Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 39 of 59

The next day came slow. No travelers walked the field path. No sick child cried at the door. Delia let her workers manage the empty beds. She had learned the countryside loved her. Now she wanted to know why her blood could do what it did. The family record told her nothing new. But her family tree named Elira, and elves were catalogued somewhere. She took her satchel and rode to the great library. The archive rose tall and gray, its walls carved with old runes that glowed faint blue. Inside, the shelves climbed higher than her cottage. She walked the aisles and searched every spine for the word elf. She found histories of kings and maps of rivers and ledgers of grain. Nothing about elves. She pulled book after book and set them in a growing pile. Her hands smelled of dust by midday. "You won't find them shelved plainly." Delia turned. Nick stood at the aisle's mouth, a book already open in his hand. Her husband found her here the same way he always found her when she chased a thing too far. He set the book on her pile. "Elf records aren't kept with common history," he said. "They're locked in the restricted rooms. My father keeps the key." He walked her to a narrow shelf behind a carved pillar. There he pulled one slim volume the catalogue had buried under a false title. He handed it to her. Delia opened it and found a list of old bloodlines. Halfway down was the name Elira, and beside it, three lines about elf healers who once served this very palace. "Three lines," she said. "That's all." "That's all they left standing," Nick said. "The rest was burned or hidden. My family made sure." He closed the book gently over her hands. "Delia. Listen. Every noble who reads this knows what an elf is worth. If they learn your name is on that list, they won't ask you to be queen. They'll cage you and breed the gift." Delia felt the weight of the small book. It gave her almost nothing. Three lines and a name she already knew. But it told her the danger was real and old and written down. "Then I shouldn't have come," she said. "You needed to see it," Nick said. "Now you know. Stop looking in their books. There's nothing here for you but a rope." She slid the slim volume back behind the pillar where it had hidden for years. Her search among the archive shelves was finished. The library held no key to her gift, only proof that others would kill to own it. She would build her sanctuary on the people who loved her, not the pages that would betray her. She took Nick's hand and walked out into the gray afternoon, done with borrowed knowledge for good.