Page 140 of The Mercy of Dawn

“Oh! Hi Cyril,” Isa called back. “I’m almost done with this cart. Just yell if you need anything.”

And that told Cyril that Isa was working alone today.

If there was one thing Tobias despised more than damaged books and disorganized shelves, it was people speaking loudly. He and Konnor—who Cyril had still never heard speak—had a hell of a scowl whenever anyone raised their voice in the archives. Isa, on the other hand, seemed prone to just yelling from one end of the archives straight through to the other whenever she needed anything.

Cyril wandered down to the shelves at the far end of the room, tucked closer to that breathtaking stained glass mural, where most of the history tomes lived.

She pulled The Dark History of Purism in Reykr out from where she’d shoved it back yesterday and tucked it in her arm. She skimmed her finger over the other titles housed on the same shelf, but they were all the same. Written in varying voices and points of view, they each detailed the rise of the purist movement in Reykr after the fall of the Great Kingdom and the subsequent resurgences in the following years.

Cyril had learned nothing different from the first book than the second, third, and fourth she’d read, but she’d give this one a try too, just in case Dark History was where all the secrets lay.

It hadn’t helped at all that Reykr was such a fucking big place, with more settlements and towns than Cyril could keep track of. And resurgences had popped up all over the kingdom in the hundreds of years since the initial movement. Some small, some large, but the names and geography meant nothing to Cyril.

Runa had even mentioned the names of a few problematic places—all spread out across Reykr—in the days after their history lesson, and Cyril recorded them down in the small notebook she kept in the archives. But outside of records of the initial movement, and a single resurgence over a hundred years ago, those names never surfaced again.

The guard she’d worked with in Brynnhold even let her skim through the files they had housed for the murders, and there was not a single record of the victims being from or having ever been to the places Runa mentioned.

“Isa?” Cyril called out, and a hum of acknowledgment carried from a few rows over. “Do you keep books on…places? Like, of regions and settlements in Reykr?”

“Mmm. Other side. Should be theeee…third? No. Fourth row up from the window. Bottom shelf.”

Cyril had no idea how Isa remembered that, but it was exactly where she found what she was looking for.

She crouched down, brushing a thick layer of dust off the titles. She skimmed through names of places that meant nothing to her until one gold-leafed spine caught her eye—the Forn Peninsula. Runa hadn’t gone into too much detail about the region of Reykr that she, Reyna, and a few other court members hailed from, but the name stuck with Cyril.

Not exactly what she had been hoping to find. But after what Mikael had said the other night, about his concerns with Reyna’s health and the healers from her village…

Well, maybe Cyril could switch gears for a day.

It’s not like she was making any meaningful contribution to the investigation, or even knew what was going on with the investigation at all. For all she knew, Bron could have tortured a confession out of someone a day or two ago and they just forgot to tell her.

So Cyril freed the tome from its spot on the cramped and neglected shelf, grabbed a few sheets of parchment and a glass pen from the supply cart, and made herself comfortable at a worktable.

Her eyes didn’t leave the book for hours.

Balance and equivalency.

The two principles—at every size and scope imaginable—were heavily ingrained in the beliefs of the people of the Forn Peninsula, or so Cyril surmised after gorging herself on the tome about the region and its history.

Her notes were messy, haphazard things, but carried a clear theme;

For every blessing or good fortune given to one, another paid its price.

For every death, the gods brought about a new life.

For each day of sun, there must be one of rain.

The references went on, and on, and on.

Cyril had sworn Mikael said their healers were renowned, but the principles of their practice touched on in the tome seemed, well…foolish. They inferred that ill health was a matter of balances being upset and that their healers knew how to determine what had tipped the scales, and what was necessary to restore that balance. Nothing about how they knew, of course, just that they did, and that the practice was never taught to outsiders.

She supposed it was all interesting, but not in a useful manner.

If Reyna was truly sick, and traveling back for treatment, Cyril wasn’t particularly hopeful about the quality of care the crown princess was receiving. But that was the sort of conversation she did not feel like broaching with anyone, especially just working off of Mikael’s hunch.

She should have just read the Dark History tome and kept her uselessness contained to a single crisis.

“Oh, just a second!” Isa called out from the row she camped in, organizing shelves that Cyril had heard her swear at‌ repeatedly.