REPORT

22

"How the fuck do they live in these things all the time?" Evelyn watched Taren scratch at the seer gown clinging to their body. It was tight across their broad, flat chest, like most things they wore. But a thousand times itchier.

"Keep your voice down," Evelyn whispered roughly without looking at Taren, matching her long strides to theirs.

"Do you even know where we're going?"

"You've truly never spied a day in your life, have you?" Evelyn shook her head. Walk with confidence, even when you lack it. She recounted the mantra to herself at the start of every mission, drilled into her brain from her courses.

It had been a while since she'd graced these halls, but she racked her brain for memories of the library to guide their route. They had to be fast in case the owners of their gowns came looking for them and found their belongings missing. "There," Evelyn said quietly as they both offered a cordial grin and nod to a small group of seers that passed them, seemingly unaware the fae and shifter did not belong. That's a good sign , she thought.

Evelyn spotted a glimpse of a dark room as an acolyte walked through the door and into the hall in front of them. There weren't many rooms at the Sanctum that were anything but white, so she hoped this one happened to be the one they were looking for.

She slid in behind the seer as they exited, praying more people didn't wait on the other side. She held the door open just wide enough for Taren to squeeze in, and when they turned, they were greeted by a cavernous room. It was mostly empty save for the books and scrolls that lined the walls, and a single seer who sat at a table by themselves at the other end of the space, a silver sash across their waist.

"Are you here for your shift?" they asked without looking up from the book they were scouring. The room was dark enough that even Evelyn's eyes were still adjusting. She couldn't tell what the seer looked like from where she stood, but the voice was commanding and she didn't dare wait.

"Yes, please let us know how we can be of assistance," Evelyn said. She'd prayed more in the past hour than she had in the past year, but she said another one just then, hoping the person that sat at the table continued to be consumed by whatever they were doing.

"You can start by shelving those," the seer gestured to a cart full of scrolls. Taren gave her a sideways glance. The two moved quickly to the cart and Taren pulled it behind one of the freestanding shelves, out of view of the preoccupied acolyte. Taren gestured to the cart in a panic, before realizing Evelyn also understood Kam's sign language. They signed, "What's your plan?"

Evelyn could understand Taren's gestures but cursed herself for not practicing signing with Kam enough lately. She tried her best to respond. "Just start dancing the scrolls."

Taren's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Dancing?"

Evelyn blinked at them. "What are you talking about?" she gestured before realizing she had used the wrong sign. She palmed her face. Served her right. " Reading the scrolls. Not dancing."

Taren stifled a laugh with a hand over their mouth. "That's better," they signed before picking up the first scroll on the cart. They opened, scanned it, and quickly ascertained it wasn't helpful to their mission. The two took turns opening and replacing scrolls for a few minutes in silence, every once in a while sticking a random one on a shelf near them so it appeared they were doing something productive.

Evelyn spotted a decrepit looking piece of parchment toward the bottom of the cart and pried it out from under a stack of books. She opened it, read it, and immediately grabbed Taren's arm to get their attention, holding the text up for them to read. It looked to be some declaration, written in a very formal, almost archaic script.

"How is it going over here?" The seer's voice came from behind Evelyn without notice, making her jump and drop the scroll. It hit the ground with a quiet crunch at the feet of the seer who grabbed it before Evelyn could get to it.

"I wasn't sure where to shelve this one, I was just getting a second opinion," the panther replied quickly, only a hint of nerves in her voice.

"Ah, this is a tough one, yes," the seer said. Evelyn could finally see her in the dim light now, a middle-aged woman with pointed ears, the silver sash she wore a threatening reminder that they were in the presence of someone important. "I'll go put it with the early history documents," she began walking away.

Gods be damned, they couldn't lose that scroll. "Oh, we've got a few others to put over there, we're happy to do it!" she called after the seer to no avail.

"You two are the slowest shelvers I've had in weeks. I can take this one," she scoffed. "Besides, you must handle these things with much more care. You act as though this paper is not a thousand years old." The woman tsk ed as she carried on through the rows of shelves.

A thousand years old? Gods , if she meant that literally, that scroll was nearly as old as Wren itself. Evelyn tried to calm her panic. As long as they'd both read it, they could justify leaving it wherever it was that seer was taking it. Evelyn watched the woman disappear behind a shelf, still mumbling to herself, and noted the location in case they might need to find it later.

"Did you finish dancing it?" Evelyn signed to Taren.

Her mistake was not as funny this time. Taren nodded quickly. "Let's get out of here," they whispered. They'd been there too long, anyway. And with the seer moving deeper into the library, this was their best chance at leaving unnoticed.

After tiptoeing out the door, they made their way briskly down the hall, daring to only move as fast as they could without drawing unwanted attention. They separated, shedding their costumes before Evelyn snuck back into the wash room and draped the gowns carefully over the drying line.

As they had agreed to do, she met Taren back in their room to debrief until they heard from the others.

"So, uh, what the fuck did we just see?" Taren greeted Evelyn as she shut the door behind her.

