it has ended up on a stranger’s desk.

I keep it. No hesitation or guilt this time. Whatever the reason, this belongs to my family. It belongs with me.

But my eyes catch something else.

On the shelf behind the desk, surrounded by books, papers and forgotten trinkets, sits a small glass display box. Such containers are reserved for objects too delicate or precious to be left exposed.

Another ring rests inside.

It is not gold or silver. No gemstone catches the candlelight. The band is made from rattan, braided tightly and worn smooth with age. It is the sort of simple ring that might be found in any village market.

Yet someone loved it enough to place it behind glass. Someone could not bear to let the fibers decay or lose even a single piece of the careful weave. That devotion makes it more beautiful than any jewel.

I lift the box carefully and turn it in the candlelight. When I open it, I discover that the ring itself is sealed beneath a second, thinner layer of metallic glass.