Vanhelm, weren’t they? You’re a descendent of the princess Alysse. And they said she had magic like no one had ever seen.”
“Not a descendent,” Aurora said. “Related, maybe. I don’t know. But if she was the source of my magic, someone else in my family would have had it too. And if it’s Vanhelmian magic, someone here would have that power. It doesn’t add up, Finnegan.” She leaned forward, her hands pressed flat on the desk. “Even Alysse didn’t have magic like mine, did she?” she said. “That’s what the stories say. She didn’t know she could use magic until she went to Alyssinia and felt all the power there.”
“But it’s a legend,” Finnegan said. “And you’ve proved they’re not always true.”
The end of Alysse’s story was misleading, wasn’t it? Aurora had learned that she was beloved, but the books here suggested that she had been murdered for her power, that people had not loved her after all. Who could say whether the other parts of the story were true?
“She might have showed hints of her magic in Vanhelm,” Finnegan said. “And that’s why she left.”
“To find a place she could use it properly?”
“Or to escape. Perhaps that’s why they ran across the sea. People in Vanhelm didn’t need magic. Everyone else would have followed the settlers if we did. They must have had a good reason to risk traveling so far and starting anew.”
Aurora tapped the pen on the desk, feeling the reverberations in her hand. No one in her family had had magic for generations, as far as she knew, but it was possible that she was related to Alysse. Aurora had never heard any suggestion that Alysse had any children, but some stories claimed that her cousin took the throne after her death. The scanty records made it difficult to be certain.
A distant family connection from hundreds of years ago was not enough to explain her powers. But Celestine’s bargain with Aurora’s mother might. Celestine had told Aurora she was made of magic. And if Celestine’s power combined with that dormant connection to dragons . . . could Aurora’s fire be the result?
Yet something stopped her from sharing this theory with Finnegan. The secret of her mother’s bargain, the thought of what Aurora’s true nature might be . . . they felt too personal, like speaking them aloud would allow Finnegan to see beneath her skin.
“I need to know more about Alysse,” she said. “Do you have records of when her people left Vanhelm? Reports from that time?”
“Perhaps,” Finnegan said, “but they’d be much harder to get hold of than these ones, especially if they have any secrets. And people have been studying that story for hundreds of years. Someone would have spotted something like that in the records, especially considering how much Alyssinia wants magic now.” He stood. “I have a better idea,” he said, “risky as it might be.”
“Tell me.”
“Alysse’s family lived in a small town in Vanhelm,” he said, “downriver from here. Her house was turned into a museum. It’s in the waste now, almost certainly destroyed, but—”
“But you think there might be answers there,” Aurora finished. “Answers not in books?”
“You have magic,” Finnegan said. “And you have that connection to Alysse. Maybe you’ll be able to uncover secrets that other people missed.”
There were threats to consider. The dragons, for one. The need to travel there unseen. The possibility that it was just a ruined museum, with no answers at all. But the idea was thrilling nonetheless. A chance to travel across the river again, to see where Alysse had grown up, to glimpse the dragon fire up close. . . .
“When can we go?” she said. “Today?”
Finnegan grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “I’ll make the arrangements,” he said.
TWELVE
THE MUSEUM WAS NOT AT ALL WHAT AURORA HAD expected. She had known, from the stories, that Alysse’s family had been insignificant nobility at best, and even the “noble” part might have been wishful thinking on the part of her biographers. But despite this, Aurora had pictured her growing up in a grand house, a building with turrets and hidden passageways and a forest looming over its walls. Instead, Alysse’s home was a small stone building on the edge of a half-ruined town. The remnants of a signpost still stood outside, welcoming visitors to the house of Alysse.
The house’s front door had burned away, and the stone around it had distorted, leaving a narrow space. Aurora ducked through ahead of Finnegan, and