Evelyn let out an exasperated sigh as she shook her head and plopped down into Taren's desk chair. "Am I crazy, or was that some form of legislation from, like, the beginning of Wren?"

"I would like to call you crazy, but I think you're right," Taren marveled. Much of Wren's early history was thought to have been lost. No one really understood how the fae and shifters had come to be there, or what happened in the early days of the continent. Most libraries and schools in both Denover and Allar only held information up to five or six hundred years old. No one knew exactly how old Wren was, but that librarian had said…

Taren rubbed a broad hand down their smooth face. "Do you think she meant what she said about it being a thousand years old?"

"She didn't seem like the joking type…" Evelyn mused. "It's hard to say, though. It looked like it could have been that old. I've never seen anything like it." They both sat in silence for a moment before Evelyn decided to broach the heavy subject hanging between them. "Did—Did you see…"

"I saw." Taren replied quietly.

"Do you think…?"

"I don't know what to think. I really don't," Taren avoided Evelyn's eyes. "It makes sense, I guess. I've always wondered." Taren let out a chuckle, "I mean, I was literally just giving Aria a hard time about how we basically have bat wings so she shouldn't feel bad—" Taren stopped themselves.

Evelyn cocked her head at Taren's abrupt ending. "Feel bad…?"

"Oh, just that we've actually grown to like you shifters after all." They smiled, but Evelyn caught the hitch in their breath.

Evelyn just nodded once, slowly, unconvinced by that explanation. But because Taren had possibly just learned that their entire worldview was a lie—her entire worldview, for that matter—she'd let it slide for now.

That document, if real, detailed the division of Wren's land to four sects of Mallium's peoples, including the panthers, dragons, wolves, and bats—who received the largest portion of land to the north, where Allar sat now, because there were more of them than any other group.

There was no mention of the fae, which had led both Taren and Evelyn to the obvious conclusion—the fae were shifters, at least at the time of Wren's creation. Which meant the centuries-long rift between fae and shifters was unfounded. Unwarranted. What had gone so wrong all those years ago to pull the sects of shifters apart so drastically?

"So, what do we do, cat?" Taren asked. "I'm out of my depth here."

Evelyn snorted at the jab. "You and me, both, bat ."

"Point taken." Taren grinned. "I suppose we can just wait for the others to come back. Our part of the mission is over, at least." They paused. "I see now why you're Luka's second. Skilled on the mat and sneaky. Impressive."

"It's what I was trained my whole life to do, I would hope I'm good at it by now," Evelyn said confidently, but dismissively.

"If that's the case, I'm not surprised at how bold you were with Aria yesterday," Taren raised an insinuating eyebrow. "I could hear you two talking. Well… Shouting is a more accurate description."

Evelyn rolled her eyes, a small smile hinting at her lips. "Gods, don't you ever mind your own business?"

"It's literally my job to protect Aria. I'm just making sure you weren't there for nefarious reasons…" Taren crossed their arms. "I was close to barging in, but then things quieted down, so I let her handle it herself. You should really be thanking me."

"Well, it admittedly started out nefariously. It didn't necessarily end that way," Evelyn recounted, a sort of fondness settling over her unexpectedly. She'd been grateful this morning when she'd seen that the mark on Aria's neck hadn't lingered. The guilt ate at her anyway. She truly hadn't been thinking when she'd barged into Aria's room. The smile the princess had given her in the courtyard had triggered memories of the way she'd interacted so casually with Luka at dinner the night before. And then Luka had found Evelyn after dinner and defended Aria in a way that told her everything she'd needed to know, whether he would admit to it or not.

And she'd just… acted. Pure predatory protection over her packmate. She'd seen how much their split had impacted him, and they couldn't afford him going through another heartbreak right now.

"Don't worry, I would have pestered Aria about it if I'd had time this morning, but you're the one sitting in front of me. So, if you don't want to give me the details, I'll just ask her later. Unless I don't want to know the details…?" Taren cocked their head.

Evelyn scoffed. "Trust me, if I slept with Aria, you would have heard her loud and clear."

It was at that moment Aria and Luka walked through the door.

***

"That's an awfully bold statement," Aria said, taken aback. "What an interesting thing to walk into. Maybe I should be concerned you didn't find anything, if this is all you have to talk about?" She glanced at Evelyn quickly and ignored the accelerated way her heart beat in her chest.

"Where's everyone else?" Evelyn replied, apparently eager to change the subject. Aria noticed the ripe blush in the panther's cheeks.

"We saw them talking to a seer on the way back and waved them down. They should be here soon," Luka said. "But I would personally like to hear more about the conversation we walked in on," he smiled slyly. "Actually, I would like to hear a lot more about it. "

Aria smacked him on the arm. "Fuck off, ash eater."

He feigned pain. "What? Like you don't want to know?"

"I'm more interested in hearing about their mission than entertaining some shifter's fantasies about me," Aria rolled her eyes.

Before Evelyn could snap back at the insult, Kam, Finn, and Leah walked up. "What did we miss?" Kam signed as each person found a place to sit, stand, or lean against a wall in Taren's exceedingly crowded room.

