Although the fried sausage tasted twice as good as it had last night—cooked with Ginnis' practiced care—Emberlyth found her appetite lacking. It wasn’t hunger that had driven her to steal an entire ham the night before. It had been a gnawing emptiness, one no amount of food could ever hope to fill. Now, she merely chased the beans around her plate with her fork, poking at them half-heartedly.
Maybe stuffing her face was the problem? Even Emberlyth had her limits. Surely, it was natural to feel this way after last night’s indulgence. That had to be it.
With a sigh, she pushed the plate aside, her eyes drifting over to the stack of books cluttering her desk. She needed something to occupy the long hours ahead, but the weight of their leather-bound covers felt oppressive this morning. No, she wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy. Maybe something lighter, more entertaining? Something to steal her thoughts away.
Her gaze lingered on A Journal of the Abyss, the thickest tome among them. The spine was cracked, the pages worn soft from countless readings. Emberlyth knew every story within by heart—the entries, the theories, each word. There was nothing left in it to surprise her, nothing to pull her into its world like it had the first dozen times. It had become a well-worn path, familiar and dull.
But who was to say that was all there was? The estate’s downstairs library had always seemed a tomb for family journals and dry accounts of lineage, but it had its surprises. Last time she ventured there on some futile quest for Aethermark lore, she stumbled upon a curiously misplaced volume. A Tale of Light and Dark: The Forbidden Romance. The title alone had been enough to make her roll her eyes, and the cover—a swooning figure clasped by a shadowy arms—was as melodramatic as it was suggestive. She hadn’t expected much, and to be fair, it hadn’t disappointed in that regard. But it had been...different. Out of place. A glimpse, perhaps, of something else hiding in the dusty shelves.
That thought stirred something in her—a faint spark of excitement. Maybe there were other oddities buried there, overlooked treasures waiting to be found. It was enough to get her on her feet, ready to explore. But just as she turned toward the door, she hesitated, eyeing the plate she’d abandoned.
It felt wrong to leave it. Ginnis had made it for her, and even if she wasn’t hungry now, she might be later. And Ginnis wouldn’t say it, but she knew he hated seeing food wasted. Muttering to herself, Emberlyth picked up the plate and, still standing, wolfed down her breakfast with the mechanical efficiency of someone determined not to let sentiment go to waste.
She ate like someone still clinging to the belief that they might grow another inch or two. Never mind that she already stood tall enough to loom over most adults on the estate. “You’re already tall enough,” they’d say, only for her to grow another inch as if out of spite. Now, her height was mostly stable, but she still carried herself with the unshakable certainty of a girl whose long limbs hadn’t quite caught up with her ambition. More so, she still had a lot of lanky frame to fill, and Ginnis had never seemed to mind. Feeding her was his quiet, unspoken purpose.
So she ate, knowing it would please him. Couldn’t let the old man feel obsolete.
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For a time, Emberlyth stood before the library door, her stuffed and aching belly a distant memory. Her eyes traced the familiar sign hanging there, its intricate letters spelling out some long-forgotten family motto she’d never cared to learn. It was written in a dead language. But today, something else weighed heavier on her mind.
“I could’ve sworn I left it right here,” she quietly said.
She pried at the edge of the wooden sign, slipping her fingers beneath it in search of the key. Nothing. The space was empty.
Had Izbeth moved it? That seemed unlikely. The maid rarely touched anything without purpose, and Emberlyth wasn’t exactly barred from the library. Her name was written right there on the door, after all. Perhaps the key had been displaced the last time she came to clean?
“Careless of her, if that’s the case,” Emberlyth murmured as she reached for the handle. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. “Careless, indeed.”
The great secrets of the world were not housed within the Third Draekart Estate’s modest library, exactly. But there were still sensitive documents and rare reports stored here—things best kept out of the hands of nosy maids or overly curious guards.
Emberlyth smirked. It would be a welcome change to point out one of Izbeth’s mistakes for once. The maid had an infuriating way of correcting Emberlyth, her tone so matter-of-fact it barely registered as criticism. As if Ember’s flaws weren’t entirely her own fault but rather an inevitable result of her poor upbringing and misguided sense.
Yes, it would be satisfying to hold the high ground for once. Unless, of course, I misplaced the key myself…
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
She quickly pushed the thought aside. I did leave the key in its usual spot. She was certain. But certainty was a slippery thing, especially when the memory in question couldn’t be verified.
Maybe there had been a plate set out for me last night.
It was exhausting, always being told she was in the wrong. After a while, you started to believe it.
“Positive thoughts, Ember,” she quietly said, stepping into the library’s shadowed interior. “A positive mental attitude goes a long way. You’re infallible, perfect, and can do no wrong. There’s no way you would’ve—”
Her words trailed off as she took in the sight before her. Dust covered every surface, thick and undisturbed. The floorboards groaned beneath her feet as if they hadn’t borne weight in ages. Did Izbeth even know where the library key was? Perhaps no one had ever told her.
