Once we all reached the hall, the yellow-clad woman turned to face us.
“Welcome,” she bowed. The action looked difficult for her, so I felt like telling her not to bother, but Daath began his questions immediately.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Seer you want to speak to,” she said slowly as she straightened up. “I knew you’d be coming, and I knew Bahz would give you trouble.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The woman blinked and looked to Kalian. “You haven’t told her my name, have you?”
He shook his head. “No. Myrcedes, this-”
“Don’t,” she held up a hand to stop him. I frowned. Why couldn’t he tell me her name? She sighed at my clear frustration. “I apologize, your Highness. This is complicated. Perhaps I am not the one you’re looking for.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m confused. Can you please explain? Anything?” I tried to refrain from getting frustrated with her, but I was close to feeling like shouting.
The old fae smiled. “Yes. I’ve been wondering if you would come ever since the General’s trial.” I saw Kalian take a sharp breath at being called the General again. People at the Moonstone Castle said it to him all the time, but either they were joking, or he would tell them not to use the title anymore since it wasn’t his. “I became a Seer a long time ago when I was very young. When I did, I met a much older Seer who took an interest in me. She said there was something I should have, and one day, someone would come to get it from me. There was a Seer a long time ago who died before she could send her log to be archived.”
It dawned on me at that moment what she meant. “You have Alless’s log.”
She smiled and nodded. The woman seemed satisfied that I’d said something right, but I could tell she had more to say. “Alless left her log somewhere only one other Seer knew of. Upon reading the log, that Seer realized what it said, and why she had died. Alless had written inside the cover to pass the log down amongst trusted Seers until the right person was to come to claim it.”
“Thank you,” Syrion said. “Myrcedes needs the log. Where can we find it?”
“It’s hidden,” she nodded. I sensed a shift in Daath and Syrion’s demeanors, steeling over at the lack of forthcoming on her part. “And it will remain hidden until you can tell me the name of the Seer Alless wanted the log to reach. My name.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Daath frowned. He looked to Kalian and nodded toward me. “Just tell her the damn name.”
“No,” the Seer shook her head. “Queen Myrcedes, you want the log so you can prove that the prophecy exists. You need it. You and I have both seen what will happen if the people of the fae realm think they’re being taken advantage of.” I took a sharp breath. So she’d seen the same vision I had, the guillotine glinting in the sunlight, the crowd screaming for the death of someone who only wanted to help, and the empty palace full of dead bodies.
I nodded; my mouth felt so dry I couldn’t even swallow. “If Kalian tells me your name, someone could claim we fixed this.”
“But the General can not lie,” she smiled. “If he testifies that you didn’t know my name until you heard it from Alless, that I received the log from trusted Seers, unaltered since the day Alless last touched it, then he must be believed.”
This is ridiculous. Daath’s voice rang throughout my mind. It’ll only take me a second to figure out her name.
No, I answered back. I don’t need it.
“Alless left the log for Tawney,” I smiled at the memory of our final moments together in the Bay of Souls. She’d interrupted my question to tell me how fond she was of the name. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
The yellow-clad Seer’s face seemed to elate upon hearing her name, and I almost thought she was tearing up. She nodded slowly and then sped up to a rapid pace, her excitement getting the best of her. “Yes, my Queen.”
She laid one hand flat in the air and snapped with the other. A very old, plain leather journal materialized in her open palm. The cover was umber, but the back of the book was several shades darker than the front like it had been sun-bleached. The binding was loose, and some threads keeping the leather together were frayed. The pages looked faded from the side, save the bottom outer corner, which was darker. I tried to imagine how old this was, but it was hard to imagine. While I had existed as long as the Kings of the Night, my life hadn’t been continuous, and the past twenty-three years certainly hadn’t prepared me to grasp the concept of something millions of years old. I couldn’t even imagine what sort of lengths generations of Seers had to go to in order to keep it in one piece as it was passed down.
I watched her stroke the cracked, umber cover with her bony thumb, a