Evelyn pinched the bridge of her nose. "Please, for the love of the gods, can we just report on our findings?" It was fun watching the panther squirm uncharacteristically.

"Fine, but we're coming back to this conversation later," Luka smirked.

Each member of the group took a turn recounting what had happened during their separation. Leah and Kam went first, explaining they'd tried talking to a few different seers without any luck.

Finn followed them with only a slightly better outcome. "I spoke with a lesser seer on custodial duty. She said she saw a visitor come in through the gates in a cloak on the day of the solstice when it was just her and a few other lesser seers left while everyone else was up on the mountain. She wasn't the one to greet them, and everything is kept very private here, but she said they normally don't allow visitors on the solstice. Apparently, this person was an exception."

"That's it?" Luka asked. "Did she see what they looked like under the cloak?"

"She said the only thing she noticed was a petite frame that was sort of hunched," Finn shook his head. "I tried to get more out of her, but she didn't have anything else to offer. I wasn't sure it even meant anything, but at least worth mentioning since it's an anomaly for them to provide counsel during the solstice." The group nodded.

"Looks like you didn't need my help flirting after all, Finn," Kam signed with a grin.

"Believe it or not, I'm plenty capable of charming people on my own," Finn rolled his eyes.

"My gods, what's a person got to do to get charmed by a panther around here?" Taren huffed dramatically, generating a hearty laugh from everyone but Finn, who looked at his feet, hiding a soft smile.

Luka cut the conversation short. "Taren, Evelyn, anything?"

"Eh…" Taren rubbed the back of their neck and shared an uneasy glance with the panther, who nodded to them in encouragement. "Yes. But it's… Okay, it's going to be hard to hear. And I'm not sure it has anything to do with our problem at hand, but… you all deserve to know it anyway."

"We found an old scroll," Evelyn interjected. "It was ancient. Like, ancient ."

"Quit dancing around it," Luka said flatly. "We can handle it."

Taren let out a heavy exhale. "Basically, the librarian may have confirmed it was a thousand years old. And it had a formal declaration of land division among the fae and shifters. Except… the fae weren't mentioned. The northern land was given to…" They gulped, hesitating, "another sect of shifters. Bat shifters."

Aria blinked at her friend, whose face remained stoic. "Taren, this is not a time to joke," she said. "What did it actually say?"

"They're not joking," Evelyn confirmed. "The writing was old, but it was clear. The fae, whoever you might be now, descended from shifters. "

"That's… No. That's not correct," Aria stammered. "Where did you find it?"

"Under a stack of books on a cart in the library. It looked like it had been there for a long time. It was at the bottom, but it looked out of place, so I grabbed it. The librarian was unphased by it. She took it to the early history section and shelved it," Evelyn explained. "It's real."

"How…" Aria started, but words escaped her. It made sense, didn't it? She and Taren joked often about the resemblance of fae wings to bats. There had always been rumors, superstitions, myths. But they had always been a joke at the expense of the shifters… Hadn't they? Though, most myths often came from a bit of truth, she supposed. "How does no one know about this? How is this not common knowledge?" she said finally. And then she had the same realization Taren had earlier: The entire justification behind hundreds of years of war meant nothing. "Gods above."

"Gods above," Leah echoed somberly.

"I know the seers must swear an oath of secrecy when taking their vows, but my gods, what else are they hiding if they've kept this knowledge to themselves for so long?" Luka said, running his hand through his long hair, now free from its bun. "I thought that secrecy only applied to those they counseled, not… this ."

Evelyn shook her head. "The librarian was an advanced seer. I think most of the librarians are, actually. Maybe the rest of them don't know." No one spoke for a moment, allowing the news to settle deep in their chests.

"Did you see those journals in Selene's study? The open ones?" Aria asked Luka. "They had old writing, symbols I didn't recognize. Maybe she knows more about the creation of Wren than she's let on. "

"But what does that have to do with the equinox?" Luka asked.

"I don't know," Aria shook her head. "But it's more of a lead than anything else we've gotten so far."

"You didn't get anything from Selene?" Evelyn pried hopefully.

"Not much," Luka replied. "Just that Mallium has cut her off from helping us and won't give her any visions about the equinox."

"And that whatever the sacrifice was that resulted in his solstice decree, it wasn't the Sanctum seers who offered it," Aria added. "That was all she could tell us. And that she's open to speaking with us more, should we need her."

"I think she should be there when our leaders meet," Evelyn said, meeting Aria's eyes for the first time since she'd walked in the room. "Even if she can't seer about it, she may have knowledge that could help."

"She is apparently under strict instructions not to help us in our efforts," Aria began. "But," she thought, pausing, "perhaps if she's in the room, she could at least answer any questions we may have concerning her knowledge and experiences over the years as Head Seer. Perhaps if we ask the right questions, with the right context, she can give us something that will help us piece things together."

The group considered this, nodding.

"I love a good loophole," Taren smiled.