Thinking about it, the library might not have seen a proper cleaning since the last batch of maids left the estate. While the gloomy light that filtered through the narrow window had always added to the oppressive stillness, that wasn’t the only reason Emberlyth had always made a point of hauling whatever book she needed up to her room. Down here, the air felt heavier, thick with dust that set her nose twitching if she lingered too long.
“Maybe it was Uncle or Vaelen who misplaced the key,” she mused aloud, though even as she spoke, she could feel the hollowness of the suggestion. Their visit had been brief, more a formality than anything else. Neither of them would’ve spared the time to dig through old ledgers or sift through faded letters.
“Whatever.” The word fell from her lips, struggling to wave the thought away.
She set off down the single row of shelves, her footsteps stirring the dust into lazy spirals.
“It’ll turn up. Keys always do. And it’s not like there’s anything worth guarding in here anyway.”
The library was modest: five shelves in all, crammed with a hundred books or so each. Except the final shelf, built into the back wall, housing rows of boxes and drawers filled with loose papers, old correspondence, and brittle estate records instead. The room spoke of neither mystery nor grandeur—just a cellar repository for the mundane detritus of a fading estate.
Ember crossed to the far wall, where a narrow slit of a window let in a meager shaft of daylight. She unlatched the wooden shutter, letting it swing open with a creak. The light fell on the desk beneath, a small workspace littered with the usual: inkpot, quill, a half-burned candle. She never used the desk herself. Too many cobwebs, too little charm. She preferred the comfort of her own room.
But now she paused, the faintest frown tugging at her lips. The air near the desk carried a scent she couldn’t ignore: burnt wick, sharp and recent. Her gaze dropped to the candle. The wax at its base had pooled and hardened, but not entirely. Still pliant. Fresh.
“Someone was down here.” The words came quietly, but they landed heavy in the stillness.
Ember touched the wax again, as if to confirm the unease curling in her gut. Her uncle? No, the smell wouldn’t linger this long if it were him. And Vaelen? The thought was laughable; she barely tolerated the estate as it was. Yet she couldn’t shake the memory of that faint creak she’d heard last night, just as she’d been drifting to sleep. The kitchen was, indeed, too far from her room for her to hear a midnight snack being pilfered, but this…
“Who would be down here?” she wondered aloud. Her eyes swept the shelves. They looked untouched, the dust undisturbed. “Someone touching up the ledgers? Reviewing the estate budget? Or maybe Ginnis, scribbling an angry note about a stolen ham?”
The thought made her snort, her lips curving into a reluctant smile. Ginnis, hunched over a ledger, muttering about pilfered meats. Did the man even know how to write? She’d never seen him do it before.
With a shrug, Ember dismissed the thought and turned back to the shelves. She had come here for a reason, after all. Something to read. Something to pass the hours. And now, buoyed by the faint thrill of mystery, the search felt a little more hopeful.
I knew I wasn’t the one to lose the key, she thought as she ran a hand along the spines of the books. I knew…
After a few minutes of skimming through dull historical records and inventory logs—exactly the kind of uninspired drudgery this room was known for—a thought tiptoed into Ember’s mind, uninvited and unsettling.
Why would anyone come here in the middle of the night, though?
At first, the question had barely seemed worth asking. It wasn’t unusual for Ember herself to find the midnight hours creeping into her life. The world felt different then, quieter, as if time itself loosened its grip. But others? Most people retreated to their quarters as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, seeking warmth and rest. Even Ginnis, gruff and tireless as he was, wouldn’t abandon his rigid schedule. The man rose before dawn to prepare the day’s meals; his nights were sacred to sleep. Surely he wouldn’t be so haunted by thoughts of a stolen ham that he’d forgo his bed to brood in the library.
The more she turned it over, the stranger it seemed. And where another might have felt the first prickling of unease, Emberlyth only got more engaged. A mystery. A puzzle. The perfect remedy for a dull and dreary day. How long had it been since she’d felt that delicious spark of intrigue?
Before long, her mind spun a thousand tales condensed into one. A thief, a shadow slipping through the halls of her home. A proper agent of the night, bold enough to prowl the Draekart estate under cover of darkness. It could be nothing, of course. A misstep, a harmless whimsy. But even if it was just a maid choosing an odd hour to tidy up, Ember was too starved for stimulation to let it go.
She rolled her shoulders, shaking off the weight of her earlier exhaustion. Any thoughts of a curious read was forgotten, set aside as her thoughts unfurled in a hundred directions at once. Each idea more elaborate, more delightfully absurd than the last. Would she set a trap? Lay in wait? Confront them with dramatic flair, demanding answers like some intrepid heroine?
Yes, she would have fun with this. Even if it amounted to nothing—just another idle fancy to pass the hours—it was a welcome reprieve from the monotony that threatened to swallow her whole.
Humming softly, Ember set to work, her mind alight with plans.