By the time the moon hung high over the palace, the halls had grown silent enough that my footsteps seemed louder than they should've been. Elias had left the room hours ago after insisting I "explore at my pace," and I remained surrounded by scrolls and books scattered across the long table.
The lanternlight glowed softly over the pages.
Aurernhart's history.
Magical wildlife.
Ancient clans.
Lost eras.
All meticulously recorded — and all significantly different from the whitewashed, oversimplified version we were taught at the royal academy.
I turned another page.
The first king… actually had magic. Not surface-level magic either — but something powerful, ancient, woven directly into the lands he conquered.
When he marched into the fae territories, he didn't just take their land.
He broke a pact.
He shattered a boundary between realms.
And the fae punished him by stripping him — and all future kings — of their magic.
Except…
